The last time I saw my mother was after I’d been there, at my sister Erica’s, for two weeks, helping out as my mother deteriorated after a stroke. It had been quite difficult. She had needed very intimate care, if you know what I mean, and I guess it wasn’t any different than what millions of healthcare workers do every day, but it was my mother, and the role reversal was quite intense. But it also felt like the most important thing I’d done in a while, too.
She was starting to no longer be sure who I was or my sister was, but she accepted our love unquestioningly, without fear. We would listen to her dreams about her childhood in France, and hold the phone up to her as she sang 1930s campfire girls songs with her sister Françoise over the phone. I would take her around the block in her wheelchair and she would have lucid moments, but I can’t remember what she said, though you’d think I would. She may have said she liked some of the cypress trees, I think.
When it was finally time for me to leave – Sandra had come down from Seattle to relieve me – Erica started to explain that I was returning home, and I grabbed her wrist in a signal to stop. There was no reason to let her know it was the last time she’d see her son. (That’s my sister. Terminally honest.) I just said, “Mom, I’m going to the grocery store. But I just wanted to tell you I love you.” I kissed her on the cheek and said “je t’aime, ma petite maman.”
She may not have been able to quite place me, on the other other hand, she had surely forgotten I’d ever went to prison, and that was a big comfort to me.
I cried in the car to the train station, and my ex-brother-in-law didn’t know what to say. But my niece asked what was wrong and I said, “It’s the last time I’ll ever see my mother.”
She was moved into a hospice in Paradise and died three weeks later. It was a lovely place, and I was very sad when it was consumed in flames when those epic fires destroyed the town. But if somehow it was the only building left standing, that might have been even sadder.
"she had surely forgotten I’d ever went to prison, and that was a big comfort to me" I love the way this line is dropped into the mix, so simply. Those last weeks with a mother who has lost much of her past--so very moving.
I don’t recall the last time I listened to The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. It was probably when Roberta Flack died, or else maybe when I wanted to feel something. What would listening to that song make me feel? Nostalgia? Longing? What if?
The first time I heard it I was 13 or 14. In bed, probably a Saturday night, transistor radio pressed to my ear and I heard the song and time stood still. Hackneyed, yeah, but it did. I know it stood still because I’m there now.
That might also have been the night I went to bed with tanning stuff on my face and it came off all over my pillow. Brown stains. Being a kid I didn’t notice in the morning so when my mother did the laundry she asked what that stain was. I was embarrassed, I remember that, the same way I remember hearing that song. I can feel in the gray folds of my brain the unease, not wanting to admit I wanted a tan. What the heck was wrong with wanting a tan? 13-year-old boys have endless needs and desires, all of which are shameful. Not to play the gay card, but gay 13-year-old boys back then had (hopefully no longer have but who am I kidding) an extra something of shame.
I didn’t tell my mother that I was trying out tanning stuff. (I don’t remember if it worked. Was I newly tan? Did she notice that I was tan the next morning? If not, why not?) I didn’t tell her anything. I said “I don’t know.” In my mind’s eye (hackneyed, yeah, but I can see it!) she looked uncomfortable, then asked: Did you masturbate on the pillow?
My mother went to her grave never knowing about the tanning stuff. Did she wonder about it for decades? Did she die wondering about the condition of my pillows?
The last time I listened to that song might well be the last time I ever listen to it because I can still hear it, because time stood still then and I can still hear it and feel it and I wonder, what would I write about now if I had just said to my mother “I wanted a tan”?
I can feel all of this, the shame and the held memory. That fear (back then) that maybe your mom thought you'd come on the pillow (of course, she knew you had not). It's amazing how songs do this to us, bring back entire worlds. I remember the feeling of that song when I first heard it. It always sends me to a lovely, nostalgic place, but I don't know what that nostalgia is all about except for a time of life. It's such a powerful song! Great mother/son story this morning, Kevin.
It just struck me now how much, in addition to the whole story, I liked your use of "hackneyed"--twice. I personally didn't think there was anything hackneyed about what you wrote. (There's something perfectly placed about those lines to me, and I liked the parallelism.) But it also seems a great and specific example of George Saunders' advice to acknowledge to the reader places where they might have such concerns. Nice.
Thanks, Annemarie. I was very conscious of writing those sections and thought to lighten them a bit; an experiment in changing the tone. And 'hackneyed' is a fun word. Nice to think this exemplified a GS idea, too.
The last time I saw my father was on the day of his death. He’d been in hospital for about a week, and this latest admission, we knew, was probably it. He had esophageal cancer. By now, all he could stand to try and eat or drink was lemon jello, the hospital kind. The only color I remember in the room that day was that sickly gray-yellow dribbling out both sides of his lips and down his chin. He couldn’t swallow.
I often slept over and was alone with him early that morning. They’d transferred us to the maternity ward, having no space elsewhere. I’d already called my mother and sister to let them know where we were and that they should come. I watched as the nurse fed him the jello and freshened up his face.
Shortly after the nurse left, with a sudden and spectacular show of strength, Dad hoisted himself up, got off the bed, and sat down in the bedside chair. “I’ve got to get back to my nest,” he said. It was the first time he’d looked at me in weeks, looked at me in the sense that he knew who I was. I felt a few moments of delirious hope, the significance of the maternity ward now dawning fully upon me. Was this my father’s rebirth? Could he come back home now?
He started to fall out of the chair. I pushed the button for the nurses’ station but no one came. I don’t know where I got the strength from, but there I was lifting my father up and getting him back onto the bed. My mother and sister walked in. Dad made a strange gurgling sound. Mom tried to usher me and my sister out, but I wasn’t leaving. I kissed his head and heard life leave him.
A few months later, I was in Nicaragua doing academic fieldwork. I saw something that reminded me of my father’s death. Two years ago, I wrote this poem about it:
"I've got to get back to my nest," sounds like my father's last words about wanting to go home. I think this is very common, actually. (The beating of the sea turtle sounds just horrific.)
Yes, I think must be common. Thanks for the prompt, mary g. Except for the poem part, I've carried the memory of that day around in my head for 26 years. Great to finally put it in on paper. Yep, horrific. But I guess what the majority of humans everywhere (including myself some days) do for food is pretty horrific, when you come to think of it.
Just when I am wondering when’s the last time I’ve had a distressing call at the shelter the phone rings and it is a girl asking to leave a message from her mom for a man named Shawn that she has lost the place where she was staying and she is stranded in Ohio. The girl sounds like she is probably nine or 10. She does not know Shawn’s last name and no one named Shawn answers the page I make and the girl also mentions that her dad is in jail and my brain just kind of stops and pulls up short here and my heart starts to fall like a stone. Without a last name I can’t take the message for Shawn because he is not the only Shawn who comes to the shelter and all I can do is tell the girl to get his last name the next time she talks to her mother and wonder why her mother did not tell her his last name in the first place. The next call I answer is a woman looking for her son. I haven’t heard from him in months, she says, I don’t know what’s going on. Damion does not answer his page and after I check the roster I see that he is no longer in it, if he ever was. The last call I answer is a woman calling after missing several calls from her son. I’m in the hospital, she says. No one named Marquis responds to the page I make but having her son’s first and last names I am able to take a message asking him to call her. I’m in the hospital, she repeats. Bless you, she says.
Probably the hardest call I have ever answered at the shelter was a woman calling to see if we had any diapers and then hearing a baby start to cry in the background.
The last time I read one of my sister Mary's prompts was about five minutes ago. I'm still reflecting on it, and perhaps I'll read it again--though if I do, the occasion I believed was "the last time" will no longer be the last time. There will then be a new last time. So the old or original last time will then become the second-to-last time, and it could slide further down the list if subsequent readings occur. The End. Perhaps. I could add more to this post or revise it.
The last time i read one of my brother Ben's comments in my Substack was about two minutes ago when i came across this particular comment. I will probably read it again, though, because maybe he'll add to the post or revise it. But then i wouldn't be reading the same comment, i'd be reading a new one and that would be the last time, unless I read it again, which I may, I cannot predict the future
Our first moments are endings. Expelled from the only home we’ve ever known, warm, dark, wet, a soundtrack featuring mother’s heartbeat, we enter a new world. Do we know at that moment that we can never go back? Do we feel an initial grief that is forgotten with the first taste of mother’s milk?
Like a newborn, Anna forgets endings. She reads a novel from cover to cover and comes out a different person in some small or less small way because of what’s she’s read, but six weeks later, she can’t tell you how the story ended. Same with movies. Sometimes, she rereads the final pages or streams the last thirty minutes, because she’s found herself wondering about how everything wound up. But then she forgets again a few weeks later.
Likewise, except for the few times she’s been present at a physical death, she can’t remember the details of the significant endings in her life. She can’t remember what happened in her first teenage breakup or the last class with her favorite professor. She can’t remember the last day of her first adult job. She can’t even remember the conversation when she and her first, and so far, only, husband decided to part. He moved out of their apartment after, but how soon? Was there a moving truck? Did they say kind things to each other as he shut the door? She remembers being sad but no details. Today though, they are close. They share each other’s happiness and soothe each other in times of trouble or sorrow. Sometimes, she wonders if they’ll decide to move in together again, although she doesn’t wonder whether they will marry again. They are both happier unmarried than married.
Once, when seeing a therapist for unrelated matters, she mentioned that she doesn’t recall endings. When the therapist encouraged her to explore the why of it, her initial thought was that whatever the reason was it couldn’t be good. Maybe suppressed trauma. Maybe something wrong with her brain. Maybe a personality disorder that she’s never heard of. And, then she thought about her former husband, now lover and best friend. What if she’d remembered the details of the end of their marriage? Which led to her second thought: forgetfulness was best left be for now.
This is so well done. And what a thing to happen--a former husband as lover and best friend! I don't remember anything. When you wrote "six weeks later" regarding a book, my thought was "six hours" for me.
It's interesting how our minds turn to trauma immediately when trying to figure out a 'why'. Maybe there is trauma somewhere in the background, but sometimes the better answer is 'why not'?
Indeed. The older I get the more often I say to myself as events unfold in ways that I never expected, I think to myself, " I sure didn't see that one coming, but why not, it's not like I know that much, do I?"
Beautiful. I also cannot remember important moments. Lately I've been wondering if it's connected to an undiagnosed concussion at 13, but maybe it's just connected to being human.
They were at the mall for a birthday party for her eldest, just turned 13. The party plan was a scavenger hunt to find and list the most expensive perfume, the largest stuffed animal the biggest pair of running shoes. The party guests had been deployed, erupting from stores to break into laughter and comparisons. “Mine’s bigger!” No, mine is!”
Her youngest, nine years old, sat next to her mother on the sofa in the atrium, waiting for the party guests to reconvene. She gazed longingly at the candy store with its treasure trove of peppermints, gummy bears, chocolate kisses-- the assortment so tantalizing that it left her almost breathless. “Mom, mom can we please just get five candies--just five. Mom, please!” Her mother, knowing that five would quickly morph to 10, smiled at her memories of penny candies—her reward for sitting through the Reverend Kimball’s sermons. Then, her daughter turned to her mom and asked, “Mom. when do kids stop playing and start talking?” And that’s when she realized that she was on the cusp of a sea change in her youngest daughter--that before too long she too would be gathering in a gaggle of friends, hanging out at the mall, endless phone calls chattering about haircuts, boys, the boredom of suburban life. No amount of penny candies would convert her back to a kid who loved to play Pet Store, a game where her mom played both a pet store owner and the buyer and her daughter got to be the pet—a puppy poodle, a kitten, occasionally a penguin or a turtle. Had they already played it for the last time?
So many "last times" with our children. Over and over. (And over!) Did you end up buying her the penny candy? Love that game, by the way. Hard to think that there was a last time you played it. (In one of my books, i write about the last time I picked up my son and put him down again. Didn't know at the time it was the last time, but it happened.)
Mark’s court case dragged on over the next year and a half. When the case was finally dismissed for lack of evidence, he quit school and moved to New York. His last day in Kent, Phyllis helped him load his battered Corvair with everything he owned: they hauled boxes stuffed with shirts, sweaters, and jeans, cookware, power tools and paperbacks, tackle boxes filled with all manner of equipment from hammers, pliers and screwdrivers to a smattering of s-hooks, they carried rolled canvases, photos of his sculptures, portfolios of silkscreen prints and antiwar posters, all the relics of his previous life. The carefully curated collection of student works would be useful for studio visits (how eager he was for feedback from fellow artists, but also, hopefully, critics, collectors, gallery-owners!) Leaving before dawn, he pulled into lower Manhattan in the mid-afternoon. It was sunny and unseasonably warm the day he parked on the street to drop off some things at a friend’s studio. While they were reminiscing over a beer, someone broke into his car and when he got back to the spot where he’d parked it, it was gone.
Mark had always been protective of his work, yelling at Phyllis for moving a pile of proofs from a bench so she could sit down, yet losing everything hardly fazed him. He told her he would make better stuff now that it was gone.
I know the feeling. Once my kitchen knives were stolen from the trunk of my car on Avenue A (I had brought them to a friend's to sharpen). I stopped cooking after that, since I couldn't chop anymore. What a relief.
The last time Maxine saw her father was at her college graduation. From the stage she scanned the crowd, wondering why he wasn’t with her mother and older brother, and found him seated a few rows away from them. He was resting his arm over the back of the next seat as if he were with the woman in that seat, someone Maxine didn’t know.
The afternoon was hot, and people in the audience were wiping their foreheads and folding their programs to use as fans. The speeches seemed to last forever. No one could remember, later, what had been said.
When it was all over, Maxine found her family – her father had rejoined the others by then – and they headed across the Great Lawn toward the picnic tables.
“Let’s see that,” her father said, gesturing toward her rolled-up diploma. He unfurled it and nodded appreciatively. “Latin, huh? Do you know what it all means?”
“I know what ‘cum laude’ means,” Maxine said. She adjusted the cap on her head so the tassel would stop hitting her nose.
“It means you did good,” he said. “I tried hard with you kids, and I guess I did all right. Billy in graduate school and engaged to be married, and now you with a cum laude degree. I can say my job is done.”
“There’s still Linda!” Maxine said.
“Well, Linda,” her father said with a sigh. Linda had left home two years earlier, soon after her sixteenth birthday. She showed up for a day or two, every few months, and sent an occasional postcard. “I don’t think I’ll have to send Linda to college.”
“You never know.”
“What’s next for you? You have any thoughts about a job?”
Maxine couldn’t remember her father ever asking about her future. She swallowed hard and said, “I’d like to go to law school.”
“Honey, I can’t swing that,” he said. “That’s not in the budget.”
When she didn’t answer, he added, “I wouldn’t want to see you doing that type of work, anyway.”
Rose called over her shoulder, “Move a little faster, you two! All the food will be gone by the time we get there.”
Two days later, when she was packing up her belongings, Bill called to tell her their father had moved out, leaving Rose alone. “You’d better come home now,” he said. “She’s in bad shape.”
I read the whole thing and then remembered the first line, which made all of it so unsettling. I want to know what became of him. And whether or not she went to law school!
More please! Great cast of characters and feels like an opening to something longer..what happens to law school, Linda, Rose, even the unnamed woman next to the father.
This is indeed part of a longer story - not the opening, though I may rearrange the sections. I just wrote this piece in response to the prompt and I'm not totally sure where in the story it goes. BTW my piece from last week is another part of the same story.
The last time is a ghost. An uninvited shade. An icy finger thrust through my chest wall on Solstice. It asks “What If?” embossed on black stationery in silver calligraphy delivered by a man in top hat and tails.
“What if?” as Steve pedals down the driveway and onto the road, arm raised in reassurance–the “yes-I-have-everything-no-I-did-not-forget-my-wallet-oops-I-forgot-to-tell-you-about” gesture that reassures but doesn’t. I’m left in a liminal space between the kiss and his chin lifted full-on grin at the end of the day. He’s still such a kid.
“I’ll bike over to get my CT Scan. It’s close.”
Or last week–”so what if it’s a fractured rib?” It will heal. Takes time.” Shrug.
Meanwhile–there are bikes to ride, pizza to snarf, another Mariner loss.
(I don’t want to address the myriad “what ifs” there.)
I’ve done last times before now. I’m at an age when last times outnumber first times.
The last phone call with my dad.
“I’m worried I have cancer.”
“But you just had a full exam. Don’t live in fear, Dad.”
“You’re right.”
He was gone two days later.
The last time I held my mom’s hand, leaned over her bedside. Her breaths raspy and labored.
The strong, resilient woman who annoyed me so much in junior high.
“Only a slut would paint her nails black!”
I was sent back upstairs to remove what I thought was cool. It matched my dress. I was late for school. It was the last time I painted my nails black. I should do it one more time. Just because.
“Behold! Not a slut, Mom.” As I wave them toward the sky.
The same woman who would not reveal how she voted when my dad asked her.
“But what if your vote canceled out mine?”
“That’s fine.”
She should be here, now. Testify before Congress. Look some of them up and down, like she did my prospective dates.
Steve still remembers that. (He passed scrutiny with flying colors.)
I’m not sure what was keeping her from slipping away. Worry about leaving my dad behind?
“It’s ok to leave, Mom. We’ve got this.”
The last time I spoke to her.
The last time. An ear worm, now. “Well, I’ve told you once, and I’ve told you twi-ice…But ya never listen to my advi-ice.”
This is really well done. So breezy, yet full of everything. Lots of great lines, but I really liked this one: "Look some of them up and down, like she did my prospective dates."
The last time I farted out loud was at a funeral. On purpose. It made everyone laugh, even those crying. Laughing mourners outnumbered the crying.
The deceased was a very unpleasant man. He was our local TV weatherman. He revolved his life around fronts, troughs, and a variety of barometric pressures. When he came home, to his family it was like an ill wind had blown in.
On TV, he predicted the future with flashy graphics and digital segues, separated by commercials for Hyundais, burial insurance, and medicine for moderate-to-severe illnesses.
He didn’t believe in climate change, global anything, or the butterfly effect. On ordinary timescales, his predictions became more inaccurate the further out his forecasts were cast.
On the evening of June 27 he made his last prediction, for by the next morning he was dead. He died in his sleep when an ill wind blew in from god-knows-where. But on that evening, his forecast was particularly inaccurate on so many levels.
“Tomorrow will be one of those days you’ll want every day. It’ll be beautiful. It’ll be just be a great day for everyone,” he declared, followed by a commercial remedy for constipation for those who normally fretted the next day anyway.
Besides his dying, making his forecast just so wrong, it hailed.
What made him unpleasant wasn’t his bad forecasting but his fatalism. He would say things like, “I expect tomorrow’s high to be 95,” or “I have determined that the high tide will be at noon,” or “I wanna say that the dry spell will last into next week.”
Like he was the one who determined tomorrow’s high, when the high tide rolled in, or how long the dry spell lasted. Then, if it turned out that the high was lower, the tide was gentler, or the dry spell ended sooner, he would say things like, “You can thank the weather,” as if he were the weather!
Like, “You can all thank me!”
I thanked him, alright, because he was my father. He forecast I’d be a failure; he predicted my doomed, bankrupt future; and he foretold of my miseries at the behest of his own vicarious failures.
The weather is serious business. When it succeeded, he owned it; when it failed, he shirked responsibility. Like raising a child.
So, yeah, I thanked the weather by contributing to it. I farted out loud. Everyone laughed at the one last ill wind to blow his way. But, like Bob sang, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
Wonderful read. This sets it up perfectly: "The deceased was a very unpleasant man. He was our local TV weatherman. He revolved his life around fronts, troughs, and a variety of barometric pressures. When he came home, to his family it was like an ill wind had blown in."
I really, really like this sentence: "When he came home to his family, it was like an ill wind had blown in!" What a great description that is! I love this tale of you farting--an ill wind, indeed--out loud at his service! And the repetition of the "ill wind" throughout works so well.
The last time came in an instant. It was here and then gone. Gone forever. We wondered what it meant not to have it any longer. In fact, within a few moments it was evident that no one could remember when the last time was?
Wally asked Judy; she couldn’t remember. Mather wondered as much as the rest of them, just when the last time was, but when the last time was apparently beyond them. Seemingly, it was beyond everyone, including me. But I didn’t wonder about what was beyond me because the last time was really behind me. I had figured that out. So I just packed up my duffel bag, said goodbye to my friends, and made it out to the highway.
It was then that I encountered the greatest problem. Because the last time had come, no one was traveling. You see, there were no more buses because the last bus had left. There were no cars on the highway because the last time to use the car had passed. There were no trucks because the last pickup or delivery had happened.
I sat on the side of the road. My stomach felt raw; my head was swimming. I was frightened that there would never be another last time. How was it that I hadn’t just stayed at home? After all, the last time I had left the house had passed. I sat there pondering. Then the question and my thoughts about it faded. I had lost that. I figured that the last time I had a thought had just happened.
I watched as a cat crossed the road. It was a calico and large for one. The cat looked at me in its feline way, sat, scratched, licked its butt, stood, and sauntered over to me.
“You want to know something?” I said.
The cat sat, purred a bit, and looked at me without blinking. I started to continue but I couldn’t remember what I had been saying. What was the cat thinking? I sat there wordless.
The cat got up, glanced at me, and walked away into nowhere.
The last time I saw Alice she was sitting on the end of my foot. A tiny beast of a girl, she made me lean toward her when she thought her claw thoughts
Go Alice, I whispered so Dennis in the next room wouldnt hear. Not for five years remember?
It's been five years
No. Nooo
I checked my calendar three times. Five years tomorrow
I dont know how you bent time but it cant be more than three and a half
It's five
Come back tomorrow
She hesitated. Dennis knocked on the door. You ok in there?
Hold on
I waited. She left as slowly as she could, leaving a dent on my quilt and a chill on my foot
There were letters stained into the end of my bed
If youre not here tomorrow I'll send the Forgetter
I just looked up numbats and indeed they are adorable and I've just learned a single numbat can eat up to 20,000 termites in one day. What drive! What enthusiasm! What a tragedy for termites when a numbat moves into the neighborhood!
I don't really know what this is about, J.D.A., but I just love it! So intriguing. So bizarre. Fabulous ending. Love the letters stained into the end of the bed and the last two lines. A wonderland of a different order?
The last time I was in a barber shop was 1968.
The last time I went to a dance was maybe 1964.
I smoked my last cigarette around 1990.
The last time I quit smoking was 1985.
My last divorce was 1995.
I don’t remember the last time I was sure about something.
But just yesterday I cursed the politicians.
I don’t know why the middle decades have disappeared.
The last time I thought about running out of money was yesterday.
The last time I said so what about running out of money was just now.
The last time I told myself not to worry about getting old was the
Last time I was worried about getting old.
The last time I cut my own hair was a little bit too long ago,
According to a friend.
Every afternoon my neighbor in the marina
Smokes a cigar with a glass of whiskey, sitting under an umbrella.
Sometimes I go over and we talk about how fucked up the war was.
The last time I was over there he offered me a drink,
But the last time he offered me a drink I said no thanks.
Tod, I love every word of this
I'm with mary g. on this. Love every word.
So good!
Oh. Just perfect. All that breathing space leaves me breathless.
the best ever
Beautiful. I see a whole life here..
I could keep reading this one, Tod. Love it.
The last time I saw my mother was after I’d been there, at my sister Erica’s, for two weeks, helping out as my mother deteriorated after a stroke. It had been quite difficult. She had needed very intimate care, if you know what I mean, and I guess it wasn’t any different than what millions of healthcare workers do every day, but it was my mother, and the role reversal was quite intense. But it also felt like the most important thing I’d done in a while, too.
She was starting to no longer be sure who I was or my sister was, but she accepted our love unquestioningly, without fear. We would listen to her dreams about her childhood in France, and hold the phone up to her as she sang 1930s campfire girls songs with her sister Françoise over the phone. I would take her around the block in her wheelchair and she would have lucid moments, but I can’t remember what she said, though you’d think I would. She may have said she liked some of the cypress trees, I think.
When it was finally time for me to leave – Sandra had come down from Seattle to relieve me – Erica started to explain that I was returning home, and I grabbed her wrist in a signal to stop. There was no reason to let her know it was the last time she’d see her son. (That’s my sister. Terminally honest.) I just said, “Mom, I’m going to the grocery store. But I just wanted to tell you I love you.” I kissed her on the cheek and said “je t’aime, ma petite maman.”
She may not have been able to quite place me, on the other other hand, she had surely forgotten I’d ever went to prison, and that was a big comfort to me.
I cried in the car to the train station, and my ex-brother-in-law didn’t know what to say. But my niece asked what was wrong and I said, “It’s the last time I’ll ever see my mother.”
She was moved into a hospice in Paradise and died three weeks later. It was a lovely place, and I was very sad when it was consumed in flames when those epic fires destroyed the town. But if somehow it was the only building left standing, that might have been even sadder.
"she had surely forgotten I’d ever went to prison, and that was a big comfort to me" I love the way this line is dropped into the mix, so simply. Those last weeks with a mother who has lost much of her past--so very moving.
wow. what Mary said!
Wow, Mark. So heartfelt and poignant and the fire consuming the hospice--so many last times layered here.
Such love.
Beautifully done. Thank you.
So lovely.
I don’t recall the last time I listened to The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. It was probably when Roberta Flack died, or else maybe when I wanted to feel something. What would listening to that song make me feel? Nostalgia? Longing? What if?
The first time I heard it I was 13 or 14. In bed, probably a Saturday night, transistor radio pressed to my ear and I heard the song and time stood still. Hackneyed, yeah, but it did. I know it stood still because I’m there now.
That might also have been the night I went to bed with tanning stuff on my face and it came off all over my pillow. Brown stains. Being a kid I didn’t notice in the morning so when my mother did the laundry she asked what that stain was. I was embarrassed, I remember that, the same way I remember hearing that song. I can feel in the gray folds of my brain the unease, not wanting to admit I wanted a tan. What the heck was wrong with wanting a tan? 13-year-old boys have endless needs and desires, all of which are shameful. Not to play the gay card, but gay 13-year-old boys back then had (hopefully no longer have but who am I kidding) an extra something of shame.
I didn’t tell my mother that I was trying out tanning stuff. (I don’t remember if it worked. Was I newly tan? Did she notice that I was tan the next morning? If not, why not?) I didn’t tell her anything. I said “I don’t know.” In my mind’s eye (hackneyed, yeah, but I can see it!) she looked uncomfortable, then asked: Did you masturbate on the pillow?
My mother went to her grave never knowing about the tanning stuff. Did she wonder about it for decades? Did she die wondering about the condition of my pillows?
The last time I listened to that song might well be the last time I ever listen to it because I can still hear it, because time stood still then and I can still hear it and feel it and I wonder, what would I write about now if I had just said to my mother “I wanted a tan”?
I can feel all of this, the shame and the held memory. That fear (back then) that maybe your mom thought you'd come on the pillow (of course, she knew you had not). It's amazing how songs do this to us, bring back entire worlds. I remember the feeling of that song when I first heard it. It always sends me to a lovely, nostalgic place, but I don't know what that nostalgia is all about except for a time of life. It's such a powerful song! Great mother/son story this morning, Kevin.
Thanks, Mary. This almost went another way, into my love of late-night radio, but that tanning episode is jucier.
yes, it's got the shame in it.
This is what's fun about your prompts. Fun to write to, and then a learning along the way (why choose this over that?).
YES
choose this over that!
It just struck me now how much, in addition to the whole story, I liked your use of "hackneyed"--twice. I personally didn't think there was anything hackneyed about what you wrote. (There's something perfectly placed about those lines to me, and I liked the parallelism.) But it also seems a great and specific example of George Saunders' advice to acknowledge to the reader places where they might have such concerns. Nice.
Thanks, Annemarie. I was very conscious of writing those sections and thought to lighten them a bit; an experiment in changing the tone. And 'hackneyed' is a fun word. Nice to think this exemplified a GS idea, too.
“I can feel in the grey folds of my brain the unease, not wanting to admit I wanted a tan” - great sentence.
Thanks, John.
yay Kevin
The dialog with your mom, and the answers left unanswered that haunt us--nicely done.
The song was the first thing that came to my mind too when I read the prompt. Great story.
Thanks, Deborah. What filled people's minds before pop music?
Yes, it’s time travel, it’s 2 1/2 minutes of forever.
The last time I saw my father was on the day of his death. He’d been in hospital for about a week, and this latest admission, we knew, was probably it. He had esophageal cancer. By now, all he could stand to try and eat or drink was lemon jello, the hospital kind. The only color I remember in the room that day was that sickly gray-yellow dribbling out both sides of his lips and down his chin. He couldn’t swallow.
I often slept over and was alone with him early that morning. They’d transferred us to the maternity ward, having no space elsewhere. I’d already called my mother and sister to let them know where we were and that they should come. I watched as the nurse fed him the jello and freshened up his face.
Shortly after the nurse left, with a sudden and spectacular show of strength, Dad hoisted himself up, got off the bed, and sat down in the bedside chair. “I’ve got to get back to my nest,” he said. It was the first time he’d looked at me in weeks, looked at me in the sense that he knew who I was. I felt a few moments of delirious hope, the significance of the maternity ward now dawning fully upon me. Was this my father’s rebirth? Could he come back home now?
He started to fall out of the chair. I pushed the button for the nurses’ station but no one came. I don’t know where I got the strength from, but there I was lifting my father up and getting him back onto the bed. My mother and sister walked in. Dad made a strange gurgling sound. Mom tried to usher me and my sister out, but I wasn’t leaving. I kissed his head and heard life leave him.
A few months later, I was in Nicaragua doing academic fieldwork. I saw something that reminded me of my father’s death. Two years ago, I wrote this poem about it:
Nicaragua, Atlantic Coast
The large green sea turtle is lying
on its back. The men are beating it.
I try to avert my ears, remind myself
this is food. But when the wondrous creature
expels its last breath, I cannot help but
listen:
it sounds exactly as my father did.
"I've got to get back to my nest," sounds like my father's last words about wanting to go home. I think this is very common, actually. (The beating of the sea turtle sounds just horrific.)
Yes, I think must be common. Thanks for the prompt, mary g. Except for the poem part, I've carried the memory of that day around in my head for 26 years. Great to finally put it in on paper. Yep, horrific. But I guess what the majority of humans everywhere (including myself some days) do for food is pretty horrific, when you come to think of it.
I think most of us choose not to think about it. Not saying that's a good thing, obviously.
Oh my gosh. This is breath-taking to read--the description of your father's last moments and the sea turtle's sounds. Well written.
Thanks so much Angela. Loved yours, too. The images so clear and very relatable.
Thank you!
The Last Call
Just when I am wondering when’s the last time I’ve had a distressing call at the shelter the phone rings and it is a girl asking to leave a message from her mom for a man named Shawn that she has lost the place where she was staying and she is stranded in Ohio. The girl sounds like she is probably nine or 10. She does not know Shawn’s last name and no one named Shawn answers the page I make and the girl also mentions that her dad is in jail and my brain just kind of stops and pulls up short here and my heart starts to fall like a stone. Without a last name I can’t take the message for Shawn because he is not the only Shawn who comes to the shelter and all I can do is tell the girl to get his last name the next time she talks to her mother and wonder why her mother did not tell her his last name in the first place. The next call I answer is a woman looking for her son. I haven’t heard from him in months, she says, I don’t know what’s going on. Damion does not answer his page and after I check the roster I see that he is no longer in it, if he ever was. The last call I answer is a woman calling after missing several calls from her son. I’m in the hospital, she says. No one named Marquis responds to the page I make but having her son’s first and last names I am able to take a message asking him to call her. I’m in the hospital, she repeats. Bless you, she says.
Wow, wow, and another wow. All heartbreaking calls. "Bless you, she says." is the perfect ending to this little piece.
Probably the hardest call I have ever answered at the shelter was a woman calling to see if we had any diapers and then hearing a baby start to cry in the background.
Yes, so hard. And sad.
I agree. Perfect way to end this.
Thank you. This is actually pretty much a passage from my journal I wrote yesterday after coming home from the shelter.
Heartbreaking writing - and even more so because I know it's real.
Yes, very real.
The last time I read one of my sister Mary's prompts was about five minutes ago. I'm still reflecting on it, and perhaps I'll read it again--though if I do, the occasion I believed was "the last time" will no longer be the last time. There will then be a new last time. So the old or original last time will then become the second-to-last time, and it could slide further down the list if subsequent readings occur. The End. Perhaps. I could add more to this post or revise it.
The last time i read one of my brother Ben's comments in my Substack was about two minutes ago when i came across this particular comment. I will probably read it again, though, because maybe he'll add to the post or revise it. But then i wouldn't be reading the same comment, i'd be reading a new one and that would be the last time, unless I read it again, which I may, I cannot predict the future
don't make me stop the car
someone had to say it
Well done, Ruth!
Go to your room!!
The End
Endings.
Inevitable.
Our first moments are endings. Expelled from the only home we’ve ever known, warm, dark, wet, a soundtrack featuring mother’s heartbeat, we enter a new world. Do we know at that moment that we can never go back? Do we feel an initial grief that is forgotten with the first taste of mother’s milk?
Like a newborn, Anna forgets endings. She reads a novel from cover to cover and comes out a different person in some small or less small way because of what’s she’s read, but six weeks later, she can’t tell you how the story ended. Same with movies. Sometimes, she rereads the final pages or streams the last thirty minutes, because she’s found herself wondering about how everything wound up. But then she forgets again a few weeks later.
Likewise, except for the few times she’s been present at a physical death, she can’t remember the details of the significant endings in her life. She can’t remember what happened in her first teenage breakup or the last class with her favorite professor. She can’t remember the last day of her first adult job. She can’t even remember the conversation when she and her first, and so far, only, husband decided to part. He moved out of their apartment after, but how soon? Was there a moving truck? Did they say kind things to each other as he shut the door? She remembers being sad but no details. Today though, they are close. They share each other’s happiness and soothe each other in times of trouble or sorrow. Sometimes, she wonders if they’ll decide to move in together again, although she doesn’t wonder whether they will marry again. They are both happier unmarried than married.
Once, when seeing a therapist for unrelated matters, she mentioned that she doesn’t recall endings. When the therapist encouraged her to explore the why of it, her initial thought was that whatever the reason was it couldn’t be good. Maybe suppressed trauma. Maybe something wrong with her brain. Maybe a personality disorder that she’s never heard of. And, then she thought about her former husband, now lover and best friend. What if she’d remembered the details of the end of their marriage? Which led to her second thought: forgetfulness was best left be for now.
This is so well done. And what a thing to happen--a former husband as lover and best friend! I don't remember anything. When you wrote "six weeks later" regarding a book, my thought was "six hours" for me.
Right !! Memory is overrated.
And entirely untrustworthy.
It's interesting how our minds turn to trauma immediately when trying to figure out a 'why'. Maybe there is trauma somewhere in the background, but sometimes the better answer is 'why not'?
Indeed. The older I get the more often I say to myself as events unfold in ways that I never expected, I think to myself, " I sure didn't see that one coming, but why not, it's not like I know that much, do I?"
I like the way the details in this build to that final paragraph and realization about "the last time." Well done.
Beautiful. I also cannot remember important moments. Lately I've been wondering if it's connected to an undiagnosed concussion at 13, but maybe it's just connected to being human.
The end of Pet Store
They were at the mall for a birthday party for her eldest, just turned 13. The party plan was a scavenger hunt to find and list the most expensive perfume, the largest stuffed animal the biggest pair of running shoes. The party guests had been deployed, erupting from stores to break into laughter and comparisons. “Mine’s bigger!” No, mine is!”
Her youngest, nine years old, sat next to her mother on the sofa in the atrium, waiting for the party guests to reconvene. She gazed longingly at the candy store with its treasure trove of peppermints, gummy bears, chocolate kisses-- the assortment so tantalizing that it left her almost breathless. “Mom, mom can we please just get five candies--just five. Mom, please!” Her mother, knowing that five would quickly morph to 10, smiled at her memories of penny candies—her reward for sitting through the Reverend Kimball’s sermons. Then, her daughter turned to her mom and asked, “Mom. when do kids stop playing and start talking?” And that’s when she realized that she was on the cusp of a sea change in her youngest daughter--that before too long she too would be gathering in a gaggle of friends, hanging out at the mall, endless phone calls chattering about haircuts, boys, the boredom of suburban life. No amount of penny candies would convert her back to a kid who loved to play Pet Store, a game where her mom played both a pet store owner and the buyer and her daughter got to be the pet—a puppy poodle, a kitten, occasionally a penguin or a turtle. Had they already played it for the last time?
So many "last times" with our children. Over and over. (And over!) Did you end up buying her the penny candy? Love that game, by the way. Hard to think that there was a last time you played it. (In one of my books, i write about the last time I picked up my son and put him down again. Didn't know at the time it was the last time, but it happened.)
Yes. Those moments when you realize that the last is either here or coming. So bittersweet.
Mark’s court case dragged on over the next year and a half. When the case was finally dismissed for lack of evidence, he quit school and moved to New York. His last day in Kent, Phyllis helped him load his battered Corvair with everything he owned: they hauled boxes stuffed with shirts, sweaters, and jeans, cookware, power tools and paperbacks, tackle boxes filled with all manner of equipment from hammers, pliers and screwdrivers to a smattering of s-hooks, they carried rolled canvases, photos of his sculptures, portfolios of silkscreen prints and antiwar posters, all the relics of his previous life. The carefully curated collection of student works would be useful for studio visits (how eager he was for feedback from fellow artists, but also, hopefully, critics, collectors, gallery-owners!) Leaving before dawn, he pulled into lower Manhattan in the mid-afternoon. It was sunny and unseasonably warm the day he parked on the street to drop off some things at a friend’s studio. While they were reminiscing over a beer, someone broke into his car and when he got back to the spot where he’d parked it, it was gone.
Mark had always been protective of his work, yelling at Phyllis for moving a pile of proofs from a bench so she could sit down, yet losing everything hardly fazed him. He told her he would make better stuff now that it was gone.
Come see me in New York, he said.
Yes, yes, yes. Losing everything can sometimes be the best thing to happen. Not always! But sometimes.
I know the feeling. Once my kitchen knives were stolen from the trunk of my car on Avenue A (I had brought them to a friend's to sharpen). I stopped cooking after that, since I couldn't chop anymore. What a relief.
The last time Maxine saw her father was at her college graduation. From the stage she scanned the crowd, wondering why he wasn’t with her mother and older brother, and found him seated a few rows away from them. He was resting his arm over the back of the next seat as if he were with the woman in that seat, someone Maxine didn’t know.
The afternoon was hot, and people in the audience were wiping their foreheads and folding their programs to use as fans. The speeches seemed to last forever. No one could remember, later, what had been said.
When it was all over, Maxine found her family – her father had rejoined the others by then – and they headed across the Great Lawn toward the picnic tables.
“Let’s see that,” her father said, gesturing toward her rolled-up diploma. He unfurled it and nodded appreciatively. “Latin, huh? Do you know what it all means?”
“I know what ‘cum laude’ means,” Maxine said. She adjusted the cap on her head so the tassel would stop hitting her nose.
“It means you did good,” he said. “I tried hard with you kids, and I guess I did all right. Billy in graduate school and engaged to be married, and now you with a cum laude degree. I can say my job is done.”
“There’s still Linda!” Maxine said.
“Well, Linda,” her father said with a sigh. Linda had left home two years earlier, soon after her sixteenth birthday. She showed up for a day or two, every few months, and sent an occasional postcard. “I don’t think I’ll have to send Linda to college.”
“You never know.”
“What’s next for you? You have any thoughts about a job?”
Maxine couldn’t remember her father ever asking about her future. She swallowed hard and said, “I’d like to go to law school.”
“Honey, I can’t swing that,” he said. “That’s not in the budget.”
When she didn’t answer, he added, “I wouldn’t want to see you doing that type of work, anyway.”
Rose called over her shoulder, “Move a little faster, you two! All the food will be gone by the time we get there.”
Two days later, when she was packing up her belongings, Bill called to tell her their father had moved out, leaving Rose alone. “You’d better come home now,” he said. “She’s in bad shape.”
I read the whole thing and then remembered the first line, which made all of it so unsettling. I want to know what became of him. And whether or not she went to law school!
I love the bits of information dropped in, particularly where he's sitting during the ceremony, and where his arm is.
"No one could remember, later, what had been said." Amen to that. But a memorable occasion, otherwise.
More please! Great cast of characters and feels like an opening to something longer..what happens to law school, Linda, Rose, even the unnamed woman next to the father.
This is indeed part of a longer story - not the opening, though I may rearrange the sections. I just wrote this piece in response to the prompt and I'm not totally sure where in the story it goes. BTW my piece from last week is another part of the same story.
The last time I saw my ex, I ran interference for my son-in-law’s family. I will never, ever need to do that again.
An entire novel in two sentences!
the last time I took a nap I didn't wake up
WAKE UP, RUTH!!!!!!
OK
you did too
The last time is a ghost. An uninvited shade. An icy finger thrust through my chest wall on Solstice. It asks “What If?” embossed on black stationery in silver calligraphy delivered by a man in top hat and tails.
“What if?” as Steve pedals down the driveway and onto the road, arm raised in reassurance–the “yes-I-have-everything-no-I-did-not-forget-my-wallet-oops-I-forgot-to-tell-you-about” gesture that reassures but doesn’t. I’m left in a liminal space between the kiss and his chin lifted full-on grin at the end of the day. He’s still such a kid.
“I’ll bike over to get my CT Scan. It’s close.”
Or last week–”so what if it’s a fractured rib?” It will heal. Takes time.” Shrug.
Meanwhile–there are bikes to ride, pizza to snarf, another Mariner loss.
(I don’t want to address the myriad “what ifs” there.)
I’ve done last times before now. I’m at an age when last times outnumber first times.
The last phone call with my dad.
“I’m worried I have cancer.”
“But you just had a full exam. Don’t live in fear, Dad.”
“You’re right.”
He was gone two days later.
The last time I held my mom’s hand, leaned over her bedside. Her breaths raspy and labored.
The strong, resilient woman who annoyed me so much in junior high.
“Only a slut would paint her nails black!”
I was sent back upstairs to remove what I thought was cool. It matched my dress. I was late for school. It was the last time I painted my nails black. I should do it one more time. Just because.
“Behold! Not a slut, Mom.” As I wave them toward the sky.
The same woman who would not reveal how she voted when my dad asked her.
“But what if your vote canceled out mine?”
“That’s fine.”
She should be here, now. Testify before Congress. Look some of them up and down, like she did my prospective dates.
Steve still remembers that. (He passed scrutiny with flying colors.)
I’m not sure what was keeping her from slipping away. Worry about leaving my dad behind?
“It’s ok to leave, Mom. We’ve got this.”
The last time I spoke to her.
The last time. An ear worm, now. “Well, I’ve told you once, and I’ve told you twi-ice…But ya never listen to my advi-ice.”
This is really well done. So breezy, yet full of everything. Lots of great lines, but I really liked this one: "Look some of them up and down, like she did my prospective dates."
Thanks Mary!
yay ghosts!
Love the tone and personalities we get in just a few words each.
Thanks Janet!
Title: The Last Time
The last time I farted out loud was at a funeral. On purpose. It made everyone laugh, even those crying. Laughing mourners outnumbered the crying.
The deceased was a very unpleasant man. He was our local TV weatherman. He revolved his life around fronts, troughs, and a variety of barometric pressures. When he came home, to his family it was like an ill wind had blown in.
On TV, he predicted the future with flashy graphics and digital segues, separated by commercials for Hyundais, burial insurance, and medicine for moderate-to-severe illnesses.
He didn’t believe in climate change, global anything, or the butterfly effect. On ordinary timescales, his predictions became more inaccurate the further out his forecasts were cast.
On the evening of June 27 he made his last prediction, for by the next morning he was dead. He died in his sleep when an ill wind blew in from god-knows-where. But on that evening, his forecast was particularly inaccurate on so many levels.
“Tomorrow will be one of those days you’ll want every day. It’ll be beautiful. It’ll be just be a great day for everyone,” he declared, followed by a commercial remedy for constipation for those who normally fretted the next day anyway.
Besides his dying, making his forecast just so wrong, it hailed.
What made him unpleasant wasn’t his bad forecasting but his fatalism. He would say things like, “I expect tomorrow’s high to be 95,” or “I have determined that the high tide will be at noon,” or “I wanna say that the dry spell will last into next week.”
Like he was the one who determined tomorrow’s high, when the high tide rolled in, or how long the dry spell lasted. Then, if it turned out that the high was lower, the tide was gentler, or the dry spell ended sooner, he would say things like, “You can thank the weather,” as if he were the weather!
Like, “You can all thank me!”
I thanked him, alright, because he was my father. He forecast I’d be a failure; he predicted my doomed, bankrupt future; and he foretold of my miseries at the behest of his own vicarious failures.
The weather is serious business. When it succeeded, he owned it; when it failed, he shirked responsibility. Like raising a child.
So, yeah, I thanked the weather by contributing to it. I farted out loud. Everyone laughed at the one last ill wind to blow his way. But, like Bob sang, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
oh oh oh, this one hurts in all the right places! I love the way "because he was my father," doesn't come until near the end. Ill wind, indeed!
so good!
I wrote one for this which may or may not have involved farting !
but it was 550 words after two edits so I thought no. Shazzam
You should go for it anyway.
I did. I even had the phrase its a n ill wind that 'breathes nobody good'
and a cacophonous fart at a funeral. Shaz-blinkin aam!
Was I you in a previous life? Smells like it.
Wonderful read. This sets it up perfectly: "The deceased was a very unpleasant man. He was our local TV weatherman. He revolved his life around fronts, troughs, and a variety of barometric pressures. When he came home, to his family it was like an ill wind had blown in."
Thank you, Kevin.
I really, really like this sentence: "When he came home to his family, it was like an ill wind had blown in!" What a great description that is! I love this tale of you farting--an ill wind, indeed--out loud at his service! And the repetition of the "ill wind" throughout works so well.
Thanks so much. So happy you enjoyed it.
The last time came in an instant. It was here and then gone. Gone forever. We wondered what it meant not to have it any longer. In fact, within a few moments it was evident that no one could remember when the last time was?
Wally asked Judy; she couldn’t remember. Mather wondered as much as the rest of them, just when the last time was, but when the last time was apparently beyond them. Seemingly, it was beyond everyone, including me. But I didn’t wonder about what was beyond me because the last time was really behind me. I had figured that out. So I just packed up my duffel bag, said goodbye to my friends, and made it out to the highway.
It was then that I encountered the greatest problem. Because the last time had come, no one was traveling. You see, there were no more buses because the last bus had left. There were no cars on the highway because the last time to use the car had passed. There were no trucks because the last pickup or delivery had happened.
I sat on the side of the road. My stomach felt raw; my head was swimming. I was frightened that there would never be another last time. How was it that I hadn’t just stayed at home? After all, the last time I had left the house had passed. I sat there pondering. Then the question and my thoughts about it faded. I had lost that. I figured that the last time I had a thought had just happened.
I watched as a cat crossed the road. It was a calico and large for one. The cat looked at me in its feline way, sat, scratched, licked its butt, stood, and sauntered over to me.
“You want to know something?” I said.
The cat sat, purred a bit, and looked at me without blinking. I started to continue but I couldn’t remember what I had been saying. What was the cat thinking? I sat there wordless.
The cat got up, glanced at me, and walked away into nowhere.
A philosophical conundrum!
The last time I saw Alice she was sitting on the end of my foot. A tiny beast of a girl, she made me lean toward her when she thought her claw thoughts
Go Alice, I whispered so Dennis in the next room wouldnt hear. Not for five years remember?
It's been five years
No. Nooo
I checked my calendar three times. Five years tomorrow
I dont know how you bent time but it cant be more than three and a half
It's five
Come back tomorrow
She hesitated. Dennis knocked on the door. You ok in there?
Hold on
I waited. She left as slowly as she could, leaving a dent on my quilt and a chill on my foot
There were letters stained into the end of my bed
If youre not here tomorrow I'll send the Forgetter
And something like that happened
the Forgetter spends way too much time at my house. Love the stained letters as they can be letters or letters.
the Forgetter can be a lil beeatch. I chase him and jump on him with steel capped boots. Yes they could be Numbats or letters 2.
( that’s an Aussie joke - have you seen a Numbat? adorable )
I will look for one!
I just looked up numbats and indeed they are adorable and I've just learned a single numbat can eat up to 20,000 termites in one day. What drive! What enthusiasm! What a tragedy for termites when a numbat moves into the neighborhood!
I don't really know what this is about, J.D.A., but I just love it! So intriguing. So bizarre. Fabulous ending. Love the letters stained into the end of the bed and the last two lines. A wonderland of a different order?
thanks Annemarie ❤️