Hey all,
Nothing new today because I didn’t have time because on Monday morning, I surprised Emily, threw her on a plane, and we spent a kid-free night at the amazing TWA Hotel in Queens*. If you ever have the opportunity to stay there, I highly recommend it. Even if you just have a long layover at JFK, it’s more than worth checking out for a drink, a meal, and a wander around one of the world’s landmark examples of design.
Anyway, jetting away to NYC for a night meant no time for a new newsletter.
But I did want to share something with you.
Over the weekend, Southern literary icon and all-around dude Chuck Reece published an essay I wrote on his site, Salvation South. Like much of the personal essays I write, it’s about my dead mother. But—and here’s why I’m telling you all—it’s about my son, too. And my work as a father.
I’ve pasted the first segment below but you should click here to read the whole story. I hope you enjoy it.
*This is not sponsored content. I don’t have nearly enough subscribers for that kind of action.
My Mother the Crow
I threw open the windows as my mother instructed.
“You can’t leave a spirit inside,” she’d say. “You have to open all the windows when someone dies so they can get out. You have to let them out. Open the windows and say, ‘Go! Go! Shoo! Get out of here, you ghost! Time to go! Bye bye, ghost!”
I opened each of the four windows in my parents’ bedroom as wide as I could and realized how stale the air inside had become. Normally, we’d open the windows during the day to allow the fresh air to wash over our mother, but over the last few days, the hyperfocus on what we knew were her last moments made us forget this.
The outside air felt good. Cool but not cold. Massive dark clouds hung in the sky. It smelled of early spring, the slight hint of wetness, the freshness that comes with the death of winter, the air infused with new life from budding trees and plants and flowers. The smell filled the room, and I thought perhaps my mother’s spirit was floating just above my head, searching for a way out. I looked up and around the room, thinking that she might be just up there, she might still be with us for a few more instants. My heart felt calmer than it had in weeks. My mother wasn’t suffering, but maybe she was still with us. Maybe she was just above our heads.
Read the entire essay—beautiful work. Thank you for sharing this. The generational thread here, bringing this back to you and your son, is so moving. My dad—who first got diagnosed with cancer when he was 36—recently finished his second bout with it, and is dealing with the aftermath. I think about these themes a lot and have since I was a kid, so this was an emotional read for me. Again, thanks—really appreciated this one.
Well done.