Ellen, Mum, Gumma, 1921-2007

V111.
Each that we lose takes a part of us;
A crescent still abides,
Which like the moon, some turbid night.
Is summoned by the tides.

Emily Dickinson

My mother would have celebrated her 90th Birthday today. Her last slice of birthday cake was at our celebration for her 85th. She suddenly and silently died of a heart attack three months later. She was a strong minded only child, reserved and often prickly, with many, many talents. The love of family, dear friends, early American antiques, cooking, poetry, literature, but most of all my father, who died in 1998, enriched her days and ours.

Sadly, even living next to my brother and me, surrounded by her two beloved grandchildren, she never ever moved on from the loss of my dad. The older she got, the more she longed to join him. Her wish was granted and I believe they are dancing their hearts out together. For all her New England reserve and measured attention to privacy, she and my dad were flamboyant and gifted dancers. Everyone stopped when they entered the dance floor, they dazzled and danced as one. High School sweethearts, they were reunited in January '46 at a local dance hall. My mother had graduated from college, was teaching 1st Grade and my dashing dad was home from his CBI WWII stint in India. They became engaged that Valentine's Day, built a house and married in August. They knew what they wanted and they had their American dream, the picket fence, the girl & boy, the dog & cat. Her only sorrow was outliving him, going it alone was not for her.

I read this poem at my mother's funeral, for me it summed up her painful longing for her other half, my beloved dad, her Ralph.


Ashes Of Life
Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike;
Eat I must, and sleep I will,-and would that night were
here!
But ah!-to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike!
Would that it were day again!-with twilight near!

Love has gone and left me and I don't know what to do;
This or that or what you will is all the same to me;
But all the things that I begin I leave before I'm through,-
There's little use in anything as far as I can see.

Love has gone and left me,-and the neighbors knock and
borrow,
And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse,-
And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow
There's this little street and this little house.


Today is my 600th blip, no gaps, no backblips.

For the Record,
This day came in damp and way too warm for December.