From the back of the cavernous room, filled with weeping women in black dresses and jackie kennedy veiled hats, whose cigar-smoking husbands lined up against the walls  like  usual suspects, I stood paralyzed, staring down at my patent leather shoes, making the blue rhinestones of my mother's bracelet, sparkle and dance across the funeral home floor. 

No matter how long, or how loudly, Tennessee Ernie Ford echoed "How Great Thou Art" over the loudspeaker, my feet wouldn't move me any closer to my mother's casket.   

Under the harsh and buzzing fluorescent bulbs, i breathed in one long last look, committing the lines of her face to memory, hoping that everyone who came to say goodbye, knew that even after what she did to the baby, she had always tried so hard to shine brightly
in the barely burning light.  

*farmhousefreak 6.10.13*

I named them after the sisters in Arsenic and Old Lace...

I've been waiting for my blog muse since 2008... anyone seen it?

the old lady in the tattered fur coat

She pukes in my bed...

she once was so stressed--she peed on my husband...

she scratches me and draws blood...

she won't tolerate closed doors or cabinets...

or the dogs....

her hair's falling out...

she's starting to lose her balance...

she can't see very well anymore...

she won't take her meds without my resorting to extreme measures...

she gets smellier everyday....

her stupid tumor just keeps getting bigger...

and i have no idea how to love her any less-- than with all of my heart.