NEVERMORE

I wish I could write the words as I saw them in my mind’s eye at 4 o´clock this morning. The “ desfile de las vocales”* paraded past me and the consonants were crisp as fresh lettuce, but since I am now totally awake and no longer as sure of what I need to say nor just how to say it, I’ll just go along as best I can.
            At Lalo’s insistence, I tried to read a quasi-handbook on how to deal with a diagnosis of a terminal illness. He felt it had helped him and might be beneficial to me.  I tried, but I have an aversion to anything vaguely suggestive of platitudinous savvy so I never got through it; however, on the back cover of the book, I did find something that struck a chord of sorts; it said “Life, for everyone, is a terminal condition.” Well, yes, but where do you I find the safety in numbers in that?

            Five months have come and gone and I can’t seem to get past his death.  I know that the official cut-off for normal grieving is supposed to be at six months but I’m not even close.

            Lalo was the keynote of my life...  I became a real person when he was born because I then had an authentic identity; I was a mother. Before that, I was somebody’s daughter, niece, grandchild, wife; but now my official place in the world was that of mother.

            As an only child for practically six years, he was the starter-kit of our little family, receiving all of the attention, both positive and negative, but he weathered the storm although, when Susana was born, I worried a little that he wouldn’t survive the shock of not being the be-all and end-all. I decided to make her arrival an event dedicated to him. His father and I had an easel, paints, brushes and drawing paper delivered to our door a few hours before we were due to arrive home from the hospital. The card on the gift read “to Lalo from his new little sister” and for quite a while afterward he referred to her as “la nueva” ---the new one---.  As was the case of the relationship between their father and his siblings, my dream of this brother and sister caring deeply for one another became a reality, thank God. I also know how very deep is the hurt that Susana is feeling at his passing, although I cannot really plumb the depths of it since I was an only child and never suffered such a terrible loss as that of a sibling. I can at least be there with her in the devastation I know she is experiencing.

            There is a lyric in a song that goes-------Toward a closing door, a door marked Nevermore that wasn’t there before ------ that seems to apply to our situation.

Patricia Bari Frew                                             *Alludes to a children’s song in Spanish: “The parade of the vowels”