death, on the spin cycle

andy pink, down down low low —

from the morgue to the coffin to the grave digger's apartment to the mortician's flat —

occasionally, i startle myself with the realization that i am going to die, that this is an experience, death, that I will have to endure, experience, go through, as a rite of passage to the end of life and perhaps to the advent of another world. i would like to have dementia on the day I die, I do not want to understand death, or my passage through it, I do not want to know what is going on, no information, no goodbye men and women, hello god and saints, I want it to be unknown to me as I keep my keys in the fridge, waiting for this event that fires up the auto, for all I will not know.

I am overwhelmed by the thought of my mother's death; I cried about it quite a bit recently, in the hospital, as I was gaining myself again, and the wound is that I will never see her again, that she will never stand before me, that I won't look at her, see her eye, her face, her silver hair, none of this will be available to me. and my mother, not liking to be in photographs, empties the possibility of visual memory: there are so few photographs of her, going back years, though I have one, from about 25 years ago, on my fridge, holding a christmas plate, scrapped, with her head at a 45 degree angle, tired, resigned to being photographed in our dining room. overwhelmed by my mother's death, I wonder: will I be able to go on, to brush my teeth, take coffee, check the mail, leave the house — will all of these ordinary duties become impossible after my mother dies? I will have my sister, and she will be a face that I can recognize, but without my mother, without her eyes, her face, her silver hair, will I collapse? this is a real worry. petit-marcel or petit-michel, at the end of her book, will it be possible to read another, three volumes or more?

your local momma's boy,

andy pink