November 28, 2020

I left my husband with the aide and added additional hours to make sure he would not be alone. Then, to work:

My friend picked Evan and me up with her daughter in their van, the bubble wrap I had ordered arrived after the fact, so my BFF ran over to Staples and got some to fill in. We met BFF’s husband,(who rented a truck) son, nephew at my mother’s building and went to work.

Bit by bit, my mother’s life of seven years in New York City, the city where she was born and to where she had returned, was disassembled.

Item by item,
box by box,
drawer by drawer,
went out the door.
Until there was
but one
more:

Only the bed remained;
the one she slept on and laid her head,
that gave her solace through veils and dreams;
there she lay and there she passed—
for eight months, to the end, she was sustained.

My mother made the bust of a woman in a ceramics class in Florida. She said it reminded her of her mother. It now sits in my house, opposite the photographs of my grandmother and grandfather, above the stairs.

The bed will be donated to a person in need in the building.

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

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