Just ready "M Train" by Patti Smith, copyright August 2016, a meandering consideration of loss, with a bit of renewal. Her husband Fred had died about a decade earlier, and soon afterward that, her brother Todd suddenly and unexpectedly died. She is still dealing with those losses and others, such as friends and treasured objects.
From page 209:
"We want things we cannot have. We seek to reclaim a certain moment, sound, sensation. I want to hear my mother's voice. I want to see my children as children. Hands small, feet small. Everything changes. Boy grown, father dead, daughter taller than me, weeping from a bad dream. Please stay forever, I say to the things I know. Don't go. Don't grow."
From the last page:
"By the time you read this, more time will have passed. A new moon. Another full moon. Passover. Easter, which I will spend with my children and grandson, sleep in the room they have prepared for me, sit on the detective's chair my daughter-in-law found for me, and write at the desk my son chose for me. I will think of Fred, who made all this possible when he asked me to give him a son and then a daughter, never realizing he would not be physically present to watch them grow, nor to greet his grandson, who was born on his passing day and shares his droopy pale-blue eyes.
"Easter prayers will be uttered, eggs discovered, the boy on my son's knee will watch Thomas the Train. It will be raining. I will most likely rise, make some coffee, and quietly slip away. Climb the stairs, close the door as the comforting sense of their camaraderie softly recedes, then sit on the detective chair, open my notebook, and begin to write something new."
