I read Beloved by Toni Morrison this weekend. I haven't read a novel in quite a while, other than for teaching, just plays and screenplays these days. I picked it up because a roundabout chain of events (discussing Oprah's film career leading me to look it up) making me realize that it was inspired by the case of Margaret Garner, who's been in my mind for years but I never knew was connected to this book.

Margaret Garner was an escaped slave who, when confronted with the possibility of recapture for her and her children, killed her two-year-old baby rather than allow it to be taken. The act shocked everyone involved to such a degree that no one knew what to do with her, and she was taken away to jail, while some argued for her punishment and some people argued there was a justification for her act. It stuck in my mind powerfully because I have never been able to decide what to make of it. On one hand, how could you kill your child? How could you cut off all hope of possibility for that child's future? But on the other... she knew what slavery was, and she decided that it was better for her child to die than live that life. She would know how bad it was. But, still, was it her RIGHT to take away all possibility for that child, even with her maternal responsibility, even with the weight of her knowledge? So I've never been able to forget this case for my complete inability to assess it.

The book is beautiful and brutal, told in fragments of memories amid the unfolding of a horror story in their present lives. It is all about the enduring mark of horror that has been left on these people's lives by having been owned. And it makes you realize just what that means in a way that, in the absence of the details of narrative, I think we don't usually grasp. At least, as a white person like me.

I did not, thank God, have an education that pretended slavery was less awful than it was. I do think it's sometimes presented as just, like, analagous to English service you just don't get a choice about, but I was not under that illusion. I think primary education glosses over the specifics sometimes, though I understand why, but just telling you, for example, about the rampancy of sexual assault doesn't really make it clear what that means. The book makes you see the depths of the horror and degradation in a way simple facts do not.

But there's one undercurrent in the story that troubles me. One thing that is mentioned over and over that in the condition of being a slave, you cannot afford to love anyone because they could be taken away or destroyed, at a whim, at any moment. I certainly understand how difficult it can be to put your heart out there when there's so much tragedy it could be subjected to. But the book seems to suggest even that it dulls the ability, not just the opportunity, to love. Like, the mothers lost even the ability to really love their babies because of the knowledge that something terrible could happen to them.

Is that really so? Can even something so abjectly awful as chattel slavery take away the ability to love? Loving your child is natural. Like, how could you stop it? How could anything turn off the human capacity to love your children? I mean, maybe that's it. Maybe that's the whole point, that's just part of how horrifying it was. But to me there's something kind of offensive in that— to suggest that the victims of this horror were turned into people who could not love. Like, they were still human beings! No matter how you treat a person like an object, they never become an object! Does torture really take away such a fundamental aspect of humanity? That idea seems... racist, almost. To suggest those people were rendered into something less than human.

I don't know. Of course I know nothing. I can't begin to relate to or understand these ideas. Maybe that's it! Maybe that's the horror! I've heard people say that if you treat somebody some way long enough, they're likely to become it.

But I don't feel like that's an assessment I could ever make. Maybe Toni Morrison could— or somebody could argue that even she couldn't —but not me. I don't feel like I could ever believe that without being incredibly racist. I can't believe that a human being could be ROBBED of their capacity to love and made into something that can't love without believing that person isn't human anymore. I can't believe a human being can be made less than human by the actions done to them by another human. Maybe by their own actions. But not something somebody did to them.

I will never truly understand. And that's why this book rocked me.

Ten thousand things I could be doing. Projects to work on, arts to experiment with, things to make, things to watch, stories to read. But I have no interest in any of them.

I have a hard time getting mentally into anything I don't already have some spontaneously developed interest in. That's tough for me to find at the best of times. Right now? Nothing. Practically nothing.

Bah.

I keep trying to write about something else, but there really isn't anything on my mind but how consistently down I've felt lately. I feel like an ass whining about it, given the terrible things going on in the world right now and the people who have much bigger problems than me-- I've been doing my best to listen rather than speak about that --but it's just overcoming me lately. It's been worse, I guess, but it's been so consistent. In the past several weeks I've had a number of breakdowns, but mostly I just feel so listless and generally unhappy. I'm not enjoying much of anything. Normally I am a very energetic, productive person, but right I can't seem to get anything done. Not chores, not the work that matters to me. Everything feels pointless, like it doesn't come to anything, so why even bother? I feel like I spend a lot of time and effort doing things I don't really care about, and when I kill myself getting the things I do care about done, they don't really come to anything, and I don't enjoy them as much as I hope I would.

I don't know what to do about it. Bernie thinks I should try to see somebody, but honestly I don't think it would make much difference. My experiences attempting that previously were... inoffensive, I supposed, but didn't really make a difference. On top of that, I have state insurance, which nobody takes, and I can't afford it out of pocket. I already know all the tricks to cope in the meantime, which get me through the day but don't take care of the problem. So there isn't really answer.

I guess I'm just whining. This is how it goes. But I'm so exhausted with feeling exhausted, and sad about feeling so sad.

Remember my resolution to go back to writing in my journal on the regular? Yeah, that didn't happen.

Unfortunately, neither did my using my three weeks off as a break. I didn't have work, no, but inwaterwrit got married and I was her maid of honor, so the first week was taken up with helping her. That was a ton of fun, but then Bernie had his graduation ceremony. And then, because I never visit him in Baltimore, I agreed to go back to Maryland with him to attend Balticon. We worked tech for it, which was also fun and got us in for free, and Bernie even helped me do a bit of networking that might lead to something good for me. But now I'm at home for the weekend, to be there to help out my dad with some landscaping chores. Again, all that stuff is good, but it meant I didn't do much resting, and didn't get much of the catching up done that I'd been meaning to. Since I'm going back to work on Monday, I guess there goes that.

Honestly, I haven't been doing that well lately. I've been pretty consistently exhausted for the last several months, and I'd been hoping my between-trimester break would help me get myself back. But that didn't happen, and I'm a little afraid it's not going to. It's contributed to a vague depression for a while now that I'm not sure how to lift. I'm hoping that since even when I go back to work it won't be nearly as intense will mean I actually do eventually recover. But I haven't felt like myself in a while.

It’s times like these, when I have so, so many things on my plate that I miss Bernie being around the most. He’s always very supportive of me, which he has no difficulty doing from far away, and I’ve relied on that as I’ve been getting through this shockingly intense schedule. But the one thing I could really right now use is an extra pair of hands, the little extra help that you can expect from sharing your life with a partner, and that I’m sorely missing.

I feel kind of bad confessing that’s the part of Bernie being gone I find most difficult. It sounds as if the most important value I place in him is what use I can make of him. But I swear it isn’t that. It’s that it’s the only part of our relationship that we cannot have from a distance.

I do surprisingly well being on my own for long periods. Bernie and I talk for hours every day, and he’s so good at making me feel loved and supported from that alone, so the emotional closeness is there. I don’t really experience the phenomenon of becoming touch-starved. Whatever the state of things are in that regard, I just kind of get used to it and that becomes okay. So even though it’s been over a year at this point, it hasn’t been that bad.

But the one thing that isn’t the same is that we can’t help each other out in any material way. Just little things— like, if you’re going to be cooking for yourself anyway, it isn’t much extra work to make enough for two people, and then the other person is saved some work. That somebody can run an errand for you in the course of their day, or be the one to turn over the laundry, or help you carry all the bags you need for your day to the car. Those aren’t huge things, but when you’re this busy any little bit of relief makes a difference. And on top of that, it makes me think of all the things I may not suffer too much from the absence of but that I still did enjoy about partnered life. I try not to dwell on it, but it makes me a little bit melancholy.

My granddad’s funeral was held at Our Lady of Lourdes, the Catholic church of Burgettstown, Pennsylvania, the small coal-mine-adjacent town where my dad grew up. But it was also the place where my parents were married, almost forty years before. I was there before, most recently when my grandmother passed and I attended her service, but that was before we lost my mom.

My dad pointed to the insignia of the cross within the circle in the tile before the altar, where they stood during the ceremony. Where they promised for better or for worse, in sickness and in health. Strange to think that here we were, forty years later. Without her. To think of her then, so young and beautiful and full of hope, was too much for me. I cried.

I felt weird about it. A little guilty. I probably should have been thinking more about Granddad. But everything I knew about him just made me happy for him instead of sad— he had ninety-two happy, healthy years, surrounded by the love of family and friends and not even much in the way of sickness until the very, very end. Thank Jesus he lived such a life! I didn’t want to think people believed I was so sad for his sake when it was really because of my mother.

My dad hugged me. “It’s okay, Phoeb.” “Forgive me, but it’s not Granddad.” “I know.” He took my hand. He knew, because he was thinking of her too.

My cousin Meryl had been given a family wedding album from Granddad’s house. She originally thought it was her mom and dad’s, but was confused when she opened it. “What is Mom wearing?” I asked, without looking, “Does it look like a furry hood?” “Yes!” she answered. I laughed. “That’s my parents’ wedding.” Apparently my mother decided that her bridesmaids would wear cranberry dresses with fur-trimmed hoods, because winter of 1975, I guess. I can think of no other explanation.

There’s some wonderful pictures in there. The church still all done up for Christmas, because they were married two days after. My dad at twenty-three, with shaggy hair, an enormous mustache, in a champagne suit and cowboy boots. My dad’s wonderful aunt, also named Joann, with hair all the way up to Jesus. Dad’s little Italian grandmother, Mama Nonni, almost as wide as she was tall, guarding their money purse like a pitbull. All four of my grandparents in truly hideous seventies finery, all pleats and pastels and big permed hair. Dad says there was a lot of family on both sides, but he mostly remembers how quickly all of his family fell in love with her, took her in and made her theirs, because they could see right away how good she was.

I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

I have talked about my mother’s death here before. But today, on the one-year anniversary of her passing, I want to talk about the night she died. I don’t have much point to make. This is a very disjointed, stream-of-consciousness entry. But I’m ready to talk about it, and I want to have a record of what it was like.

Casey, Sarah, and I drove down together. We came home into a very clean house—partially, I think, for all the people who would be coming in, and partially as way for my dad to feel in control. He’s a strong man— believe me when I say almost impossibly so —but he channels stress into things like that. He had food waiting for us. And he took us upstairs to see Mom.

They had put a hospital bed next to the big bed in their bedroom. That was good, she hadn’t wanted to die in the hospital. She wasn’t conscious; she was on a sort of liquid morphine that basically knocked her out. They put her on oxygen, but it wasn’t doing much good, and she kept gasping, trying to breathe. She couldn’t, really, but her body would try to anyway.

Dad was so in tune with her condition, with everything he’d done to take care of her. He’d called the previous day and said it would happen very soon. And we went home the next day, because he was right.

He asked if we remembered the part in Harry Potter with the thestrals, which are only visible to you after you’ve seen someone die. “I think we’re going to see thestrals soon.” He’s not usually one to talk in literary references, so that one struck me.

A hospice nurse came and spoke to us. We were kind of normal and together, which I think surprised them a little. But we don’t act out in front of strangers. I was proud, though, when the nurse took a moment to tell my dad how impressed they all were with how my dad took care of her. She actually said she’d never seen anything like it. He is strong, and he loves her.

It was very surreal. How normal it was, while Mom was right there dying. Mostly it was waiting. We’d sit with her for a while, holding her hand, talking to her. My dad and my brother had a lot to say. How much they loved her, but how it was okay for her to go, that she didn’t need to hurt anymore. Neither of them have ever been afraid of or uncomfortable with their emotions, but their frankness and their verbosity impressed me. This process made my brother a lot softer. And my dad, well, he’s perceived by some to be a hard, intense man. But he loved my mother utterly. Reordered his whole life to be there for her in her illness. And damn certain he was going to tell her everything as she died.

Dad told us stories of how they met, when they were young. How they were friends for years before they ever dated. How after graduation they traveled cross country to Yellowstone National Park in a van with three other friends and a German Shepherd. How they were camping in the park, smoked some weed, and went swimming at the same time there happened to be an earthquake, but because they were high, they weren’t sure if they imagined it or not. How my mom said to my dad, “If you grow up a bit, you might be worth keeping.” It made me smile to hear all that. Funny to think of my straight laced parents being cooler and more adventurous than me.

I just cried a little, quietly. Weirdly, I found I didn’t know what to say, and felt too embarrassed to try. Words are supposed to be my thing, and I didn’t have any for my dying mother.

It’s okay. She knew how I felt, and she couldn’t hear anything anyway. But it was weird.

So we sat with her, listening to her try to breathe. Then we’d get hungry, or have something to do, so we’d wander off and do it. Dad had a little camera set up in the room, so we could watch her from the kitchen. In case it happened, we could rush up and be there.

She looked like a scary troll. I feel awful about thinking that, but she did. Not like my mother at all. Her hair was gone, her face and body were bloated and stressed. She had tubes coming out of her all over. Horrifying. The picture of death.

We took a picture of her. Not sure why. I guess because it was real, it happened, and there’s no pretending that it didn’t. I have it and Casey has it, but my dad asked us not to show it to anyone. It’s private. It’s the last picture of my mother on this earth.

Casey’s girlfriend Sarah was with us. My family is private, intensely so, so it was a question as to whether or not she would come for this part of things. Bernie was working, so in deference to both of those things I had chosen not to bug him until there was actually a funeral. Dad probably would have been okay if Bernie came. Though in fairness he hasn’t known Bernie as long. Casey and Sarah had been together for like six years then, and he wanted her there, and Dad was fine with that.

Sarah was so good. The whole time I couldn’t imagine how awkward everything had to be for her. Being in the middle of other people’s uncomfortable, private, tragic moment. But she was perfect, being present and quietly, lovingly supporting my brother. I have so much respect for how she conducted herself in what had to be a deeply difficult situation. I already liked Sarah, but that was when she became family.

It was late when it happened. When the life finally slipped out of her. Her breath, already choppy, became more and more infrequent. She twitched for a while. Then she was still.

I posted on Livejournal when it happened. And Twitter, I think. That’s probably kind of sick that I even thought of it. But I wanted to mark the moment.

Dad called the hospice. They would send the right people. So we waited, there in the bedroom with the remains of Mom. I had been laying on my parents’ bed, right beside her hospital bed. I stayed there, staring at her as she went cold. Her skin became so gray, that weird troll that replaced my mother.

Nobody came for a long time. Everyone curled up someplace and slept. I don’t know where everyone ended up. I think Casey was on the floor. I slept there beside her. It didn’t seem strange. She was either a sack of dead disease, or she was my mother. I’m not afraid of either.

The hospice nurse came. I dragged myself up, sat in a chair and was polite. Same as I was with the nurse the previous day, be nice to the stranger, have good manners, even if you just lost the most important person. She asked for all mom’s medications and destroyed them. She was decent and said nice things, but I don't really remember what they were.

Two men in suits came from the funeral home. My dad remarked how weird it seemed to come ready to move a body dressed in a suit, but I guess it was supposed to be gesture of respect. They were very careful gathering her up, zipping her into the body bag. I watched them do it, which likely made them take extra pains, but honestly I didn’t care. In that gray shell there was more remaining of the cancer that killed her than there was of my mother. What did I care what happened to a dead sack of tumors, when the person who bore me, raised me, loved me, made me who I am, was already gone forever?

I went to my own room and slept. The next day, I stripped the hospital bed, washed the clothes, made up the guest bed. They were the only sheets we had that fit it. Bernie and I slept that night on the sheets my mother died on.

I mention all this because it feels like it should have been weird or creepy. But none of it was. At least not to me. I just love her, and miss her, and I still don’t quite believe she’s gone.

The sky is blue, and that’s beautiful.

Everyone thinks so. I mean, look at it. Even people for whom blue may not be their favorite color, they can definitely see how pretty it is. Even if it weren’t obvious to me, everybody around me tends to think so.

If you have eyes in your head, you can see it. By any standard, it’s blue.

I really like how that blue looks; honestly, sometimes it seems like the bluer it is, the more I like it. So I’m actually rather invested in the sky being blue. I work hard to avoid allowing things like pollution and smog to ruin that blue. So the fact that it’s blue gives me a lot of joy, and I put a considerable effort into keeping it that way.

But because I like that blue so much—as I said, sometimes it seems like the bluer, the better — it’s on my mind a lot. The comparative blueness. The quality of it. “God, it’s so blue today! Gorgeous!” “Well, it could be a little bluer, but it’s still pretty blue, and it’s still nice the way it is.” But sometimes it’s not so much about appreciating it as worrying over the possibility that someday, it might turn green. “Make sure you don’t let the sky turn green,” so that I put in the effort to keep the smog levels down. “Ugh, keep polluting like this, and the sky’s going to turn green for sure.”

The sky is blue, not green. The very idea is absurd, and I’m not crazy. I can look at it and see that.

But sometimes— and how often can vary, depending on a lot of things —the little voice in my head actually tells me, “The sky is green.”

The funny thing is? Most of the time, it is not hard to ignore. I mean, yeah, it’s silly that there’s a part of me that thinks that, but it’s OBVIOUSLY, VERIFIABLY WRONG. It doesn’t bother me that much because it’s not difficult at all to just go about my life, free of distress, ignoring the plainly irrational thought without allowing it to change my behavior in any way.

I am proud to say that I’ve never allowed that idea to affect my actual behavior. Maybe I’ve occasionally made a bad choice on an isolated occasion, but it’s never become a pattern and it’s never hurt me. I will confess, though, that sometimes the voice gets loud, and sometimes it gets vehement. Most of the time it’s just an occasional moment of “The sky is green,” but in very bad moments, weak moments, it becomes, “Phoebe. The sky is so fucking green I don’t know how you stand it. Shut down the factory, close off the smokestacks. NEVER OPEN THEM AGAIN.”

I’ll admit, the yelling has on certain occasions become so bad I started to believe it. But still, always, I have never acted on it. I have always been able to understand intellectually that I’m being crazy, even if it doesn’t feel true in the moment.

I suppose there’s still the temptation to go to absurd lengths to maintain that blue. But I’ve never given into it— I am too busy, too healthy, too grounded, thank God. But right now, the sky stays blue pretty easily these days. That may not always be the case.

I know it can’t stay blue forever; even if I don't smog the hell out of it, eventually the sun’s going to set, and all that gorgeous color’s going to go away and change into something else. I don’t like thinking about that. The color of the sky is probably way too important to me. Especially since its change is almost inevitable, no matter what I do, and I shouldn’t put myself in a position to hate the new color and be miserable. People put way too much stock in blue, I know. Other colors can be beautiful, and the world would be a better place if we didn’t care so much about beauty at all. But I’ve internalized it. Blue is most beautiful to me. I want the sky to be blue forever.

When the sun sets— if the sky really does turn green— I don’t know what I’m going to do.

Today is my twenty-eighth birthday.

Today would have been my mother's sixty-second birthday, the first pass of her birthday since she died.

I don't really know what to say about it, except that I'm thinking about her. Even more than usual. I'm sure everyone has noticed how much I talk about her. Maybe I do it too much, maybe people don't want to hear about it. But I like to talk about her. I just loved and admired her so much, the loss of her gapes, and it helps me feel like she's a little less missing from my life.

I'm a little surprised to think she's been gone almost a year. It doesn't feel that long. I remember her last birthday. It was pretty much the last time she left the house. We took her to Bolete, one of the nicest French country restaurants in America. We had a nice time all together, but she couldn't eat much. She was so sick then. She stopped treatment less than a week later. Two months later she was dead.

My family aren't really birthday people. But at least they mean you're getting older.

I remember telling crearespero, when we were working on figuring out how to portray Mrs. Hawking in the beginning of the Arisia 2015 process, that Mrs. Hawking has been mostly by herself for the last year, and while she likes it that way, the complete lack of outside perspective entering her little bubble has made her start to get weird. I think a little something of this has started happening to me. Outside of people I encounter incidentally for my job and stuff, I have barely interacted with anyone in the last several weeks, especially not socially. Like my weird little protagonist, I am emotionally fine with this, but I start to worry it's not good for me after a while, even if it doesn't bother me. I think it makes me out of practice dealing with my particular social anxieties, which makes them seem harder than they would be otherwise. Also I like my friends, I want to maintain those relationships, so I should make the effort to spend time with them.

And I miss Bernie. It's seem to be keen recently in a way it wasn't before. I mean, I always wish he were around, but my solitary nature makes me pretty resistant to ever feeling lonely. And he and I talk every day, so our relationship still feels so strong than I always feel close to him even though he's far away. But maybe it's started to wear on me, as I've begun to be a bit melancholy that he's not here. It also strikes me how I miss having someone around on whom I can count on for help whenever I need it. I'm a really indepedent person, I have trouble asking for help at the best of times, but with Bernie I actually felt comfortable enough to turn to him. I have great, generous friends, but I hate to bother them, and I certainly hate being helpless unless somebody can come to my aid. I got sick with a migraine today, and it would have been so nice to have him here to help me out. But as it was, I had to manage on my own. I can get my fill of emotional closeness with Bernie even far away, but when it comes to physical support, that's just something he can't do from Maryland.

The snow's the biggest problem. It's be so much easier to plan and get around and just freaking see people without it. I want to make that effort again. I love Mrs. Hawking, but I should definitely work to be ANYTHING BUT LIKE HER.