Remembering Mother

20^th December 2011

Dear Cassi,

A picture of my mother as she
 would want to be remembered. 

Today I lit a candle in memory of my mother’s death. I observe the anniversary by the lunar calendar so the date changes every year, but the feeling is the same. I spent much of my day baking corn bread for a  mental health group, and I know that my mother would have thought that a fitting tribute. If there is one thing she loved it was to bake and share her baking with the world.

       

I would think it wrong to dwell like this, but I’ll give myself a few moments. The sun has set and the waxing darkness fits my mood as I sit in the dim light. This is a time for celebration for most, but the air is cold and there is no light labor for a winter.

       

In this a modern time there is no true season to that strange human animal and we spend our time wondering if retirement will come before our bodies give out. They say youth is wasted on the young, but who does the wasting? I spend my youth in hard labors and will spend my middle age there with little but the dirt on my hands and the perspiration on my cheeks to show for my works.

       

It is winter for us, Cassi, and the year is born in that winter. So let us hope that spring is all the things they speak of in its warm blossoms. How I would love to fall on to the warm grass and sit sleeping in the sun for a time. I feel as if my body is made of bedrock and carrying that stone has grown so hard.

       

The will to move on is all I have left to me in this dark place, but it burns like the fires of a great boiler driving me on against the hard currents. One day I will find what I journey for in this cold world. One day I will see the warmth that I once knew blossom again and grow.

       

Often folk look back and see better times. “The good old days” are things that live in camp stories. If things were always so much better in the past then why do we live for change? I know that things look better as you leave them, that the world of the past looks better than you know, but my honest finding is the future is the only place I have to go.

Stay safe, Cassi.

Richard Leland Neal