Yarhzeit

My mother died 35 years ago today, just a few weeks shy of her 61st birthday. Trying to write about her life and my feelings for and about her runs up against the dam holding back the words—fragments of sentences, whole paragraphs, inchoate emotions that swirl and churn, rise to the surface and are pulled deep again. It's like a rapid below a steep drop in the river, too much turbulence to stay there long. Better to get downstream a bit . . . I miss my mom. Most of all, I think, I miss what I missed.

Today is also the 31st anniversary of the day I quit smoking—May 18, 1987. The occasion was a 3-day whitewater trip on the Cal Salmon River. The coincidence of it being the same date as my mother's death is just that—a coincidence. I think.