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.

Three days after the funeral, L. and I find ourselves at an “Agriturismo” in Tuscany, attending the wedding celebrations of our good friends Josh and Audrey. We wrestled with the idea of participating in the event so soon after our trauma; obviously, the RSVP was delivered long before my Mother passed away so suddenly. In the end, we decide some joy and family togetherness could be curative, and it is. Tuscany is beautiful, even prettier than they say, especially when you’re in the light and air of the place. Plus, we find a great new friend, Josh’s Best Man Gianluca, il Cavaliere Triste (the Sad Knight). More about Gianluca later.

Back in Verona, life goes on. We are glad to be far from America, happy with this day to day strangeness which tends to pull our thoughts away from Virginia valleys and the wooden houses we wander in dreams. Fede hears to the whole story in my awkward Italian and pours beer into our glasses with feeling, remarking on the beauty of the foam.

I start work at an English school here in the old center, just five minutes from the Vicolo. You get to a point where you simply must earn some euro. The school is called Speak Your Mind, same place Josh works. In fact, I’ve socialized with the folks there in the past and so I find myself in a friendly, comfortable setting. Teaching English is fun; it forces me to create systems for thinking about language. Suddenly I have a reason for things which once seemed formless and random, simple stuff like nouns becoming adjectives becoming verbs becoming adverbs, or the workings of the intransitive which, in Italian, is conjugated with essere in the passato. My students teach me a lot, and they, in turn, seem to dig my energy. It’s the best day job I ever had.

In October, my brothers and I meet back up at 68 Devonne Drive to empty Mom’s house. L. is swamped with work and has to stay in Verona with little Mary. Alice is there with Harriet. Leslie joins us mid-week. I could write pages about these brutal seven days but I’m just too wrung out. Suffice it to say we do what we have to do. Mom’s house is now sold and gone. I’ll never again stand in the backyard under the watchful moon, or wash dishes at her sink, or rake the leaves, or sit with her and L. watching the Packers play, or haul in the Christmas tree.

They hold a celebration of my Mom’s career at the Wooly Mammoth Theatre in Washington, D.C.. This is at the end of our week dismantling the house and I, for one, am a shell of myself; it’s hard to be in the moment. Sig makes it down from Manhattan for the day and we throw back some beers together in the spitting rain, talking about our mixed-up lives and how we all just keep on keeping on.

It’s quite an honor to be given use of the The Wooly Mammoth for our celebration. The Director, Howard Shalwitz, worked with Mom on several occasions and adored her. Thank you, Howard. Much gratitude also goes to Sally Kessler who did a mountain of organizing to set everything up. They made displays of Mom’s sketches and costumes. Amazing the work my Mother did; her watercolors are lovely, skillful and vibrant, and Mom never considered herself much of an artist.

After, we go to the Lebanese Taverna for dinner, a whole group of us. I talk with Peg and Don about those early days when they first met my Mom. Pat and Phil Porter came down for the celebration and I have a great talk with Phil who may be the sharpest, liveliest octogenarian I’ve ever met. Susan Tsu was at the celebration but couldn’t make the dinner. Meg is there, Sig and Kate, my brothers, all of us just spent, exhausted, missing her.

We get back to F’Burg around midnight. I am leaving for Italy tomorrow afternoon, but I’ll be up all night. I pass through the dismantled rooms of my Mother’s last home while my family sleeps. I drink, I’m drunk, tears streaming down my face in maudlin waves; I’m sobbing and choking, standing in the Autumn back yard, lights on in the garage, the end of my time here. This is my selfishness, my indulgence. I know I’ll never touch this raw sadness in just this way ever again. It will become integrated into the general fold of life and memory, it will soften and recede. So I want to feel it in all it’s swallowing force, while I still can. I want to lash myself to this terrible moment and ride it all the way down. Tomorrow I’ll collect myself and move on.

We are in the USA for XMas, ’08, a fine if sad time. Only see Rich; it’s going to be hard for the Inghams to all get together. Seeing Mom was obligatory and now we’ve lost the heart of the family. The Speras are wonderfully kind to me, warm and hospitable, genuinely understanding of what I’m going through, this first XMas without my Mom.

I go running on the forest paths of the JCC summer camp near the Spera’s sub-division home. I love the winter woods of Virginia, that wet leaf perfume, everything in decay and nothing blooming. Of course I can’t help but see a vision of her through the black and bare, vertical bars of the pine trunks, a glimpse of a young girl with a book in the crook of her arm, walking and dreaming on a long ago winter day like this one. Was she dreaming of being a writer, being a wife and mother, being a nurse, being a champion horseback rider? Was she dreaming of escaping her tyrant mother, escaping her humdrum life of chores and school? Was she dreaming of a man just like my Father? Was she dreaming of me?