After the initial feelings of emptiness, that seems to be a staple of my mornings these days, I felt enormous gratitude thinking about the gift that was Mom ... and the gifts that are, really, every moment of every day ...
But the feelings of torment ... worrying about the future ... after a very bleak conversation with a previous supervisor last night ...
I had a really interesting conversation with my cousin about the small town in which my mother, and his, had grown up. I'm not sure if I should say the name of the town ... I'll call it
"H-ville" This small town was both the place from which my mother was always moving away ... throughout her life ... yet it was always, always in a most fundamental sense Home for her.
I've heard about H-ville all my life. And talking with my cousin ... who lived there, taking care of our Grandpa in the early 1970s ... I benefited from his vivid memories of H-ville. He said he's lived in large cities and small - San Diego, Jacksonville, Tulsa, Pocahontas (small town in Iowa) ... but of all the places he's lived, the one he really found to be the best ... at many levels ... was tiny H-ville. My cousin said H-ville really was just like the Mayberry of the Andy Griffith Show. And this was a place that really was tolerant of aberrant, elderly, or otherwise less than perfect citizens. To this extent, H-ville was something like that wonderful town in Lars and the Real Girl. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0805564/ And my cousin and I agreed that this town ... Grandpa's home ... would have been the place he would have liked to have died, even if he fell off a bridge or drowned in a "ditch." Better by far than to die broken and stripped of everything that was of value to him, in the nursing home where he was placed, to die abject and alone within a year of his compulsory placement there.
Mom ... and my Aunt ... "moved on" from H-ville. And it's hard, very hard, for me now to wish that they had not followed the contemporary cultural lead, followed by all good peripatic Americans back then, thinking to escape the Great Depression by finding a life Somewhere Else.
And what of me ... today ... and thinking of my Mom ... yesterday ...
I can't but admire Mom for trying. She followed the path she thought best, and did the best she knew how. But ultimately ... things seemed not to really work out. In a way it has to be said she over-reached ... and the results of over-reach are all around us in our shattered, alienated, impoverished and deracinated family.
Even ... can it be said? Even when it comes to our chosen professions. Mom and I were here once again, as so often, so much alike.
For to be honest, I'm not so great at what I do. I'm one of those folks in the profession who has his license and does sort of OK but on the whole really doesn't quite measure up.
Likewise my Mom wanted to write ... and got her degree in Journalism ... but was really not all that great despite her honest and vigorous efforts. She too didn't really quite measure up.
How if she ... and her children ... had stayed in H-ville?
She could not have reasonably really been a Journalist in H-ville. I doubt if I could have plied my profession there either. She .... and, I suppose, I ... would have been situated in humbler vocations. But ones perhaps that would have brought us greater sense of purpose, of satisfaction, of connection to the community - even if I had been a shopkeeper and she a homemaker.
Oh my. Those strategic decisions of the 1930s and 1940s truly led to deep dislocation and deracination for all of us ...
And today I sit alone ... rootless ... hopeless ...
and therefore turn to the Hope of the Hopeless ...
Oh Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me and rescue me from my own isolation and nothingness.
Oh Lord Jesus Christ please please please take good care of my Momma
I love you Lord Jesus.
Charles Delacroix
Feast of St Andrew
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