GRIEF Poem: Life and Breath, by Paula Praeger

Each day, all day, she sleeps in her hospital bed. She gets up briefly for meals. With trembling hand, she raises food from dish to lips, the climb of small portions, the descent of slow, slow chew.

She breathes, chest rising and falling under the blue woven blanket. I stare at her timeworn face crowning the bedclothes. She still has all her own teeth, focal points between parted lips. How much longer can she live? I love Ev, my stepmother. She will be cremated.

So was my mother. I paid $100 dollars extra to have her ashes strewn over the Atlantic Ocean, to afford her a moment of freedom, a release from her painful life. She gave birth to a son who died in infancy and lost an old boy, Daddy, who divorced and stigmatized her, made her a freak among wives of linotype operators and and New York Post deliverymen who didn’t know from divorce.

I revisit Ma’s sullied mothering. She was busy, busy with classes in interior decorating and painting. She cooked breast of chicken divan for stoop shouldered, big-bellied boyfriends that moved like slugs, with similarly paced intellectual capacity. I dusted our furniture, did the wash, and made our beds. One day I stamped my foot down on the wine colored carpet I vacuumed. I declared, one job a day, the blooming of my teenage rebellion that lasted her lifetime.

Ev escaped the wrath I loudmouthed at Ma, but she too was my victim. She confiscated my Daddy so I had to get even, dragging disquiet in my overnight bag when I visited on weekends. I released miasmic vapors into the nooks and crannies of what I perceived as happy suburban life.

This woman I have come to love after years of battles and truces will soon leave me behind.