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.

She was a great traveling companion, my Mother. I think of her coming through the gates at Catullo last year, walking strong on her fixed left leg, no wheelchair for Mom, thank you very much. How many hours total did we spend together in cars, going from one town to the next and talking non-stop?

All the paperbacks in the airport newsstand she’ll never read now, the bright magazines! She always had a book tucked under her arm, always. And there’s Barack Obama, taking a shot at the nomination, Bush on the way out. She never got to see the end of the Bush years….

She and Richard were supposed to visit us in September; we were going to show her Rome. I had imagined her at that sweeping view of The Forum you get from the Capitoline Museums. It would have fired her imagination. We wanted to take her up on the Palatine with its grand ruins of brick foundations, the umbrella pines in wan repose, the silence above squalling downtown Rome; all these things that won’t happen….

Ted meets me in Minneapolis/St. Paul. My plane was right on time. It’s always fine seeing my brother, no matter the circumstances. He is driving my Mom’s Toyota; she had been on one of her car journeys when she was struck down, in fact she’d just spent a week at Ted and Alice’s in Vermont.

On Feb. 7th of this year, Mom adopted a little terrier dog named JoeJoe. L. and I had been encouraging her to get a dog for years and she was thrilled with dog ownership, “besotted” as she liked to say. It kills me to see JoeJoe’s little leash crumpled in the back seat.

Nothing breaks my heart like a hospital. She’s in her own room in the ICU, head half-shaved from where they had to release blood from the top of her brain. Seeing her without her glasses makes me think of all those times she spent the night with us in C’Ville, when I’d get her up in the AM. People who you think of as always wearing glasses seem rumpled and vulnerable without them on. They blink at you and you know they they can’t see you. Plus her mouth is agape, she’s all collapsed. Moving close over the bed to embrace her, I am hit by the sour smell of her breath. Of course- they cannot brush her teeth for her, indeed she’s not even eating anymore. The sweet, soap-smelling air of her is broken. She seems already gone.

Jim is there with computer set up on instant message to Palo Alto. His wife Leslie writes every few minutes with news and ideas. So much has to be considered! Rosemary (I still call her Rosie), my eldest niece and Mom’s namesake, made a chain of origami cranes which hang over Mom’s bed. There’s a story about Hiroshima, a little girl making thousands of these cranes to cure radiation poisoning; something Rosie heard. Mom was a fine grandma, always took time for her grandkids. I wonder how they’re doing with all this. It would help to have them here.

I’m always thankful for Jim’s brand of gallows humor. You can tell he’s shaken up though. Ted and I back to smoking. Rich will come tomorrow.