Four columns of my house, I bid you good-night,
Tell my family, I’ll come no more;
Four columns of my house, I wave to you good evening,
Tell the world I’ll come at evening no more.
---Adapted from Ancient Greek Lament
My mother, Aftecea Georgia, died on March 3, 2007. She had an ambiguous relationship with her Greek heritage. She was both proud and ashamed. It helped make her crazy. Terrified at the possibility of other kids calling me names, such as “Greaser,” she died my black hair blonde when I was an infant. One day she got her wish. My hair fell out and came back a light ashy brown. Curls gone. As long as I can remember, she kept her own hair anything but black. Her greatest gift to me was not love, although that was the second greatest gift. Her greatest gift to me was her insistence, from very early on, that I must never do as she did, see as she saw, act as she acted. She hid books from me because she was an avid reader. She sent me to finishing school because she had never been to finishing school. I have to say such warnings hurt and confused me. Yet, I couldn’t today be more grateful. Such distancing forced me into the interior life. It gave me the aloneness of self to free myself from the past as I grew into adulthood. At the same time, it freed me enough from any present as well. As I looked around the family and then society for role models to grow into my adult identity, none seemed of value for me. At first, looking at my family back and forward, I thought one must choose physical or mental illness. As I scrambled for my identity beyond the family, frankly, everyone around me known or not seemed incapacitated, limited, handicapped, —in some way. There were no role models adequate for me. I was truly alone in an irrational social net of competing complexes that instead of finding a niche within, as expected, I soon realized I had to find a way out from them.
When my mother died, the moon was the fullest and brightest I had ever seen it.
It rose slowly up from the horizon over Lake Michigan. I couldn’t tell if my mother was riding it or lifting it on her back. The snow on the streets was brittle with fatigue and age. The cold glazed surfaces with ice. I drove around shrieking all day and night, and when I had nowhere else to go, I went back to the hotel and I talked all night to the red coat I had bought her the year before.
I had gone to help her pack and fly her back to California with me. Instead, I gathered the last comb she had used, her coat, and a few other pieces and flew her to California a corpse.
For her funeral, I wrote my goodbye to her.
Lament
Four columns of my house, I bid you goodnight,
Tell my daughter I’ll pick up the phone no more;
Four columns of my house, I wave to you goodnight,
Tell my youngest son I’ll push his chair no more;
Four columns of my house, I say to you goodnight,
Tell my grandchildren I'll feel their cheeks no more;
Four columns of my house, I bid you goodnight,
Tell my son and daughter in-laws I’ll see their hearts no more;
Four columns of my house, I say to you goodnight,
Tell Angel and the others I’ll hear their names no more;
Four columns of my house, I wave goodnight to you,
Tell Malik I’ll hear his soul no more;
Tell Alexis I’ll know her dreams no more;
Tell Angel I’ll no more see his drawings;
Four columns of my house, I say to you goodnight
Tell my sisters and their children no more I’ll see their faces;
Four columns of my house, I say to you goodnight,
Tell the sidewalks my feet will stroll the earth no more;
Four columns of my house, I bid you all goodnight,
As I leave for the Underworld to meet my eldest son.
