My mother (96) died last week, 10:30 a.m., Thursday, March 13, 2014. For the past nine months I never left her. I am in her home. Surrounding me everywhere are her creative (she was Leo Sun) efforts to make a beautiful home and gardens. Everything around me is my mother. However, wherever I look, her precious body is no longer here. I am devastated, in grief, in bereavement and anguish. During these last nine months all activities, each breath I took, was for my mother.
I realize in my grief that all my life I have been seeking my mother. The nine months (nine tests, gestation to birth) were very difficult. Mother’s illness demanded skills I did not possess. Often at a loss as moment-by-moment emergencies ceaselessly occurred, I stood by helpless. She would cry out “Help me, help me!” I would ask, “How can I help, Mother?” She would say, “I don’t know. Find me in your heart. Love me.” Now with her gone I do not know why I should go on.
Editor’s note: Ellen Bass was recently named the new Santa Cruz County Poet Laureate. Her poetry includes “Like a Beggar” (Copper Canyon, 2014), “The Human Line” (Copper Canyon, 2007), and “Mules of Love” (BOA, 2002), and she coedited “No More Masks!” (Doubleday, 1973), the first major anthology of poetry by women. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, The New Republic, Ploughshares, and The Kenyon Review. She teaches in the MFA program at Pacific University. Visit ellenbass.com.
I would pick Tom Davis. He is the owner of the climbing gym, Pacific Edge, and I find his climbing accomplishments and his sense of community to be very inspiring to me.
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