Monday 28 Nov 2005

Yesterday marked six months since I have not seen my mother. Hmph. So last night with many longings for her I watched (the Cole Porter story) De-Lovely when we got back from taking frozen pizzas to Grandma's for supper. While I sang along through the absdelovely music — oh man, great singable songs — I cannot say I felt her with me, though I will always think of watching it together in the spring as we worked side by side on my quilt.

Thus it was a fitting day for me to unpack the quilt and start the needlework, so I stitched as I watched, stitched as I sang, stitched as I cursed my sorry ineptitude with the needle and the bulky fabric that has to be wrestled with so that I don't accidentally sew the thing to itself. Got two squares done, have numerous holes in the skin of my fingertip, and can hardly wait to get at it again.

Dad went to our little Joanie's for supper and picked up a roasted chicken from the IGA along the way. "Beats my cooking," he said when we spoke on the phone.

<>
<>
<>

Helen Bevington was a university professor in the States. Following are excerpts from a diary she kept. These were written after her husband's death:

“With him I came first in his life, as he came first in mine. Now I'm not first with anyone at all. And can never be. The panic comes from the realization." - two months after her husband’s death, from Along Came the Witch, by Helen Bevington

Nov 1965
"I ask people who have tried it how to live alone. I asked a professor's wife at Duke, a widow these three years. She burst into sobs. 'It can't be done,' she said."

May 1965, the month her husband died:
"We've lived on the edge of a volcano that finally erupted, the same hot volcano for five years. It came to have the air and semblance of home. For five years I've known he must die of cancer. The only question was, how soon? I love him and thank him for surviving so long.

I think he did not know. He had no reason not to hope after the first operation, for as far as he was told the prognosis was good. But the time was always too late. I write it down now because he cannot read it, can never read again.

Princess, it is as if one take away
Green woods from forests, and sunshine from the day."

<>
<>
<>