As
I saw it,
all
my mother's life, my father
held
her down, like
lead
strapped to her ankles.
She
was
buoyant
by nature;
she
wanted to travel,
go
to theater, go to museums.
What
he wanted
was
to lie on the couch
with
the Times
over
his face,
so
that death, when it came,
wouldn't
seem a significant change.
In
couples like this,
where
the agreement
is
to do things together,
it's
always the active one
who
concedes, who gives.
You
can't go to museums
with
someone who won't
open
his eyes.
I
thought my father's death
would
free my mother.
In
a sense, it has:
she
takes trips, looks at
great
art. But she's floating.
Like
some child's balloon
that
gets lost the minute
it
isn't held.
Or
like an astronaut
who
somehow loses the ship
and
has to drift in space
knowing,
however long it lasts,
this
is what's left of being alive: she's free
in
that sense.
Without
relation to earth.