80
You would've been 80 today. Sometime today, I don't know when but you always were one to note the exact time of birth on top of the date. Mine was 1:25pm, or 1:27pm or something like that. Been a long time since I bothered to check. You're the only other person who would know or care anyway.
Instead of 80 you're minus ten in my reckoning, ten years gone that is. Ten years ago today your body lay in a rehab center a short walk from a SIR stop and you were oddly surrounded by silver balloons and stuffed animals and gifts that you would never see because, well, your brain had gone without oxygen for too long the January before but your body being a stubborn kind decided to hang around for a while digging its heels in figuratively and literally on the bed until you wore the skin off the back of your heels right before you finally did give up the ghost as we were trying to decide if we should let the doctors start hacking off pieces of you to act as heralds to the next world "hey, here come her feet, hey feet when does the rest of the body get here? the brain has been up there on the shelf in a jar for a while waiting to get back in that nice warm skull" I can see the doorman of the afterlife saying.
It's different now but the same. The world is still stupid and cruel and greedy but there are plenty more doodads to fill up the time between now and when we all join you. I wonder what you would've thought of You Tube. Maybe they could put old mysteries on there and you'd watch it. Doesn't matter much now though.
I wish I had gotten to cook for you now that I know how to cook a little. And I wish we had a bigger trip than that last one to Lancaster. Can't change that now though, the cement has set and no wishful chisel can crack it. Better to think of the good than the bad or the simply mundane-falling-a-bit-short-of-hopes times.
I hope you're well wherever you are and wherever that is I hope you're not in an 80 year old body. I hope you can walk and read and talk and dance and laugh and eat and yeah, even smoke and drink because that's what I make you do in my memory or maybe that's what you're doing on your own there because maybe a memory is the only place any of us survive after we discard the husk we're imprisoned in for a while.
Happy birthday mom, I miss you.
Instead of 80 you're minus ten in my reckoning, ten years gone that is. Ten years ago today your body lay in a rehab center a short walk from a SIR stop and you were oddly surrounded by silver balloons and stuffed animals and gifts that you would never see because, well, your brain had gone without oxygen for too long the January before but your body being a stubborn kind decided to hang around for a while digging its heels in figuratively and literally on the bed until you wore the skin off the back of your heels right before you finally did give up the ghost as we were trying to decide if we should let the doctors start hacking off pieces of you to act as heralds to the next world "hey, here come her feet, hey feet when does the rest of the body get here? the brain has been up there on the shelf in a jar for a while waiting to get back in that nice warm skull" I can see the doorman of the afterlife saying.
It's different now but the same. The world is still stupid and cruel and greedy but there are plenty more doodads to fill up the time between now and when we all join you. I wonder what you would've thought of You Tube. Maybe they could put old mysteries on there and you'd watch it. Doesn't matter much now though.
I wish I had gotten to cook for you now that I know how to cook a little. And I wish we had a bigger trip than that last one to Lancaster. Can't change that now though, the cement has set and no wishful chisel can crack it. Better to think of the good than the bad or the simply mundane-falling-a-bit-short-of-hopes times.
I hope you're well wherever you are and wherever that is I hope you're not in an 80 year old body. I hope you can walk and read and talk and dance and laugh and eat and yeah, even smoke and drink because that's what I make you do in my memory or maybe that's what you're doing on your own there because maybe a memory is the only place any of us survive after we discard the husk we're imprisoned in for a while.
Happy birthday mom, I miss you.
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