Written Six Weeks Before
March 16, 2006
My mail, e-mail, and phone calls go from the ridiculous to the sublime. Apologies for the cliché, but I can't resist its perfect applicability:
In my mailbox today yet another catalogue of boob jobs in bikinis and an invitation to explore the grandeur of Europe on Queens I or II. I am no more likely to buy a minute leopard-skin thong bikini and its transparent cover-up, (oxymoron, that, isn't it?) than I am to embark on a cruise on which I can expect to experience a personal sense of ease and well-being due in no small part to a phenomenal staff whose sole motive is to ensure my complete comfort at all times. This same staff will also present me with award-winning delicacies presented with a flourish, grace, and intimate knowledge that is the ultimate in civility.
An aging hippie like me would not relax among the privileged diners in tuxedos (silver-haired) and designer dresses, (always blond) even were she to win a state lottery. I did win an English football lottery apparently, but I didn't play fairly, looked up their address with Mapquest. I replied to them asking why their offices were in a discount clothing store. They told me they were in an annex to that building, but the jig was up, (it's cliché day) and our correspondence ended.
Does anyone buy from the telemarketers? I don't know anyone who does. I know pitifully few people here in Florida, so I'll just ask you. Do you even know anyone who knows anyone who buys from them? Of course not! They are to a man and woman loathed. People have been trying to squelch them since the day they began calling us at home and yes, I've lived long enough to remember a time before. Don't they know everything about us these days? Isn't that the going theory? Do they just plague us willy-nilly? Is it to stir discontent? What do all those courses colleges offer in marketing teach? Certainly the students don't pick up any useful information about selling to me.
Why does a middle-aged woman who is not fat, but not bikini material either get catalogues trying to sell her plunging flimsies and snob-appeal cruises when she has a by-pass scar between her breasts and collects cruising-prohibitive disability checks? Things weren't any more luxurious for me when I worked—I had the bad economic sense to choose modern dance, then special education and never did get much past paying what I think of as Everyman bills. That's not right is it? The homeless and the families in refugee camps don't pay mortgages, rent, telephone, dry-cleaning bills do they? So I suppose I'm wrong in thinking of them as Everyman bills. Damn. Duh.
However, I have spent these moments of whining distracted from my mother's sick room. I've vented about silly complaints with the world and moved off from my seriousness, sadness, helplessness. Mom is sleeping and seems to be comfortable so I've been tripping over some shoelaces, some foibles of modern life and gotten time off from thinking about death. Our watchdog minds, our tenacious grips, our stubborn souls come through for us just in time, just enough for the necessary lift, until we level. At least, that's our hope, isn't it?
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Author's Note
This is a blog post from 2006. I'm revisiting the weeks before my mother's death. Blame it on spring, I guess.
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I appreciate everything about how you perceive and express the mundanities of this existence as they blanket what is real and important and painful.
And I totally dig your use of parentheticals.
I dare say that I believe our brains work similarly. Whether I'm right or not doesn't really matter, still a
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Bumpy ride, smooth landing. Poetry in prose. *
*, Nonnie. You could pose your same, well-expressed, well written, suspicions and questions today. Wait. You have.
"gotten time off from thinking about death".The best cruise ever.
Reading this was like having coffee with you and it was a pleasure.
God, I am so right there with you. You, or the narrator, are not alone.
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Truth!
Modern life.
Fine prose and a difficult topic.*
Selling to people is a telemarketer's life. Take that away, and I imagine them going the way of Willie Loman.*
Selling to people is a telemarketer's life. Take that away, and I imagine them going the way of Willie Loman.*
Telemarketing has sustained the hope of many writers, actors,musicians, dancers, painters, sculptors and other creatives when nearly all hope was lost. And, guess what, they do sometimes sell their product and can make good money. I felt it was a whiney deathbed story, but well written enough to read through.
I'm wondering if you'd do a series of these moving up to the death, and then perhaps a reflective year later. And use the dates like in a diary. And a bit more "reveal" like Mr. Pepys sprinkled though out. Oh, and a different title. Maybe, "Six Weeks Before and After". Xo, Lucinda There's a big non-fiction market out there.
I feel that the question marks are like smiles and that they increase confidence between the writer and reader. What Carol Reid wrote seems true to me of it, that it is like getting together over coffee and talking about the most of it. Additionally, I feel that the disabled artist serves as caregiver in culture given our empathy (honed in the arts) and sense of purpose. *
"isn't it?" Indeed.*
You have such a winning, sad and humorous way of describing life as it is. I love this.
Powerful, Nonnie
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