Me: What should I title it?<\/p>\n
Diane: How about Homeless?<\/p>\n
Me: Isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t that too ham-handed? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want people feeling sorry for me.<\/p>\n
Diane: Then don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t post it.<\/p>\n
Me: But I want my words back on the blog, and I want people to know why there haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been any.<\/p>\n
Diane: Then post it.<\/p>\n
*******************<\/p>\n
Dear Helen,<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m behind. I should have written earlier. Maybe I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be sleeping now. <\/p>\n
I understood your death. I knew it was coming, I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d react, but your perpetually bright smile helped me cope. Mack\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s demise has unhinged me. Most days I know who I am, but some days I feel lost, and many nights I feel myself thrashing about. I wish he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d lived longer than six months after you died, I wish I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d intervened to stop his surgery, I wish my last memories of my father were not of him lying in bed, eyes closed, exercising the only parts he could still move, his hands. <\/p>\n
Wednesday night I dreamed I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t find my way home. I was in a strange city and all streets were dead ends. Anxious, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d wake myself up, but go right back to the same city, and the same struggles. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had these dreams before. Wander, wander, wander, look around, not knowing where I am, or really, even where home is. This time I got mad and said to myself, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I know where to go.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I grabbed my shopping cart and walked through dark, empty streets until I came to a highway without cars. I sensed this was a place I shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be, where I might be arrested, but I picked my cart up, hoisted it overhead, and continued to walk over the lanes, past high fences and down to a broad building with a loading dock. The concrete platform was too high, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d made one wrong decision, but I heard a man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s voice that said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Over here.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Over \u00e2\u20ac\u0153there\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was easy entry to the building and I walked in that direction with my cart.<\/p>\n
I remember your dreams. You loved dreams. Yours were colorful and intricate and populated with people, and you looked to that PBS guy for help interpreting them. What was his name, the guy Mack derided, who liked James Joyce and wrote about symbols and myth and…Joseph Campbell, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s him. <\/p>\n
Thursday night, as if to ward off more wander-in-the-dark dreams, I cooked garlic toast with dinner. I crushed four fresh cloves, soaked them in olive oil and slathered the mixture on sour dough bread, which I then browned under the broiler. It was so strong it bit back. The toast reminded me of Karen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s potato soup which she cooks with five heads of garlic. <\/p>\n
I often think of shopping with you at Idylwilde, of how you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d marvel at their exotic produce – like a child your eyes sparkled at new and different – and I still have the garlic cooker you and I bought. Anyway, Karen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s soup made her whole house smell like a crushed garlic clove, but it was about half as intense as my toast. Did she ever make it for you?<\/p>\n
The point of my wandering letter is I need help. I need more rest, I need to feel up to this task, I need to feel not so alone. I know you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the answers, you didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t when you were alive, but you did always listen.<\/p>\n
Anyway, as Diane and I were driving into Cambridge yesterday, we rounded the rotary near the BU bridge and Diane whispered, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There you are.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I thought she was talking about the driver in front of us, and I said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You mean the curly-headed guy?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, she answered, pointing to the green grass near the overpass, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The homeless man sitting next to his shopping cart.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Me: What should I title it? Diane: How about Homeless? Me: Isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t that too ham-handed? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want people feeling sorry for me. Diane: Then don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t post it. Me: But I want my words back on the blog, and I … Continue reading