Unflinchingly powerful Ken.

- Peter Ciccariello

On Jan 10, 2008 8:56 PM, Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> FOR WHOM?
>
> My mother, who never ceased complaining
> throughout most of the 86 years of her life
> finally shut down and up for her final three days.
> And what could l say to this failing and senseless hulk
> that once had carried me in her body and then on her back?
> "Oh Mummy, don't die, come back, life can be beautiful"?
> As bad as things got, would get, had to get,
> there was none of that kissy-kissy bullshit
> in the moments of her ending.
>
> So what I said--words I was too much a coward to say
> if she were not in a coma and thus could not answer:
> It is time for you to die, Mom, nobody can prevent it,
> if you come back it will only be to more pain,
> more of that horror-house nursing home,
> more of my older son crying, of my younger one hiding,
> of the wife detached from you in death as you
> detached from her in life, and to me drinking and
> pill-popping my way through my filial visits.
>
> I believe because I must believe that there are people
> waiting for you on whatever Side there is,
> not perhaps a God but my father who thought he was
> and your sisters who knew they were
> and even your parents who were Communists
> so didn't give a shit one way or the other
> except they really thought Earl Browder was Moshiach.
>
> I was assured she could hear me but could not answer:
> the perfect set-up for a man like me who never had a word
> to say to her that she didn't have a smartassed insult for,
> a retort dipped in acid.
> Who was I talking to, then?
> Who was I spouting that Other Side crap to?
> To her, who believed in Absolute Zero
> and the nullity of death followed by dirt?
> "La morte e nulla!"
>
> Or to myself who would not accept the end
> as the end, who needed that belief system,
> whacked-out though some might find it,
> to quell the darkness that had taken my soul
> and was now fitting a burkha to smother it?
>
> KW/1-10-08
>
> Written after listening to Terry Gross interview David Rieff, who
> described the death of his mother Susan Sontag four years ago.  He has
> written a book about her death and the questions of how do you talk to
> the dying: in his case, a brilliant thinker who nevertheless was
> deluding herself that she could survive her third and most relentless
> cancer when all Rieff had to do was look at her to see the suffering
> she was enduring.  The question for Rieff was far more complex than
> this statement: do you lie to her or tell her a truth she really does
> not want to hear?
>
> --
> ------------------
> Kenneth Wolman                  kenwolman.wordpress.com
>    Abuse of power comes as no surprise--Jenny Holzer
>



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