Re: [Fandfs] Some memories

[Casey Hayden <buckokc@earthlink.net>]

This is really beautiful.


On Feb 17, 2011, at 8:34 PM, Laura Flanagan wrote:


Oh Cynthia.  I can’t say goodbye.

You are with me everyday in my kitchen.  Using Morton’s salt in a  
crystal salt seller, putting uncovered leftovers into the fridge  
without the added waste of tinfoil or tupperwear.

You are with me when I spread olive oil on the sliced onions in my  
cast iron skillet and broil them a few moments before I put the meat  
down on top.

You are with me when I pick up my Shakespeare and read “like as the  
waves make toward to pebbled shore, so do our hours hasten toward  
their end.”

When I make a pot of decaf typho tea and use my tea cozy to keep it  
warm.

When I use my kitchen scissors to cut up the parsley from my garden  
into my spaghetti sauce - with meat.

And then there are the bigger things.  The time I spent as a child  
roaming around barefoot in your house and gardens, eating oreos and  
small boxes of sugar cereals.  Or the summer after my parents got  
divorced when I was seven and lived in the playroom and wore  Saris  
and Zebra suits out of the costume chest - part of camp bean bag on  
the couch with Archie and Veronica;  and me and Sabine and Azul had a  
secret society of Sari Sisters that conducted bizarre and mysterious  
rituals under the tree where the dogs nightly “did the thing.”

Or when I was a freshman in college and my parents both left  
California so I came back to the highlands for Christmas to eat  
chocolate on the couch and sit by the fire place and soak up  
California and home.

And I can hear you right now reading and this complaining about the  
lack of punctuation.

And again when you “hired” me to pull weeds one summer and we bought  
a Mozart CD to listen to in the afternoons and read Ecclesiastes  
aloud and enjoyed the phrase  “all is vanity”.   It was the summer  
that Rosa Doner moved into a home and she would call all the time  
wondering where she was and you made me answer the phone because you  
couldn’t bear talking to her and I remember we talked about what it  
meant to die and you  said she thought it was pretty well the end -  
“all is vanity” you would say and smile wryly.

And then when my own mother was dying and you  cooked for me weekly -  
we had a weekly date - and we would be gratefully distracted by  
whoever else happened to be joining the table that night and I  
remember your baked salmon filets and how buttery good they tasted  
despite the fact that if felt like the world was ending but also  
going on forever.

Oh and the Revere Ware pot you bought for me when I went to college.   
Which I still have.  And use every night.

And how you used to let me lounge around the couch in my nighty until  
Noon or even 1pm reading comic books but then it was time to get  
dressed.

And your views on romantic love - which you generally thought was a  
kind of disease that came over people and didn’t last.

And how much we loved each other.  Which I actually got to tell you  
toward the end and you were grateful to hear.

And how you loved my parents - something their own parents didn’t  
know how to do very well.  And because you loved them, you taught  
them how to love me.  And then at certain point I knew that you loved  
me too,  both as an extension of my parents and as my own person.  I  
remember you remarking once as I lounged around the living room  
daydreaming,  I remember you saying - “your parents are some of the  
most restless people I know.  Maybe you’ve escaped that.  Or maybe  
you’ll get it later.”
And I’ve always wondered - did I get it?

Cynthia, you taught me patience. You taught me that you could live  
without ambition but not  food and friends.  You taught me not to say  
“whatever” or “and stuff”.  You taught me how to make rice and how to  
build a fire and how to be a landlady.

Barbara, I’m with you.  The world seems impossible without Cynthia.   
So I’m choosing to believe that she, like my mother, is still with us  
in spirit. A few months ago, when I was sitting by her bed, we were  
both quiet and I felt my mother all around us and Cynthia suddenly  
said, “I’m thinking of your mother,” and I said, “I think she’s  
here.”  And Cynthia said, “yes, I think she is.”  And so even though  
she liked to say that nothing happened after death, there was part of  
her that knew that couldn’t possibly be true and that part of her is  
no doubt hanging out in the highlands right now, enjoying her new  
found freedom and enjoying watching Molly and Honey and the dogs and  
the chickens, part of the air forever.












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