As ever, lucidity itself and desperately hard to read. Your mother is fortunate to have you as her voice to the world.
Ken
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Ken Wolman http://awfulrowing.wordpress.com/
"All writers are hunters, and parents are the most available prey."
--Francine du Plessix Gray
On Feb 8, 2011, at 11:21 PM, Stephen Vincent wrote:
> "What is your name, Mom?"
> "I don't know. They took it away."
>
> In conversation with my mother, 94.
>
> "My body is dead. I am the name it had." Euripides, "Orestes." Oddly, or keeping
> obedient to 'family form'
> I have never called my mother by her proper name:
> "Barbara", Barbara Marie Moore Vincent.
> That must have been the one 'they' carried away.
> In her dementia there are four of them, four men,
> each one taking one of those names,
> each one disappearing beyond a dark blank door.
>
> On the phone we sing a round of Row Row Your Boat
> then I let her go out "solo" on her own. Instead of
> "Merrily, Merrily, Merrily" she sings
> "Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?
> Life is but a dream."
>
> Almost desperately I want to sing,
> "Barbara, Barbara, Barbara"
> Even though she won't remember a thing.
>
>
>
>
> Quoted in "Armies of Compassion", the real intriguing and good book of poems by
> Eleni Stecopoulous. (Palm Press, 2010)
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