GRIEVING NOTES

Day Two: Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Part One: Morning and Afternoon

My drinking the night before made waking up difficult.

The first thing I recall was Becky telling me that there was a call for me. Half dazed, I took the phone. My older brother wanted to know when I wanted to leave town. It took a moment, but I remembered: "Oh yeah, mom is dead," I thought to myself.

I had been working under the assumption that I wouldn't be flying back to Houston until the evening, so I hadn't bothered with packing or setting Becky up with a key to my apartment to take care of the cats. I reminded him that he told me my flight was probably going to be tonight. "Okay," he said, and hung up. I tried to go back to sleep.

After dozing some twenty minutes or so, Becky woke me again handing me the phone.

"Is 2:45 okay?" he asked.

"No, no. I've got to get my stuff together. I need more time than that."

"Okay."

Again, I tried to sleep off my drinking from the night before. He called back a little later to tell me that my flight was leaving at 5:45. I told him that would be great. I don't think I was able to sleep after that. I went to my place to pack; Becky was going to meet me there later.

Everything seemed new. I was in a new universe, one in which my mother existed only as memory. I was a new person, in new circumstances, doing new things. I mean, yeah sure, I've left town plenty of times, but not because my mother was dead. This was unique in my experience.

Becky had gotten keys made early while I slept, so all I had to do was prepare for my trip. I was alone in my apartment for only a couple of hours, but it was enough to start thinking about Mom. I tried to keep busy, but she kept creeping in. After all, everything I was doing right then was about her. I was packing because she was dead. I was setting up my cats because she was dead. Each pair of underwear I set out, each shirt, my old suit and tie, was because she was dead.

So I packed and cried and cried and packed.

Becky arrived after a while. We made sure the keys worked, and I told her about the care and feeding of Sammy and Frankie. She called a cab for me to take to the airport. She hugged me before I left.

I've ridden in cabs before, but I can count the number of times I've done so on one hand, so the ride did nothing but add to the newness of it all.

Newness or surrealism. I haven't really decided which it was yet.

The driver, a Pakistani named Ibad, asked me where I was flying to. "Houston," I told him, "for a funeral." We chatted a bit more; I showed him the restaurant where I work as we drove by--he seemed to approve of waiting tables as a profession, a nice moment of working class solidarity between the two of us I thought. He asked me if I was only going to be out of town for a day or two. "No," I said, "more like a week; my mother died yesterday."

The driver's tone changed from chipper to reverent. "You know, I'm a Muslim," he said. "We're not Christians, but we do recognize the Christian and Jewish prophets."

"I know, I know," I replied, "all three religions are 'of the book.'"

"Yes, yes, that's right." He went on, "In the Muslim tradition, there is a moment when Moses is talking to God. Moses' mother had recently died, and God wanted him to know that He would no longer be turning a blind eye to Moses' misdeeds. In other words, Moses' mother, who was specially loved by God, was no longer around to protect him. Losing one's mother is a very significant event; that's why this story is remembered."

I had never heard this before, but it rang true. Moses lost his special protector; I lost my special protector. Moses was on his own, a man, responsible for his own life. I was starting to feel the same way myself.

We chatted some more. I told him about the Pakistani students I taught in Baytown, and how much I liked them. I told him how much I hated our awful wars against Muslim nations. I thanked him for his words of wisdom and kindness. We shook hands at the airport, and he told me he would pray for me.

As with taxi cab riding, I rarely fly. Airports are strange places to me. Being there, at Louis Armstrong International Airport, upped the surrealism level. I found my way to the gate, ducked into a news stand, and bought a copy of Atlantic Monthly. I sat, and read, and tried not to think about why I was there, about how odd and bizarre the most mundane tasks seemed to be in this new motherless universe.

I got on the plane and found my way to my seat.


My mother, my brothers, and me, 1973 or 74.

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