Memory Delivery Systems

Auntie Vi always liked to help me out with practical items, nice ones like top-of-the-line kitchen gadgets and colorful throw pillows. This didn't stop when she died, naturally enough.

In the first year after Vi's death, a shower curtain––a white waffle cotton one, like new, set out folded on top of a dumpster––showed up right around her August birthday. The second year, same time, a crock pot (with instruction booklet) in the alley. Both were items I actively wanted at that time.

This year, a bookshelf--but not till yesterday. You're late, Auntie Vi!

Yesterday morning, Marz had driven away after a visit, taking her little bookshelf back up to Duluth. It's hers, and she needs it. Textbooks. I'd been using it for printmaking supplies though, and I didn't have a replacement.

I had to stay in yesterday because my right psoas (hip flexor) muscle was locked up. (Painful.) I was reading and feeling a bit put-upon when I saw a neighbor across the street setting out a short bookshelf with a FREE sign.
I hobbled over--the bookshelf was perfect-- and the neighbor even carried it back for me.

It's from IKEA, I think-- nice and deep for holding papers.
Thank you, Auntie Vi, for having been a person I now associate with useful gifts.

The appearance of a couple other things reminds me of people now dead.
My father loved Monarch butterflies, and when a single one floats across my path, I always greet it with his name: "Hello, Daniele!"

The number 8, the sideways infinity symbol, was my friend Barrett's favorite. When I see a lone eight--like, on a scrap on the ground--it gives me a vivid sense of her. "Barrett, it's you!"
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A woman comes out of the fog.
[content note: suicide]

My mother doesn't have a signifier, or not a simple, happy one.
My relationships with Vi, my father, and Barrett were straightforward. Not without strife and (especially with my father) pain, but not complex.

My mother––Lytton––was a maze of a personality. Wonderous, often, but expensive to know, and her death by suicide created a toxic fog, a veil that came down around her life.
She loved me, I don't doubt, but since her death, no one simple object has popped up every so often to announce her loving presence.
Mostly when something reminds me of her, I feel a slicing pain.

I wonder, now that I'm moving into my own old age, beyond where she went, if that veil might lift. Or, if I might move through it, somehow...

If Lytton were alive, she'd be turning ninety this November.
But last year on what would've been her 89th birthday, I had a strong sense that she'd have already died from natural causes by then, and that I didn't need or want to keep commemorating her death day anymore. And I didn't that year, and I won't this year.
It is over and done.

I sense that that (awareness of completion) is and will be liberating, unfogging in some way... I've never found it helpful to PUSH for anything around my mother's death--clarity or gifts or anything. Pursuing books, therapy, projects, etc.
No.

For me, it's been more helpful simply to stay receptive.
It (what? the fog?) moves at its own speed–– s l o w l y ––but it moves.

Go gently.
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P.S. I had started A Lytton Project, which was great--for a while.
It included some watercolors, which I still love.
Here from 2013:

My mother, Lytton(a) Virginia Davis, twenty-one years old (1955)

I'd told Marz I wasn't sure I could handle painting my mother, it made me feel so heavy, and she said, why don't you paint her things?

BELOW: Lytton's 1956 Buick, her lipstick (orangey), and a pack of Marlboro cigarettes

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P.P.S. Oh! Here's a thing I've felt moved to do and finally did just now:
I went back into my old blog, l'astronave (2007–2023) and deleted the posts I've been double-posting there since I started this blog, Noodletoon, in late 2023.
(Speaking of foggy, some feelings I had about others had fogged me in on that blog.)

I've blogged here long enough, roots have taken hold. I see this as a continuation--on October 7, I'll celebrate my 17th continual year blogging. I am here now.
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I always add:
The suicide crisis lifeline in the US is 988--you can phone, text, or chat: https://988lifeline.org