1.
We were sitting by the kitchen bar table, M on one side, his feet high on the foot-rest of the silver swirling chair, his mother on the other, standing, her body leaning slightly over, a glass of red wine in hand -- she's a big fan of wine, this originally culturally Catholic, French lady.
I don't remember where I was standing or sitting at the time. I was the observer. I could have been anywhere, because it really doesn't matter. For all I care now, I could have been just watching this scene from a screen.
She was recounting the time before her mother died. Again. "Always the same story, I'm kind of getting tired of it now. Everyone is. I don't mean to be mean, X. It's just too much."
I didn't quite see it myself, but according to M, there were tears in her eyes as she was recounting the story for perhaps the five hundredth time of her life -- it has been a pretty long life you know, at least compared to mine.
2.
Oh yes. Now the actual story.
She had been suffering from either Parkinson's or Alzheimer's for a very long time then, longer than the life span of babies who have had to die young in all of human beings' history -- should this kind of suffering, in this kind of comparison, be seen as a blessing or a curse?
I don't know.
Anyway. She couldn't really do much then. Possibly she was quite dumb. Possibly she just didn't talk much and would sit around all day like a fucking vegetable. In any case she wasn't producing things that would make a younger person widen his or her eyes for even a second.
Then she did this amazing thing.
I think she knew that the end was nearing. And one day she pulled out the ladder with some dumb ideas filled in her head and she wrote with some kind of paintbrush or pen on the wall of her house near the ceiling -- like what they do at Blue State café I would imagine, since I have always found some of their quotations rather cute -- these exact words:
IT'S A WONDERFUL WORLD.
"From that song you know," she would then comment, take a sip of her red wine, and continue...
3.
I'm not sure I can now finish my own recounting of her recounting tonight. Let me come back to it another time.
We were sitting by the kitchen bar table, M on one side, his feet high on the foot-rest of the silver swirling chair, his mother on the other, standing, her body leaning slightly over, a glass of red wine in hand -- she's a big fan of wine, this originally culturally Catholic, French lady.
I don't remember where I was standing or sitting at the time. I was the observer. I could have been anywhere, because it really doesn't matter. For all I care now, I could have been just watching this scene from a screen.
She was recounting the time before her mother died. Again. "Always the same story, I'm kind of getting tired of it now. Everyone is. I don't mean to be mean, X. It's just too much."
I didn't quite see it myself, but according to M, there were tears in her eyes as she was recounting the story for perhaps the five hundredth time of her life -- it has been a pretty long life you know, at least compared to mine.
2.
Oh yes. Now the actual story.
She had been suffering from either Parkinson's or Alzheimer's for a very long time then, longer than the life span of babies who have had to die young in all of human beings' history -- should this kind of suffering, in this kind of comparison, be seen as a blessing or a curse?
I don't know.
Anyway. She couldn't really do much then. Possibly she was quite dumb. Possibly she just didn't talk much and would sit around all day like a fucking vegetable. In any case she wasn't producing things that would make a younger person widen his or her eyes for even a second.
Then she did this amazing thing.
I think she knew that the end was nearing. And one day she pulled out the ladder with some dumb ideas filled in her head and she wrote with some kind of paintbrush or pen on the wall of her house near the ceiling -- like what they do at Blue State café I would imagine, since I have always found some of their quotations rather cute -- these exact words:
IT'S A WONDERFUL WORLD.
"From that song you know," she would then comment, take a sip of her red wine, and continue...
3.
I'm not sure I can now finish my own recounting of her recounting tonight. Let me come back to it another time.
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