"I dream of a hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self merges with the nonhuman world and somehow survives...Paradox and bedrock."-Edward Abbey

14 September 2017

Sixty-Six

You would've been sixty-six today. Seven years to the day, we gathered at that one bristle cone between the ruins of Waldorf and the bones of the Santiago Mill to scatter your ashes. Me, the heretic, reading the requiem I composed for you, playing preacher-man because of that zaniness with the Universal Life Church, but that's another story.

Nine months and nine days before that, your youngest, my brother, and I stood over your cooling body. The stench of the disease that devoured you was still heavy in the air. My brother did not understand why I asked for two coins to cover your half-lidded eyes, and, in the moment, I was not in the mood to deliver a mythology lesson.

It was that night I truly cast my lot to the winds of chaos and let's just roll them bones...

Seven years, nine months, and nine days later, I often dream of you. You're never sick then. There was a hoodoo-voodoo article about visitation dreams I came across recently, and, you know me; I get curious, I dissect well past the marrow, watching the worms beneath squirm with savage amusement. So, of course I read it, and none of those dime-store diagnostics fit.

Brass tacks and bedposts, mother, I miss you. Terribly.

7 comments:

  1. I think I might understand, Robbie. As much as one human can understand another, who is or has had similar experiences. It's been over 30 years since my wife died, and 21 since my wife died. I still talk to them, mostly in dreams. It never goes away, but, in my experience, it lessens it's grip on you.
    Don't know if that helps.
    Hope you're doing well, and have plans.
    You're friend,
    Mike

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    Replies
    1. second sentence should read "...since my sister died, and 21..." sorry. age and all that.

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    2. A friend of the family said, right after my mother died, and she'd lost a child six months prior ; you never get over this I find such profundity in that statement...

      All's zen...

      Delete
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  3. Parents. They're rooted so deep in your bones you can't tell what's them and what's you. Thanks for this meditation, Robbie.

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