By Robert M. Katzman © May 18, 2017
(a podcast of this story I read on 91.1 FM, WGTD Kenosha, Wis NPR a week earlier courtesy of the warm and kind people of the Kenosha Writers Guild, especially Dave Gourdoux, has a link at the end of this posting.)
I was reading an online obituary page a while ago, and saw that Audrey, my Audrey, by then 86, had died.
It sent a shiver through me and I glanced over at the God’s Eye I’ve kept with me wherever I’ve moved over the past half century. It rests about five feet away from me. Intricately woven multi-colored yarn with fine detail in a Native American style, using three foot-long slender branches tied together in the shape of a six-pointed star.
It is a spiritual and ritual object thought to have magical powers by the ancient Pueblo tribes in the Southwest.
It is thought to possess the power to be able to see and understand that which an ordinary person cannot see.
Audrey, I thought to myself, now you’re really gone from me, aren’t you?
The pain within me was so real, so deep. She was someone I would often go see in Shabby Town, when I needed to remind myself that whatever else was wrong with me, with my life, a woman with fine qualities like Audrey–and Jesus, man–so beautiful, too, who was willing to give me a second look, well, ok, a lot more than a second look, then–maybe I had something valuable about me that she wanted, too, if only for a moment in time.
Audrey, Audrey, that picture of you, that little old lady scrunched up in a hospital bed, why had that newspaper or whatever online things are called now–no idea about how incredible you once were? What you were really like, so long ago. The smile that radiated from your big brown eyes, and your soft wide mouth?
So kissable a mouth. Soft lips, Audrey, you had such soft lips–soft everything.
(Read on …)