Sunday afternoon, February 25, 1979

My children--my dear children. My dear Sid, my dear Mary Renfroe--

I'm lying here in bed, listening to you all running in and out the front door, checking to see if the snow the weather man has forecast is falling yet. The door slams, opens, slams again; I can feel an icy chill creeping under the coverlet from the winter air you've let in the house. Now I can hear one of you yelling from outside. Have you spotted the first snowflake, perhaps? So much excitement, so much commotion over what I am afraid will be not much. No, not much in the way of winter weather. I don't think there will snow; I think all of this blustery dampness will end in nothing but chill rain, at most maybe some sleet and freezing drizzle. A glassy coating on the trees--that will be something to see, at least. Nevertheless you two are convinced that snow is on the way. I'm sorry, I truly am. I know how much you all had been looking forward to it, and perhaps staying home from school tomorrow. But there will be, for you, other ice storms, other snows.

It's funny, just this moment I'm remembering the ice storms of my childhood, how we'd go outside and carefully peel away the icy molds the frozen rain had made on the leaves of the camellia in front of our house. How delicate they were, and how faithful to the leaves' shape--every vein and ripple was duplicated in the ice's surface. You could see every detail if you held the ice-leaves up to the light. We'd admire them a while, then pop them in our mouths, a leaf meal. Why I'm remembering this I don't know; it may be the stuff I'm taking, these godawful drugs. A thousand memories, a thousand trembling fallen leaves of memory I thought I'd lost forever, have come back to me these past few months from wherever they'd been blown to. Some of them I don't want to come back, some I do. It seems I don't have any choice about what I get to remember, so I just let them come. I just let them come.

It's not an approach to dealing with things that I find easy. I'd much rather marshall them into orderly piles--color-coded piles, perhaps! This pile I'll sort through on Tuesday, this one on Wednesday at 10:00 p.m., after you two have gone to bed. It would be quieter then. But I've discovered these past few years that there are a lot of things that are beyond my power to shape or organize. I just have to take them, however they come, and when, and no matter what they are. Lately I've just been sort of welcoming them. Oh, you want me to accept that too, on top of everything else? Well hand it over, I say, hand it over; I'll find somewhere to put it. That top shelf, maybe? But there are some things that are so much harder than others to take that I can hardly begin to think how I'll accept them. But I'm learning. I'm learning. And by the time I have to hold out my hands for them I hope I will have learned to take them gracefully.

Which brings me to why I'm writing. I think we all know by now that I may not be able to be here with you much longer. None of us really knows, of course; I've had so many setbacks and rallies these past few years that I've given up making any guesses about what may or what may not happen in the near future! But I think that it's safe to say that I've reached a place where the treatments that were working aren't really working anymore, and there isn't much else to try. And I'm sicker and weaker, as I'm sure you've noticed. I think we all sense and know that. I've tried to be honest with you about it, your father has too. At times we've let hope get the best of us, and perhaps allowed ourselves to be a little more optimistic than we really should have been. But of course there was reason for hope! We had a miracle, after all. I've had these last few years with you that I really wasn't supposed to have; I stole time that wasn't rightfully mine, and got away with it! That was a true miracle, and I can't be angry or bitter about it now that it seems that I'm on the other side of it, that I've had it and now it's over. It was a miracle, and I'm deeply grateful; I can't ask for more.

Because you see I'll be with you now, much more than I could have been if I'd had to go when the doctors were thinking I might originally. You've seen more of me (maybe more than you would have liked to at times!), you know me better (maybe things you didn't want to know!) now than you did then; you have more memories or me--the memories of near-adults, not the hazy, murky memories of children. And so I'm confident that I'm going to be with you, I'm going to stick. I'm going to go on being with you in a way I never could have if I hadn't had these years. That's the real miracle.

I'm going to be with you. When I say that I don't mean like some spirit or fairy-godmother or angel or anything silly like that. I had a foolish old aunt who told me when my own mother died that she would always be "watching over me" from above, an idea I came to find rather macabre and upsetting, to tell you the truth. The notion that one is being "watched over" by some angel, however benign, isn't very pleasant, let me tell you. No, I mean I'm going to be with you in the way that someone who has loved you, who has known you well, is always with you, worked into your muscles and sinews and skin, embedded so deeply in your memory that you can't say goodbye to them even if you wanted to.

And you will want to--that is something I know. You'll think about me and dream about me (oh the dreams!) till you wish you didn't. There will come a time when you'll be very angry with me, full of resentment and bitterness. You'll say, why did she say this, do this, why didn't she do that, why did she leave us? Why was she such so stupid, so thoughtless, so impossible? It is perfectly all right and natural for you to be angry with me: that is what I want to tell you. It is all right. I don't mind. It is all right to be sad for me, to pity me, to laugh at me, to ridicule me, and to love, to hate me, even, in succession, or all at once, as you grow older. It is good. Because it means that I will be growing and changing along with you as you go through life and think and feel differently about me, instead of staying the same, like a photograph on a wall that never moves, that never changes its expression.

I'm going to be with you--I'm not going far. It's just an instant away, it's just a moment. It's just a few molecules of air away. It's nothing. I'll be there, whatever happens, whatever you decide to do or be, whatever mistakes you make, whatever unpleasant things come your way. And you will make them, they will come your way. But I know that you're good and talented and smart and brave enough to not be ground down by them, not be diminished by them, not be deceived into living a less full or courageous life than you deserve because of them.

Once I can recover a little energy and feel a little less queasy I am going to come downstairs and see what you all are up to. You've been so good most of the afternoon, letting Mommy rest, but now that's over. You're bickering, I call tell that--you just threw something, Mary Renfroe, I think, a big sofa pillow or book. I'll put a stop to all that. The next thing I'll do is tell you to put that awful handheld football game your father let you buy away, Sid. I can hear its beeping all the way up here. Then I'll clean up the newspaper funnies you've strewn all over the floor and see what sort of mess you've made in the kitchen: I'm sure it's a wreck. If I'm not mistaken somebody was running the blender. Then maybe I'll see what can be done in the way of supper before your father comes home from his office; I think it would cheer him so much if he could see me put a meal together. I'm going to do all these things when I come down. But right now I need to rest a little longer. I need to rest. And do you know it's rather pleasant to lie here and simply listen to you all carp at each other and misbehave and stomp around like elephants? It's lovely, it's heaven, in fact--I could go on listening to you forever, if I could.

I think it really is snowing now! I just saw some flakes out the window, falling by the streetlight down by the corner, which has just come on. You two were right; I ought to have believed you. And now you've opened the front door again to see the falling snow--I can feel the chill draft against my face up here in bed.

I love you both so very much. Never forget that. Never forget it.

Mom

P.S. I don't know when you'll get this. Maybe much later, maybe not for a long time--when you're ready. Maybe never; I simply don't know.

And now I'm going to put down this notebook and pen and turn out the light for a while.