Sincere condolences on the loss of your mother. This year will mark the fortieth year of my mother’s passing, but I celebrated what would have been her hundred and ninth birthday yesterday.
Thanks Paul, at 91 and very far gone it was a relief for all but most especially for her. Your mother died relatively young and I’m sure that leaves the sense of something unfinished for which I’m truly sorry.
My mother was 69 when she died. My father followed 6 years later almost to the day. There were no lingering illnesses, no last goodbyes. Here then gone.
Already I had grown to live with the idea that things changed; already I lived with the idea of decay. (I had always lived with this idea. It was like my curse: the idea, which I had had even as a child in Trinidad, that I had come into a world past its peak.) Already I lived with the idea of death, the idea, impossible for a young person to possess, to hold in his heart, that one’s time on earth, one’s life, was a short thing. These ideas, of a world in decay, a world subject to constant change, and of the shortness of human life, made many things bearable. - V. S. Naipaul, The Enigma of Arrival
could be lyrics to a song.
Oh, what un unusual, monumental image you created so beautifully. I think your "old bird" was an exceptionally remarkable woman. It is a great image.
Thank you Larisa. I take any praise from you as high praise.
Let's take a deviation from your so-serious theme. I want to wish you a healthy, prosperous, and successful 2026!
Same to you Larisa. If you knew me better you’d know that much of my time is spent laughing so not to worry.
The same to you, Paul, Happy, prosperous, and healthy 2026!
1934. She was two years younger than my mother. Those Depression era babies became indomitable women.
Is this in honor of your mother?
Yes. She died on the Solstice and as every maritime worker ever, as well as Dickens, would have said, she went out with the tide.
Sincere condolences on the loss of your mother. This year will mark the fortieth year of my mother’s passing, but I celebrated what would have been her hundred and ninth birthday yesterday.
Thanks Paul, at 91 and very far gone it was a relief for all but most especially for her. Your mother died relatively young and I’m sure that leaves the sense of something unfinished for which I’m truly sorry.
My mother was 69 when she died. My father followed 6 years later almost to the day. There were no lingering illnesses, no last goodbyes. Here then gone.
And so accumulate the clods that weigh most heavily in our tread and become the compost of our latter seasons.
Already I had grown to live with the idea that things changed; already I lived with the idea of decay. (I had always lived with this idea. It was like my curse: the idea, which I had had even as a child in Trinidad, that I had come into a world past its peak.) Already I lived with the idea of death, the idea, impossible for a young person to possess, to hold in his heart, that one’s time on earth, one’s life, was a short thing. These ideas, of a world in decay, a world subject to constant change, and of the shortness of human life, made many things bearable. - V. S. Naipaul, The Enigma of Arrival
Yes. The big themes get rehashed endlessly because, you know, they’re the big themes.
🤍