Oh. I thought the 'I' in the poem was David Rieff.
It's a hell of a subject to tackle... and I agree that you can't make it up.
Janet
On 12/01/2008, Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> This is supposed to sum up several comments.
>
> Patrick McManus wrote:
> > Of course the risk here is that they suddenly perk up again !!!!P
> >
> That was a real fear, and I mean Fear. She went into the hospital on a
> Sunday night in February and died late Wednesday afternoon. On Monday
> night I'd called her one surviving sibling, her brother, and he ripped
> me a new asshole Just Because he was understandably upset. But then, on
> Tuesday, the doctor told me she was stabilizing. He was talking about
> sending her back to the nursing home if she leveled off. I went into a
> panic. It was quite selfish...I could not bear the idea of going
> through that emotional racking again until the NEXT alarm which might or
> might not be false. I didn't want to have to jerk around my immediate
> and extended family. I was actually and irrationally quite furious at
> my mother for remaining alive, as though this were some sort of sick
> game of Now She's Breathing, Now She's Not.
>
> Read the next paragraph only if you like mysticism in everyday life.
>
> By Wednesday morning I'd more or less accepted the uncertainty of the
> situation, and went back to work. But precisely at noon that day I
> suddenly had this inexplicable feeling or inner command, if you like,
> that I had to go to the hospital NOW. I arrived an hour later and the
> nurse told me my mother's vital signs quit registering--precisely at
> noon--and that she'd be dead within hours if not sooner. That was 1
> PM. The nurse told me to talk to her because even the comatose can
> hear. I did. I said pretty much what was in that ur-poem. And at 4:06
> she was gone.
>
> You can't make this stuff up. Or *I* can't, anyway. It felt in
> retrospect like H.P. Lovecraft Meets the 36 Righteous of Israel.
>
> For several years thereafter I was visited by a dream of walking into a
> room that looked like it was part of Miss Haversham's house, only to
> find Mom sitting in a wing chair demanding this, that, and the other.
>
> As far as David Rieff's memoir, a radio interview, even with Terry
> Gross, can only be a talking promotional blurb. I need to read the book
> because what I heard in the 15 minute drive from the train station to my
> house triggered off what I wrote when I got home, one sitting, very
> little changed. I am sure...and I do mean I am convinced...that Rieff
> was pleading with Something for his mother to just die, to let go and be
> free of the pain of watching her suffer pain. Some people here have
> parents die, and even if it is a mercy, even if you didn't like them
> very much, it's still a wrench. I suppose we are all from our mothers'
> wombs untimely ripp'd even if it takes 48 years.
>
> Ken
>
> --
> ------------------
> Kenneth Wolman kenwolman.wordpress.com
> Abuse of power comes as no surprise--Jenny Holzer
>
--
Janet Jackson
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www.proximity.webhop.net
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