Mommsy

My cellies-"White-Bred and "Scar" were laughing at some inane thing I'm sure..I'm going in too because Gumby told me it is a man's sense of humor that keeps him at times of intense solitude. I've certainly proved out this theory in my life in case he was only joking about it. At 85 square feet between us three hulking men either in stature of weight, size, or time in grade (to appease those military folk within earshot of this). The guard unlocks our cell door after the standard 1600 hrs stand-up count (they want you standing to ensure you're not all stabbed up, or dead in you bunk from something) like a disgruntled ex-postal worker whose had his share of that loneliness aforementioned. This time as he unlocks with the clanging kerchunk, he sticks his head in and tells me I gotta go to the Chapel on the "rec move". I thought I was going to the gym to play handball...GOD had other plans though as HE so often does. This prison vernacular is as commonplace to me as stoplights, facebook, and shopping lists are to you folks lending ear to this ode to Mommsy from her Hound of Baskerville's son.

When the guard shut the cell door, the laughter left with him as if some pall smothered it out so neatly that the laugh lines on our faces, in a nanosecond, went from mirth to mourn, creasing harshly the grim rictus of reality that is going to take place now twice in my career of incarceration. The cell suddenly grew oh so small, and my cellies beelined it out to give me some space where there is none. Sam and Arnoldo (their real names) have had their sufferage over the years. Offering up what little comfort and condolences afforded them to give in the coin of our consequences that due diligence to selfishness brings when we store up our wages of sin in bags with holes in them. They've known of Mommsy's condition for about the same amount of time as I. Not much can be hidden when sharing quarters that dimes would covet.

As I make my way around the cell (how long could this take?), I turn around to see what I'm looking for; and it is a vacant thing from my heart that I can't seem to find that fell out a few moments ago when the Chapel call came. Collecting my thoughts because you know that I'm scrunching up my eyes and courage to face the brunt of all my years spent to catering to meism's....I'm searching for my pictures...culling out the ones I got of Mom with an assortment of folk--mostly of her with Dad, but some with those who will never know her effervescence...great grandkids as too little still. It's an attempt to pull out of this stack of humanity, where all my faux visits put me, at proxy, to feign an osmosis catharsis by way of a polaroid fixation that camera phones can't touch. These photos are taking on a weight that makes them hard to lift on to the next. Surreality taking on a whole new dimension that at once is arresting...not punny mind you. Each one revealing that patented smiling glow that I'll never see again except in these photos. A thousand words can't tell the face that has launched a thousand ships. Shame on me all the day as repentance tries to make this wrong as pretty as Mom. Not waxing poetically, though one of the many gifts Mom possessed and passed along to her brood. The prose of the parentage prancing about our thoughts as if all of us are surely the next Hemingway.

The snow is whipping hard and the biting howling wind is swirling about me as I take the dirgeful and purpose driven plunge toward the Chapel. This weather shooting me back in time to Billerica, Mass. 1970. I'm certain ole Dennisky can give us exactitude, to include longitude and latitude, as well the family's attitude to this winter of our discontent. But which of my siblings remember the April Fool's joke Mommsy laid on us? It was 0530 to keep it real for our military folk out there (there's quite a few for sure) when she came down to the basement where me and the three bros slept. Frantically rousting us up to the exclamation of: "Go check the car! The windows are all broken!! Hurry up! Hurry up! Save the day! Carpe Diem! Go Boys to Men!" All of us out the door in record time to the blizzard that had buried the car! How could this be happening on April the first? Only to hear the basement door slam shut as Mommsy danced around in her "got you again" jig, shouting out, "APRIL FOOLS! APRIL FOOLS!". We had to endure this from all the windows and doorways in the three-story house. My bros and I wondering  how long is it gonna be before...1)Mommsy let's us back in...(and I'm out here wondering where the heck is Patti-Sue!)...2)How many times are we gonna fall prey to this ridiculous, predictable, and perennial crapola of Mom's?...and 3)  Now...I sure could use it one more time.

Over the past few months as Patti-Sue and Big Bro, weathered with Bob, the eroding debilitating effects the various maladies have brutalized our cherished one with, I could only offer solace via phone from inside a Federal prison. By the way I own the hang-up avoidance tactic on this earth...the hat trick of phone dodging if you will. Certainly not casting dispersion...at times I don't want to talk to me! But my Mom owns the record of answering every time. Never too busy. Never too sleepy.. And at times weepy. No matter the shame I've put her through. Collect was never a problem I might add. I got into this habit of singing to her. Songs I wrote, or CHRISTian gospels she used to sing, or ones we sang and dance to together in her pre-Bob days. As her mental state drifted, I was ever being guided to just stay in the moment while on the phone. Never using the do you remember whens, or we just talked about that, or that's the third time you told me (trust me here she didn't have to be in that state to tell me things three times over as I'm certain my siblings will attest). I was better equipped to handle what was happening because I wasn't up close and personal to her daily struggles such as were Patti-Sue, Big Bro, Dennis, and Bob. I've been trying to reach Danny Boy, and have a talk with Dennisky, because their own pain is weighed in here as they suffer this passing of our Matriarch.

A few days ago, as I reached Patti-Sue in Mom's hospital room, she did something to me that was a bit unexpected. I heard Mom groaning in the background, a sound of such intensity as I leaned into the line, almost smelling the antiseptic rise in the mouthpiece of my little prison lifeline to Mom--and it's not a loud noise (only the battlefield could be as loud as a prison) --quite the opposite. It was so faint as to be the telltale heart that is fighting back this weeping I so want to do, but this stupid phone is in the middle of the day room in our unit (romper room is a more fitting name) and any weakness here may be misconstrued. I've been in three prison riots. The horrors of all that cacophony dwindle in decibel to the rasping struggles of Mom trying to make it. And then my sister tells me she wants me to sing a song to Mom as she puts me on speaker phone. I sing to her too when I get the chance. Big Bro is really missing out! And this could explain why folks dodge my calls! But now I finally have a chance to help! The sagacity of Patti-Sue's thought process here was clearly GOD ordained...not that I'm Perry Como....Tom Jones maybe..but still I have this chance..you know? And I give it my all. Starting with her Mom's favorite, Amazing Grace, and not making it much farther because as I'm going along I hear Mom's groaning stop...and then her semi-humming begin...singing along with me like she has done so many times before, and thus bringing this man to that place where I don't really care if my tough-guyness shows a chink or two because my FATHER in heaven with JESUS on HIS right is standing to see HIS servants praise HIM in the best way they can...given present circumstances. Me, in the prison proper physically, way free mentally and spiritually...Mommsy in her prison physically and mentally, but now way free spiritually. And ain't that cool beans?

Over the years I have tried to discover what are the things worse than being in a place like this. I've had at my disposal ample reading material (not to mention the tales and fables of epic renown spun out from these men in here) and through this HE has shown me, although not high up in the living chain of goodness, many are those whom are living it lowlier than I.

My Mom's vibrant elixir of elan which she poured out upon all who knew the chutzpah and fortitude of her spirit, will forever be the reasons why I survive a place like this. I make it day to day because of who it was that brought me to bear. One fine day as she would sing oft of it...in the sweet by and by...I'll see her again in GLORY. An incorruptible, immortal, and indestructible soul that combines with the most indomitable SPIRIT of all time. It will be on that shore across the Jordan where we'll sing once again. There's a shadow in the valley of death because there's a light needed to bring about the casting of darkness. That light has gotten stronger now my friends because Margaret Louisa Gonier has walked on through. PRAISE JESUS!

...later in all love mustered by Mommsy's for me and her children..dougie boy...Dwouck