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The Art of Dying
I was Mother's little
bartender
from about the age of 10
Christian Bros. brandy & Coke
an occasional martini
I got to be pretty damned good at it
knew just how to mix
and slip her the quick fix
to avoid the predictable
conflicts with my war weary stepfather
get his nasty redneck ass out the door
and back into the bars
with his drinking buddies
and my mother
safely into bed
later in life
she would devolve
into a six pack a day
alcoholic
subsisting on
Budweiser
breakfast of champions
over the course of my
childhood
I had learned to
read her like a book
how much
how long
not only could I see it
I could smell it
hear it
the way the liquor made her
slur and sing
sent her belligerent dialogue flying in circles
around the room
like a cross eyed vulture
and long distance over the
telephone
homing in on
the same sad stories
year upon year
fuel for her
great mad insatiable
burning
the worst
was that
I could
feel it
sense it
everywhere
and inside of
everything
the devil drink which sired
the numbing Faustian metamorphosis that would transform her
and shape our lives
the swirling bitter crucible of her truth
one afternoon
during my college years
I walked in and unloaded on her
point blank,
"Why don't I just bring a gun
and set it on the table
here in front of you,
then you could
kill yourself
and get it over with.
It's killing everyone around you
watching you kill yourself
so slowly.
So why don't you just get it over with."
she listened
didn't say a word
after college
I moved to L.A.
and put many years and miles
between
my mother and
myself
it got to where
I might talk to her on the phone
only a few times during the course
of a year
Mother's Day
her birthday
Christmas
if she called drunk
I simply hung up
talking to her drunk would launch me
into an unbearable funk that would
foul everything
for days
and on this particular nite
about a month shy of her
62nd birthday
it's my mother
on the phone
calling because she had
checked into a
hospital
before I even put the phone
to my ear
I knew
this knowing was something she had
passed on to me
something only talked about
when she was sober
she always said that she had
dreamed each one of us
before we were born
said she saw our faces
and she knew
now it was on me
and I knew
I knew when my
father had died
I have sometimes dreamed of friends passing
and have often
felt them
pass thru me
after their
deaths
an odd
and apparently
useless
quickening
won't fit in a bottle
and it's always
after the fact
I knew the moment
my son was
conceived
the first thing I said
after I cut the cord
and held him in my
hands was
"Uh oh, instant karma."
it was obvious
and I knew this time
preparing to talk to my
Mother
that her number
was up
I tried to keep it light
by playing a bit dumb,
"Hi Mom, how ya feelin'?
What are you in the hospital for?"
"Not too good. I've got cancer in my liver."
"How bad is it?"
"Well, they're going to try chemo tomorrow.
They figure that's about all that they
can do at this point.
The cancer is pretty bad.
They say it's all in my body."
when I was younger
my mother had always told me
that when her time came
she wanted to go quickly
that she didn't want to die an
hysterical old woman
in some nursing home
living out her last days
crying helplessly for someone to
change her
soiled diapers
as we began to talk
she immediately tried to apologize
for all the manic trauma she had pulled
from her bag of tricks:
stepfather hell
and all the textbook abuse
that he had carried with him
the poverty suffered in lieu of
the booze
the long sordid trip upriver into
her wounded heart of darkness
"I'm sorry for all the..."
"No Mom. It's all right. It doesn't matter anymore.
The only thing that matters now
is that I love you."
she said she
loved me back
and that
as they say
was all she wrote
the next day
the attending doctors filled her body with the
silver bullet of the healing poison
and she slipped into a coma
finally some release
from all that unrequited pain that eats a person
body and soul
the dumb luckless will that depends upon pity
and witless loathing
on the third day of her coma
I arranged for a plane
to take me from Burbank
to Oakland
and finally a rental car
from the airport
to Manteca
when I had finally arrived
it was late in the afternoon
Friday,
December 13th
as I entered the hospital lobby
her husband and my youngest brother were
waiting quietly
they stood up
my brother approached
and began to talk
he got about two words out
and in an effort to save him
any further grief
I simply told him that it
was all right
he said that
she had crossed over
about 10 minutes before my arrival
alone in another room
the old woman that had been my mother
lay quietly on a table
patiently waiting for me
to say
good bye
her hair a shocking gray shroud
swept back like old straw
I took her hand
brushed her brittle locks
the room was rich with an opaque light
which transcended the decades
effortlessly reinventing the bitter humor
capturing the senses inside a simple victory that softened
everything
no more the blues for breakfast
I should have never stopped for that
quick burger outside of
Oakland
I would have seen her before she died
but my mother had actually
passed away from me
many years before this
day
it is said
that sometimes there is
victory in
death
that the
art
is in the dying
and life is hell
rise up
let go
rest easy
the fever dream is
done
unborn again
• book review with michael baskinski
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 | s.a. griffin
green hills memorial park - march 9. 2000
S.A. Griffin is a crash vampire living in Los Angeles. He is a Cadillac wrangling son of the Lone Star State. His mother was Venus on the halfshell, and his father was a used car salesman. He is rhythm and oxygen.
• Thursday nites / 12:30a.m., Midnite Pacific Slacker Time. The Auto Zone w/S.A. Griffin. Radio free radio on the net
http://www.killradio.org/. Be late!
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