“I Remember No Place For Me To Hide

Writing Room, Fall of 2018.

One hundred and eleven years.

We know you were terrified, brave, horrified, strong, resilient, panicked, and courageous, and we honor you this night of the year. Death is not failure. Your lives were you and you remain wonderful, somewhere out here in our atomic jigsaw of existence. I’m so sorry you experienced such horrors.

Deepest of peaceful rest to you.

When things bottom out in the backyard, after that many drinks After that many times you didn’t see your daughter After that many times you weren’t what you wanted to be, or do, or achieve There is always dirt beneath your fingernails.

RMS, 8/23/2018

The Courtroom Funeral: April 16th, 2021

“You, I did it all for you. Do you know who I am? Do you know just what to do? Now you're all that I have, Is it fair to love me, too?

You, it hurts because of you. And I'll kiss you through a hazmat suit, That's what I'll do if I have to.

You seem to know who I am, As though you know just what to do. Now you're all that I have, Is it fair to love me, too?

And you, I did it all for you.”

--“If I Don’t Have To,” Keaton Henson

Large Dead Leaf No. 2 (1966) by Eliot Hodgkin

“She always cut her hair

so he couldn’t tear that out, too.”

(RMS, 7-16-22.)

Seaside Halloween tree.

(RMS, 10-20-2022.)

One hundred and thirteen years.

One hundred and eleven years.

We know you were terrified, brave, horrified, strong, resilient, panicked, and courageous, and we honor you this night of the year. Death is not failure. Your lives were you and you remain wonderful, somewhere out here in our atomic jigsaw of existence. I’m so sorry you experienced such horrors.

Deepest of peaceful rest to you.