La última nota de Mamá

"Para los qué amé y me amaron.

Cuando me haya ido, desprendas 

y déjenme ir. Tengo tantas cosas que ver y hacer (?) 

No deben atarme a sus lágrimas, 

Sean felices, tuvimos tantos años juntos y yo les dí mi amor.

Ustedes solo podran tratar de adivinar

Cuanta felicidad me dieron

Les doy las gracias por cuanta felicidad 

me dieron por todo el amor que cada uno me dio! 

Pero ahora es tiempo de que viaje sola; así es que si se sienten 

tristes por mí háganlo por un rato y nada mas; y después ... que su comf(?)

nza se convierta en confianza y fé

Es solo por un momento que vamos a estar sepa

rados asi que bendigan los recuerdos, (en) 

su corazón, yo no estaré lejos, por que la vida 

continúa, y si me necesita llámenme 

y yo, vendré. Aún que no me puedan 

ver ni tocar, yo estaré cerca, y si oyen con

el corazón escucharan asu alrededor mi 

suave y a su alrededor y claramente mi voz(?)

Luego cuando les toque venir por este 

mismo camino, yo saldré a recibirlos

Con una sonrisa, y a darles la 

bienvenida a su casa

              con amor"

Papá se encontró esta nota escrita a mano de Mamá

al salirse de la casa que compartieron. Es una copia, no la original. Sospecho que la habrá escrito en un momento de lucidez dentro de su enfermedad del Alzheimer para despedirse de sus seres amados. No pudo hacerlo en persona. Quizás intentó hacer varias copias para distribuir la carta. ¿Habrá logrado llevar la carta original a la oficina de correos? ¿A quién se la habría mandado? Qué bueno que existe un correo divino que supo preservar esta copia misteriosa para llevar el último mensaje de Mamá a sus seres queridos. La nota aparece como un fax del más allá. Una fotocopia que se comió algunas letras. Como el Alzheimer se fue comiendo las memorias y facultades cognitivas de Mamá.  Estoy agradecida por su profunda intuición que la llevó a dejar un mensaje infinito como este. Me hace sentir que no se fue del todo, y que ahí estará de alguna forma si la necesito, y que ahí estará cuando me toque aquel viaje solitario. De hecho ahí está ella, tan cerca y tan lejos, en el misterioso más allá... aquel espacio espiritual que todas compartimos. ¿Sabes cuál?

Step by step

On a random piece of paper with the German slogan "Immer einen Schritt voraus" (always a step ahead of the way), I wrote many years ago...

My son wanted to climb on a neighbour's wall to walk on it. I told him: "Go ahead, if you want to, you know how." (Andale si quieres, tu sabes como.) He's used to holding father or mother's hand. I was set on keeping going. From our home to my parents' house walking speed with stroller, kids and canine: roughly an hour. We don't own a car, otherwise it would take 3-5 minutes. Unbelievable! Anyway, he climbs up on the wall  and walks on it just fine by himself until he starts whining that he doesn't want to do it by himself, that he needs help. "You're doing it just fine, you see!" (Vas bien ¡ya ves!) I reassure him without stopping myself, always with an eye on him though. I hold his hand for the jump down upon his request. He'd just never walked alone on the wall before, didn't know he could do it just fine. The next walls he looked at and touched, he contemplated them but didn't ask to walk on'em nor made an attempt to do so on his own. He'll probably sleep on it a night or more. Perhaps he'll pass these neighbourhood walls in contemplative silence again or many more times until he realizes that he can do it by himself just fine... pensive, careful and analytical as he is.

dreaming is

Was on my way to a place of books and knowledge, when I met my two teen-age neighbors who I'd befriended recently. They were "cool" guys, one small, one rough, both "tough". I noticed they had packed some weapons today, each a black gun of some sort, they must have been really bored. Didn't think too much about it until they shot a few people down right in front of a mixed part of town: a fancy man, a fancy woman, and a child. I didn't see them all, as I made it inside. No blood, no cries; I was going for where wisdom lies. The bookery was in the basement. I went. Straight to the information desk where the book lady sat, we began to chat. It was I who spoke mostly, she started getting annoyed. "Just one more question before I go..." I said "what's the meaning of dreaming?" She looked at me from across the information desk, her face young, intelligent with dark-rimmed sixties-style glasses. "Dreaming is a process..." is I think what she said, for my thoughts were so loud and insistent that I couldn't hear her anymore, just saw her mouth moving, words blindly spilling, while my own contemplations swamped my mind. Or did she say progress? Why do I miss the most important answers to my questions? I need to learn to listen better, silence consciousness for the sake of growth. "...for example..." she was saying "...I use it to develop the characters in my novel, which you don't need for you have plenty to read already..." she smiled at me, suddenly nice. I nodded approvingly as if I had understood it all, every golden word she had spoken, too ashamed to admit that I'd become victim to my ego-centric conscious. I made my way outside again, trying to make sense of what she had said, wondering how much I'd really absorbed. Outside the door by the bus stop, stood my two friends awaiting the public ride home. I greeted them jolly, but they were mad. The rougher one got aggressive and started to beat me. "Don't you say anything, not a word! You're going to tell!" I had been a witness to their crime. I assured them that I wouldn't say anything, for we were friends, but their anger was unstoppable. Nobody standing around seemed to mind that I was getting beat up, he kept hitting my face. Nobody cared. I took off in the opposite way to the bad side of town, where street vendors stood at wooden tables selling food, Mexicans and New Orleans. I went towards a Mexican man who was selling tacos and kind of explained what was going on. I couldn't go home, for I'd have to go past the bus stop where my neighbor boys stood. I was afraid. Nor did I want to pull out my cell phone and talk on the street since I had once gotten robbed. I checked and Andy hadn't called anyway. So I decided to stay by the Mexican man who treated me with dignity and I felt safe knowing he was Mexican, a family man, a husband, a hard working man. The tacos were great, so were the sauces, I ate. He told me how cruel the gringos could be...that was not the word he used. I realized that my neighbors, who I thought were my friends, were not once they had something to hide. A friend can be an accomplice to crime, but a criminal can afford no friend...

Roller Coaster

I ride
Her roller coaster
Because I love her
It scares me
It envigorates and excites
Me
I ride
Her roller coaster
Because it's her
And I love it
And I love her
I never get used to it
Never want to
I'll pay again
To ride it
For riding it
I love it
I love her
Roller coaster
Ride

A.G.S.

Freiheit

Freiheit ist wie Sterben. Plötzlich wird man ganz still. Man nimmt sich immer mehr zurück und kehrt in sich und die eigene Welt ein. Man lässt die anderen da draussen einfach sein. Weiter dreht sich das Rad auch ohne einen. Jenseits von Gruppenzwang und Gesellschaftsdrang erwacht man dann und erfährt ein unglaubliches Freiheitsgefühl.

My Secret

It's my secret. 

That I love her, she knows.

My secret: Just how much.

My eternal hidden treasure.

Must never be unearthed

Lest She, I and all inhabitants

Of this place be obliterated 

By its all encompassing enormity.

I must carry my secret.

All the while speaking softly

Daily

I Love You

She knows

But she cannot ever know

How very very

Much

It's indeed a time release

Meant to be enjoyed

In measured doses

For all eternity.

A.G.S.

The River

In a time of uncalculated confusion and conflict,
I walked.
Not seeking.
Just walked.
My journey brought me to the river.
The ever changing, adapting river.
Nothing is calculated here.
Never is there confusion, but always there is conflict.
It seems the river found me.
I watched it again and the beauty that finds its way to its shores,
that flies above it and that lives within it.
My confusion was not remedied and my conflict not resolved.
It simply melted away with the sound of the river.
The beauty of life is
that there is always something to wonder about in spite of it all.
I've missed the river.

A.G.S.

His wisdom

"I think sometimes we struggle or have conflicts because we love. We want to be loved in return. Just simply the same way that we do. And when we don't feel loved as we love, we get confused in our hearts. Never forget who you are. Let your love flow out of you just as it does. What comes back is it's own and came from outside of you and as such, you cannot be responsible for it except in how you allow it to touch you."

A.G.S.

High strung intellectual

High caliber intellectual
to you what can I say?
woman that I am
who with her children
doth play
most every day
at home I must stay
I try to reach you
but you turn away
clumsy as I try
to formulate
thoughts or questions
or notions
with you to share
I'm never there
to foolishness reduced
are my spontaneous reflections
No, I can't keep up
with you
high caliber intellectual

Party Night

Apheida
Oh moon where art thou gone so soon, down, down behind that hill since before midnight strike?!

Ruphus
Oh just havin' a little party over at my place. Good sound, some dancin', groovin', movin' - with the canine and the feline. Every sound of life beats inside my heart.

Apheida
Lover of life, feel you not the summer darkness? The moon smiles onto me in the morning come winter. Tonight it is gone.

Ruphus
Comes darkness, comes night life. Sun light strong in day time hours, the partying stronger come night fall. No moon need be witness to that. Join the sleepy canines and the crazy felines in their nocturnal serenade.

The Billboard

She looked up at the billboard and admired the beauty of the woman depicted next to the symbols *alpha* *chi* *omega*. It was an ad for some sort of life insurance with the promise of benefits from the beginning to the end. "The beginning of what?" she wondered, "the beginning of life? At birth? in the womb? Can you even pick an insurance policy then? Didn't need one on the other side. Or, beginning from the moment of contract signature until death? What is death? The end of being able to pay for the service?" The answers to these questions weren't clear to her from this piece of advertisement. The woman's beauty though was to be admired for sure. Her seemingly unkempt hair framed a soft angular face with sudden curvatures accentuated  by the movement of her gestures over the years. Many, many years and countless experiences evoking a plethora of thoughts and feelings, unspoken responses and ideas expressed on the seemingly silent canvas that is her skin. And beyond that colourful surface laced with lines, some bold, others perceptible only to a fine-tuned lens and eyes aware of what it means to live a human life - beyond that surface structure, a body of flesh formed to the smallest of details. Acid muscle mass and sweet deposits of fat, symphonies of cells and sub-atomic particles all orchestrated to sing the song of an aged siren, a mature madame with something to show for the years on her back. Something to show quite literally and very figuratively on the face of her spirit clothed to bear the lessons chosen by an elusive consciousness disguised as matter of fact.