Borderlands Between The Community of the Living And The Dead

After a rough night, mom has looked better. 

I mean, a lot better.

She lies in the bed with a sort of stunned look on her face. 

She has a go at some food.  She sips water. 

She asks me to promise that today I'll stand by so dad can go out and get a suit.

She toys with the paper, lets it fall to the bed.

"What do you need, mom?" I ask her.

A long pause.

"Grace," she says.  "God's grace."

I assure her it will be there.  

Do I know that?  Sort of, yes.  Sometimes I think that it'd be better to go ahead and lie when you don't know.  But it hasn't got the feel of a lie when I say, "It will be there."

"That's the promise," she says.  She looks more troubled than I've seen her in a while.

Her pastor brings a tremendous energy into the room, prays for her, talks to her about Trotsky and The New York Times, taking some ironic glee in the fact that his family were New York Communist Atheist Jews.  He's rich with history and delight in learning and in people.  I recognize in him a passion for his pinko family, a belief in the importance of the dead, how they thought, what they felt.  (He's written to the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act to see the files of his dead relatives.)

He talks quickly, almost oppressively.  You can't think, interact, interpose in the stream of his conversation.  When he pauses and you finally do, he is fully attentive: in such a moment mom talks about the Mitfords and we find him informed about them, as well.  

But he enthuses about our family as well, encompasses my grandparents and great-grandparents (watching from photographs on the walls) in his generous acceptance of the human community.

Then he dashes out.

For a little while, mom looks better, coaxed back into the world of the living, the world of history, our semi-informed gossip about the dead.

She takes up the paper, studies it for a while, and then puts it down.

She closes her eyes, and soon she's drifting again, private and in pain, in the current that moves us between the living and the dead.