TheBanyanTree: 100 years, seven months

[tobie at shpilchas.net]

This is Tobie from "Sheltering In Place" (S.I.P.).  I’ve been thinking of you.  Shabbat Shalom.

	The shiva candle is quietly burning in the window.  We buried my mother on Thursday.  Six feet apart, close family far apart.  Kaddish through a mask.  Probably no one heard me choke up and skip a v’yit. Well, Meyshe did.  It threw him off for a second. He was standing right next to me. Our little pod can touch.  My best friend came. I haven’t seen her for close to a year now. My daughter and her husband came from San Francisco. As half faces we acknowledged each other. She’s dyed her hair auburn (it was dark blond).  People said it was hard to recognize everyone with all the face coverings.  Someone said, "But we can always tell who YOU are."   I asked why and they all laughed.  Evidently I’m always the most colorful person present.  I’ve forgotten who I am maybe.

	Can’t go into my mother’s room.  But I did once. I opened one of her jewelry cases and took out the amethyst ring she wanted me to have and the victorian era ring I gave her: a band with a small pearl and around the ring tightly braided hair. It was a popular gift between friends and lovers back way back back.  I put them on, wore them to the cemetery.  But I took them off when we got home.  Didn’t know where to put them.

	They’d had to pile up the dirt on top of the Lieberman's place next door. We apologized. And they had to move the Shapiro  headstone, promising everything would be put back where it belonged.
	
		So I guess everything is put back where it belongs.

	We need to notify everyone about my mother’s passing. I saved a list of people who were invited to the 100th birthday open house that never took place  because the pandemic fell down on top of us.  We thought we could call people. But when I opened up the file, it was only addresses, no telephone numbers, no email. So we thought we’d send cards — nice ones.  I was charged with searching on the net for a thoughtful not maudlin card.  Came up empty. You want a picture of Monet’s garden? My mother liked Gauguin, but topless native women with fruit?  Then it came to me that the walls in this house are covered with her paintings. I know her favorites and I’ll photograph them, have cards made.

	Meyshe comes into my room at night and sleeps on the other side of the huge bed. He asked me, "Isn’t this going to look wrong?"  I told him no one was looking, but he could sleep on top of the comforter and I’d sleep under. I think each one of us wants to think the other needs more support.  True. We both need more support.

	I had to tell my literary agents back east that I couldn’t send them anything to submit right now. They understood. Of course they did. Everyone has parents.  Or had parents.  This is nothing like my father’s death.  He was a monster and all I felt when he died was a sense of relief and a new feeling I didn’t even recognize: I felt safe.  With my mother’s passing I feel uprooted, laid aside on the ground next to where I was growing only a moment ago.   I was the last person on earth she spoke to and I accompanied her to the edge of her passing. I feel privileged, and haunted.

Love,

Tobie







"It's a shame chaos requires such little maintenance" THS



Tobie Shapiro
mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net <mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net>