How far do you take a thing like this? I think you take it all the way to heart. We give what we can--that's as far as the heart can go." Amy Hempel from Reasons to Live

My mother called again today to talk about my sister. Her memories wrap around mine and strangle them, taking away any brilliance I've managed to hold onto over these fourteen years.

But my mother holds more sadness than I do. (Or is it that it's louder?)

Do you remember when...? It's the same ritual every year--the same false memories and sentiments that have plowed over my heart like a metal rake.

No. Mother. I don't remember. And I bite my tongue to keep from snapping--to keep from reminding her that her memory is two inches long and has not included the truth for years about the time before my sister died--about the time my sister lived.

This year: I wanted silence. I wanted the day to come and go with a glance over my shoulder to the past. I wanted the sadness that always presses me to be private; to be mine; to carry a memory of a nine year old playing in the dirt on a baseball diamond as the truth of what was--as the truth of a hollow that exists because it must.

But it seems that I am not allowed my own mourning rituals--that I must be strong, even in another state away from my mother, because to see and hear my mother's grief is like waking from a nightmare to an empty house.

I can't write how much this hurts.

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