Mother tried to be a decent mother
in the weeks ahead of Christmas.
she’d fill the month with Advent calendars,
finger countdowns and splotchy
un-successful attempts to create a
joyful face with lipstick.

In hindsight maybe the weight
of her guilt was especially heavy during
the one month of the year that God
could not be ignored.

Its different now.
God is no longer privy to X-mas,
and guilt is not an appropriate emotion
to be taught to children.  

I was more afraid
of mother during Christmas
than at any other time of the year,
all that fake smiling and brittle kindness,
her strings could snap at any moment,
and you knew they would
you just didn’t know when,
or how, or on who.

“It always snows at Christmas!”
mother said as she reached
out my bedroom window to
gather a handful of fresh powder.
She’d bring it in to show me
and I’d wince and cringe because
her movements were  erratic
and unpredictable
like a puppet on strings, her
arms swinging wildly
from side to side,
knees jerking up and down
across the floor
she’d always end up
spilling snow on my bed.

I think the snow helped numb
what it was that she hid,
helped her hide behind
that painted wooden smile,
if only for a little while.

My memories of snow
are quite vivid.
  
I’d shovel snow into
tall piles, taller than I stood
then build tunnels
to the other side.
I jumped off of rooftops
into huge snowdrifts
and come up with
sleeves full of snow.
My friends and I would
latch onto bumpers of
slow moving cars
and “skeech” through
the neighborhood,
or careen down toboggan
runs on our feet,
face planting
at the bottom where
the ice gave way
to fresh snow.

When I turned 16
we’d hide Old Style Beer
in snow drifts,
build ice forts in the forest
and spin donuts in
St. Mary’s parking lot with
open beers in our laps
and never get caught.

As I see it now
all of these things
helped ease the
burden of confusion
with my mother’s
dis- interested
wooden puppet
smiling,

but her guilt ridden
attempts at
Christmas niceties
were never going
to be enough
to keep me from
becoming
dysfunctional.

You see its all about the snow.  
A life embraced by snow.

snow cut into lines,
Encapsulated snow,
spoon melted snow,

any kind of snow
to numb the extremities
and freeze the nerve endings,

a temporary escape from
the Christmas gift
of mother’s guilt.

Imagine this:

We are in a car that is
plummeting over a cliff
after spinning through a guardrail
off an icy mountain road, and we know
that our time is hopeless
and about to end so
I stare at you intently while
the rocks below
come racing toward us.

Can you see the look on my face?

This is how I look at you
every morning
between 6:15 and 6:25,

10 minutes
of loving the gift of you
with my eyes,

as if I’m
about to lose you
and I need to sear your image
in my mind
so it will always be with me,

even in death.

I.

She’ll drive through the parking lot
at quarter past eight tonight;
but first she’ll put up the gravy
and throw away salad.

There is something amiss with the sun.
The angle through the window,
she’s never noticed it on
her plate before

because by now
they were usually seated in the den
where the sun would greet them there,
not here.

It’s not like him to be late.
She worries while she sits,
waits a little longer,
watches the sun slide over
the edge of the table
and drift toward the empty den.

She feels as if she’s
stepped off a spaceship
after landing on a different planet
and the simple act of breathing
requires exaggerated effort.

She looks around at nothing that’s familiar.

She gets up and clears the plates,
feeds the dog, loads the wash
then heads for the door.

Its no surprise
she finds his car parked
in space 138.
The same place he always parks
when he goes for a run.

She shakes her head  
and checks her watch,
confused by the clock
on the dash, 8:31 pm.

It doesn’t make sense.

25 years of routine behavior
makes her think that it is morning.
He parks in space 138
in the morning.

Troubled by her fractured norm
she calls 911 and waits for
the police to arrive.
They tell her that they found a man
and ask her to go with them but
she cannot, or will not go with them
to identify a dead man,

lifeless on a concrete slab
in a cold city basement
under blue neon buzz
above refrigerated drawers.

They will need to find another way
to break her heart tonight.

She refuses to hear what happened,
how a mental patient ran from
behind a tree and hacked him
with a rusty machete.

She will not go with them,
she will not listen to their story,
she will not turn on the television,
she will not speak to anyone but

she will hang on to routine.

She will hold it tightly
for as long as she can.

II.

On a random Saturday at 5:15
she rushes to prepare dinner by 5:30.
At 5:35 she stares at the kitchen clock,
the one they calibrate with Greenwich
once a month.

At 5:36 she takes off her apron,
folds it carefully so as not to wrinkle it,
wipes a bead of sweat from her upper lip
and wonders if its menopause.

Her heart is racing as
she jumps at the sound of the telephone.
  
When she hangs up she is calm.

The coroner has confirmed.

She heads toward the back door,
spots her keys on the left hook while
the right hook sits empty
and she begins to cry.
    
She takes her keys into the garage
but leaves her purse behind.
She won’t be driving anywhere tonight.
She starts the car,
    
leaves it running and gets out,
lies down on the cold cement floor,
curls into a fetal position and
slowly drifts toward sleep.

She finally admits the truth.

He sleeps on cold cement as well.

As soft as the smooth direction
of velvet both ways.

A painter's wooden palette
is used to blend color,
if it isn’t quite right 
no problem,
just wash it and start over.

A clean slate with  
no layers beneath,
no previous unused batches
or miss- matches.

A fresh start without guilt
and the constant reminder
of mistaken color.

If my brain were this simple
I'd be soggy from starts over.

Instead,

my palette is thick and
crusty with mistaken color
and every new mix
blends the old with the new.

These multi-layer batches
will never dry out or wash off
so I’ve stopped trying.

I'm tired of all this
mixing and matching
where no matter how bright
the color I add,

it always ends up storm gray..

We bury them in flat graves
or convert them to ash
and wear them around our necks,
or place them in urns.

And what’s this about burial pods?
Your rotting corpse providing nutrients
to a tree that will one day be
cut down to make a casket
for the person that hung themselves
with their necklace of ash.

I recently read about
mechanically pressed ash
pressed so hard and
with so much pressure
that your loved one becomes
a diamond.
Albeit grey and dull,
and quite expensive.

Effectively if you die first
you can still be buried
with the one you love,
its almost like dying twice…

why do we no longer honor the dead?

Please don’t say an urn or a pod
or a flat marked grave honor the dead.
Google Highgate Cemetery.
Google The Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno
and you will understand the difference.

It is good to honor the dead.  

A death so honored that
a hundred years later
They’re as beautiful as ever.

Go,
look and see how beautiful it is
to honor the dead.

The shadows hold stories
Of people never seen.
They creep up the walls,
They move within dreams.

Are you afraid yet?
Are you afraid to go?
Will you drag your feet?
Will you walk slow?

The night whispers things
No one wants to hear.
It sneaks through windows
And vomits into ears.

Are you afraid now?
Are you shaking, cold?
Are you panicking now?
Are you ready to go?

It's okay.
Just a moment of pain and then
nothing.

Nothing at all.

You've been waiting for a decade.

It's time to take your fall.