This blog has been a fitful proposition from the start, losing and gaining steam as my discipline levels fluctuate or circumstances intervene. L. has been good about posting visual stuff but my little updates, anecdotes, and observations, whatever their value, have entirely ceased since around June of ‘08.

Last I wrote, we were ramping up for this group show with our buddies at scalaColore. This was May, so a good while ago, and the whole universe has shifted since then. (more…)

Up crap of dawn, Catullo Airport to Charles DeGaulle, switch over for int’l flight to St. Paul, MN.

Weeping in the window seat, that pull at the guts as you lift into the air. I have a Neil Young song in my head- “I feel like goin’ back, back where there’s nowhere to stay….these rocks I’m climbin’ down have already left the ground, careening through space.”

Everything I see makes me think of all the things she’ll miss now. The stores, newsstands, coffee shops, all the cheerful airport displays; they cry out to her in her absence. She always enjoyed choosing some little thing on her travels, a cookie or a latte or a gift for someone. She was delighted by these small, independent decisions. (more…)

Richard arrives. Jim and I are sitting in the ICU room with Mom when he walks in. He seems like a child, expression blank and unsure, stumbling a little. Back in the day, there would have been such drama in the room with Rich, especially at a moment as devastating as this. Now he’s just fine, calm and sensible, in shock like the rest of us but holding on. Mom would be proud to see how well he handled himself. (more…)

They move Mom to the Domitilla wing, into a private room where they can care for her as she dies. There is a couch to which Jim lays claim, Ted takes the lounge chair at the bedside, Rich roams the halls with his lap-top, calling banks and credit card companies and mortuaries. I begin what will be a four day migration from the extra chair to the family lounge computer to the hot, squared-off streets of Rochester where I smoke cigarettes like I never quit, years ago. (more…)

Life can be so weird and wrong. It is my 39th birthday, March 9th, 2009. I am sitting here in Verona. It’s early morning and I’m writing about my mother’s death on her former laptop, which I inherited. There’s a batch of photos from XMas ‘07 she had loaded onto the computer, shots of us making cookies and setting up the tree. I’m thankful we had all been together that year, one last time together in Mom’s little house. There’s a shot of her regarding the still undecorated tree with an expression so fixed and contemplative- I wonder what she was thinking. Mom was scared to grow old, scared to die, though she faced these fears with pragmatism and strength as she faced everything. I just hope that, when she went down, she fell into the darkness too quickly to be afraid. This thought haunts me. (more…)

So now we must take a final road-trip in my Mother’s car, but she will be missing. It’s up to Rich and me to drive her Toyota back to F’Burg. One morbid hassle- Mom requested cremation in her living will and so she’s been taken to a mortuary in Rochester for the procedure. The legalities of the death process require at least a day before she can be cremated, so in order to bring her remains with us, we would have to stick it out for another 24 hours in this hospital town. This is more than Rich and I can face. We’ve had enough of Rochester, MN. The folks at the mortuary assure us that they can get Mom’s remains to Virginia by the end of the week (we’re planning the funeral for Sunday July 20th) so we decide to leave town Monday. (more…)

The days leading up to Mom’s funeral tumble into memory, disjointed and patchy, full of the tears and laughter and grim exhuberance we associate with family disasters. We remember her, we remember ourselves, we sift through photos and letters. There had been a proposal to start clearing out Mom’s things but with everyone here together, in this state, that’s completely impractical. We’ll have to meet back up Stateside and deal with 68 Devonne Drive at some later date. (more…)

So we go to the Mary Wash. campus, the red brick and columned building which houses the Theatre Dept., on a brutally hot and humid afternoon, to remember our Mother, our Sister-in-Law, our Mother-in-Law, our Grandmother, our colleague, our dear friend. I am sweating like a pig, gushing sweat. Couldn’t even bring myself to dress properly, just a black t-shirt and my H@M pants from Milan, bought that first month we were in Italy. I am hung-over. I am dreading this. All the people we’ll have to see, talk with, cry with. Ted goes to the train station to pick up Sig. I help the Speras haul in stuff for the reception. Peg has made a beautiful dressing for the table with a small tailor’s dummy, fabric and buttons and bits of my Mother’s quilts. We have put the iconic photo of Mom crossing the Grand Canal in her goldolier shirt on a little card for the guests. Under the photo is printed a line from Romeo and Juliet, “O! she doth teach the torches to burn bright!” That was Ted’s idea. (more…)

So I have finished this writing, months after starting it and months more since the heart-breaking events I’ve recounted actually occurred. It was therapy. I know much has been left out, other things dwelt upon too long. To anybody who reads these words and didn’t know my Mother, check her out on the World-Wide Web. She had a fantastic career and should be remembered and celebrated for it, much as she doubted the significance of her own contributions. (more…)