Starstuff

Everything I write here will be a lie. Mainly because nothing I write could come close to what is going on. How the breeze comes through the open window of my mom's Hospice room, or the sound of the church bells nearby...We are close to where it all began, my dad says, a few blocks from where my parents lived when they first moved to San Francisco 40+ years ago. He shows me the window of the room where I was conceived and I try to be an adult about it all. This being the Castro, later we see a naked man at the bus stop wearing a metallic gold sock on his penis and sneakers on his feet. The fog whips over the hill and it's cold. These things are all real, some of them tangible even, but still they can't be true.

They gave me a booklet. It's called Approaching the End of Life. I read it before bed and try to pretend I'm a Buddhist, that this is just a transition, that everything is changeable, appears and disappears. The cover of the booklet has a picture of sand, shells, a starfish, only now they are called seastars because they aren't fish and never were, though come to think of it, they aren't stars either, now are they? All of it lies, like this, what I'm writing. None of it can come close to what is really going on, the messages I have saved on my cell phone from my mom. Dozens of them--always Unknown Caller--knowing that there will soon be a time I won't be able to call her again, hear her voice, the way she says my name, how the thought of this makes me lose my breath. I guess that's the truth, or as close as I can get to one right now.