September 28, 2005

Last night I finished the drawing for my Moms headstone. It's really simple and didn't take all that long, but I have been putting it off and avoiding for about 12 months now or more.

I thought I would write a bit about the avoiding. Safe here, listening to my itunes randomly produce all the songs I spent a year listening to while I tried to come to terms with this new life experience.

My Bubi kept bugging me about the unveiling and when it would happen and saying; " I don't know how much longer I will be around.." and when you're 95 years old that is not an idle threat.

And I started to feel worse and worse about not having done anything, seeing as my job was the easier compared to my brother having to manage the estate. Until this whole thing of commemorating my mom who was lying under the ground began to feel as nasty and defeating as the Torah portion I couldn't memorize for my bat-mtizvah.

I feel a little better now that I have done it. Much like I felt better once I sat down with the tapes and just memorized the damn portion but now it's almost winter and to all intents and purposes we are late late late and my mothers been lying out there near King city with nothing to tell people where she is or anything about her at all.

The worst part is that this feels so selfish, because I am aware that the reason it's taken so long is that I am scared to death to go back to that place.

I'd rather spend a night underground where she is than have to be standing over her grave. I know that sounds melodramatic but it's true.

Last night I had a dream of what we could do instead of having a horrible unveiling out at that remote jewish cemetary, where my last viable memory of the funeral is of my brother and I climbing backwards into a limousine and speeding away from all the people I loved who weren't allowed in the car with us.

In my dream we are having a giant breakfast in a big white tent with lots of crepes and maple syrup and everyone we love drinking yummy coffees and eating unkosher but excellent breakfast sausages.

In short, I don't want to go to my mothers grave, I would rather eat pancakes. I am certainly not going to chastise myself for this, because it's probably perfectly logical. Maybe, or maybe not, it doesn't matter that's all part of the lean into it mentality, and if I wanted to chase down what drives this fantasy it's probably the fact that my last good memory of my mother alive is of eating breakfast with her, my brother and my partner at the time, at her apartment when I visited in June of 2004.

Ahhh...sigh, okay there goes some of my tension.. I don't know though, I think this is going to be scary until I actually go out there. What a cliche.

Now that I feel better, here's a picture of what we are putting on the headstone.

This goes with a quote from Leonard Cohen;

"There's a crack in everything/ that's how the light gets in."

Continued from main page..