There you have it, loud and clear.

She said it to the aide.
She said it to the visiting Hospice nurse.
She said it.
I will fight death.
And then she asked the aide to call her sister, Annette.
What do you say when an elderly person in the throes of transition
asks to speak to her sister who has been gone since 2007?
“I can’t call her now, she went out.”
And that quells the request for a while.

For a while.

Until the spirits of the past return carrying white clouds of memories.
Of how her sister took her to
the theater,
to the opera,
to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens,
to the Brooklyn Museum.
Of how her sister guided her to find a career,
to get her first job.

She looked up to this older sister;
the painter,
the sculptor,
the cook,
the pianist,
the poet.
The mother-figure
who protected her,
more than her mother
whose first language was Yiddish,
(whose roast chicken was divine, who could make
one swoon over her blintzes,
who, as a child sewed for the Czar of Russia).

In my time I collected as many stories as I could,
since I was a child, I’ve stored them, hid them.
They were like marbles in a sack that ripped, spilling orbs all over the floor,
I lost my balance stepping on them, falling over them, trying to put them
back in the tattered bag that once overflowed with them, my mother’s stories,
told over and over and over;
the legacy.
Most were round and smooth
and like colorful glass that shone in the sun, reflected
as they rolled;
others were shattered and sharp and could no longer roll to escape:
They refracted at odd angles
mangled the colors within.
They contained hues and tints;
some were big,
some small,
they rolled wherever they could,
to whoever would listen;
they loved the audience.

I saved as many as I could.

But:
I will never know them all,

I will likely never hear them again.

©SusanKalish2020

The series starts here:
Part 1: And The Band Played On … a mother’s life, a daughter’s journey

The previous post is here

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