Green & Gray x3

[Teresa]

The walls of the Houston Health & Human Services office are pale gray and brown, the death requests blue, birth yellow.  The chairs are deep chocolate brown with torn vinyl, occupied mostly by women with dark skin.  We are outnumbered by children which is why most of the adults here are holding small yellow requests for birth certificates. 

 

Lisa calls me to the first window, an attractive woman in her mid-forties with short black hair and cool blue eyes, takes my check for $10.00 and pushes a small rectangular piece of paper in my direction, ticket #296, then asks me to take a seat against the walls scuffed from chair backs as untold numbers have plopped down in the deadening ritual of waiting.

 

An elderly man is coughing violently, lungs wet and rattling, so I take shallow breaths and consider moving to another seat but stay put to avoid hurting his feelings, then I burrow my right index finger into a vinyl tear and push against the spongy yellow insides, just as in 1972 at the hospital where my mother spent Christmas after an alcohol binge and suicide attempt.

 

Lisa calls my name again a half hour later which is when I decide she doesn't belong in this gray torn place, that she is far too kind and intelligent, then she smiles as if she knows what I am thinking and hands over a blue form with my mother's name on it, the only blue in the room.

 

~~~

 

The next stop is around the corner, 1885 Old Spanish Trail, the Joseph A. Jachimczyk Forensic Center where I am assigned a red badge with yellow print:  Visitor #056.  I complete a request form and pay $25.00 for an autopsy report dated 9/19/1983 which I need because I have questions about her death, about what the neighbor found, about the condition of the mother I would never see again. 

 

I'd last seen her on a Wednesday when she loaned me her pair of white nursing shoes and a $20, spoke to her by phone Friday when she asked if I wanted to go out with her and Nancy to a club - "I'll drink a Shirley Temple" - but I was studying for a test later missed to attend her surprise funeral; at the end of the call I felt a push to say the three words I'd saved too long, to send them across too many miles and years apart, the I love you that sealed us forever.  

 

She died early on Sunday and when the police asked if I wanted to see her I said no because she was no longer in that bruised bloated body, nor would she be in the closed casket two days later, stitched back together like a monster after autopsy.

 

An abstract goodbye is never final so now I choose to see her, through the eyes of a medical examiner; it is unsettling to read a blunt dispassionate report about your own mother's corpse, a body once beautiful and twenty-five, cradling you in the safety of her womb, the body whose arms held and rocked you until your fever broke, the body who laughed heartily, walked like a proud duck, ate Fritos daintily, one by one. 

 

In the report the familiar shape of my mother is cut, dissected and weighed on a scale, organ by organ. 

 

~~~

 

The medical examiner, Dr. Espinola, reports that her eyes are brown, that her stated age is forty-four, that her body is in an early state of decomposition. 

 

The report is twenty-eight years old but I feel compelled to call this doctor who disassembled my first love because he inaccurately reported her eye color, seeing only the old blood pooled behind a striking green.  He knew nothing of her heart except that its surface was smooth and glistening, that it weighed 290 grams.  He does state her cause of death as an "accidental overdose" for which my family was grateful since it meant her newly obtained life insurance policy would pay for the funeral, but after half a dozen failed suicide attempts one doesn't "accidentally" succeed.  Yet now Dr. Espinola has me wondering because who chooses to die then prepares dinner for herself? 

 

The tracheobronchial tree is completely filled with aspirated food material...

 

She choked to death, blotting out the bright green of her eyes, erasing memories and her true intention known only to a unique gray organ weighing 1390 grams.

 

~~~

 

 

 

 

[Michael Brown]

Three brief sketches working together to capture a time and place in your life, detailing the moment and the aftermath with hundreds of tiny brushstrokes behind the words in evidence. Your ability to express situations with such clarity offering a compelling invitation to witness is what lifts you far above the ordinary. You go, girl.

(Always wanted to say that.)

[Toby Tucker Hecht]

I just got back so I'm late to contribute here.  This is an exquisite description of a journey to discovery--of your mother, of course,  but also of yourself.  I can feel the urgency between the words.

[Cita]

"Ride the White Horse Home" by Teresa Jordan is a good memoir to read as reference.  I will private message you about a book that is a good example of what NOT to do.  A

[bolton carley]

going back to look at the past could not be easy and yet, i know that it is your way into your future.  i read the comments of clinical, blunt, real, candid - i find all to be true in some shape or form throughout this, as like the others, i had to keep reading.  but i'd also add cerebral.  i can only imagine how the heart would tell this as i see bits of it throughout. 

[Bill Floyd]

Yeah, if you thought memoir would be easy compared to fiction, you were way off.  Nothing's tougher than the truth.

The word "clinical" has been mentioned, a word which suggests a sense of detachment to the proceedings, but I don't think that's quite it.  I'd use "real" and "blunt" perhaps, or KS's "candid"--you're attempting to look the reality of the world and your life and her life square in the eye, in order to gain an understanding of who you really are.  I cannot think of anything braver.  The fact that you've managed to transmute this confrontation to poetry--and you have--is nothing short of transcendent.      

 

 

[Teresa]

Thank you guys for the comments.  These sixes are practice, a "jumping off" place.  There are many forms memoir can take, different shapes.  I'm playing with ideas right now, mixing cold facts with dream sequences, jumping between present and past.  The theme has to be consistent and I have to stick with a timeline meaning, there has to be a "now" which can be anywhere in my life, but it has to be constant so it can be returned to.  But other aspects are flexible.  I can mix letters with dreams with poetic prose.  I'll probably change my mind many times about form.  I never realized how hard memoir would be.  Structure is SO important and there are more options than I realized regarding style.  The end product will be a version of these sixes and other writings, some expanded, some combined, some chopped up into small lead-ins.  I thought this would be the easy road compared to fiction.  NOT.  Thanks again for reading/commenting.

[Kristine_ES]

it's more than a human should ever need to know. our spirits are tough but these things can push our limits.

you write/share/describe candidly, in all the right ways:  it's enough to make the reader touch pain, yet still want to learn more. 

[Jamie Hogan]

Yeah, like Edward said, you've got something. Something heartbreaking, and great, and a whole lot of other adjectives I could sling around and still not do it justice.

[Cita]

I like Sanda's word... clinical... and yet, it is profoundly personal and emotional.  Can it be all of those things?  Yes... as can the book... and I know there will be a book.  Bravo, my friend.  Keep it up!

[Sandra Davies]

So cool and clinical, such precise dots of colour, a retelling of an experience which recognises that the shell of acceptance, of time, is still so very fragile.   And makes us feel it as if it is our heatbreak too.