Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of my mother’s death. I’ve been rather overwhelmed at work by a new production system coming in, with training off and on all week, and it wasn’t until I wrote the date on the page of notes I was taking yesterday that I realized, with a pang, what day it was. “I’ll think about this later,” I thought — llike Scarlet O’Hara.
J.D. Salinger and Howard Zinn died the same day my mother did. She loved literature (I wanted to ask her if she’d ever read Salinger, but too late) and she was a red-diaper baby (had she read Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States”?). I couldn’t help imagining the three of them on the train to that afterlife I don’t believe in, my mother sitting between Salinger and Zinn, each of them talking to her, one about writing and the literary life and his hermitlike existence, which she might have appreciated, the other talking politics, which she would have agreed with. I imagine her turning her head from one to the other, nodding occasionally, maybe asking a question, maybe interjecting a small comment, but I don’t think either of the men would have let her get a word in edgewise even if she’d tried. And I imagine her feeling escorted by just the right men into the next stage, which she didn’t believe in either.
(Note: the spellcheck on WordPress accepts “Salinger” without comment but underlines “Zinn” as questionable. But then it also underlines “spellcheck” and “WordPress.” No political subtext there, I guess.)
January 29, 2011 at 9:13 pm |
I missed the day entirely. It happened to be the second snow day this week, and my brain shut off. I had intended to light a candle and say some prayers to that omnipotent being no in my family has a relationship with except me. I took comfort in that fact: no one missed anything but me. Let’s see what we create as a family next weekend.