I went back to Maine this past week to bury the remains of my mother ... that was the easy part. The hard part was visiting with all of my siblings and other assorted relatives. It was chaotic .. it was stressful .. it was forgetful. This was suppose to be a time of remembrance... a time when all my mother’s children and their spouses and her sisters... and nieces, nephews and grand children and great grand child got together and rejoiced in her memory .. that’s why we picked such a beautiful setting .. that and she was born and lived most of her life and wanted to be buried there .. and so she is.

My middle sister drove us all nuts .. I mean she’s usually stressed ... kinda like caffeine only angrier... she was beyond belief. My little sister was her usual quite subversive self and the other siblings where oh so wonderful .. in their ability to empower the neurotic behavior of the afore mentioned sisters.

Did I mention that I drove to Maine? For those of you keeping track .. I live in Colorado .. not far from Denver .. Yes I did live in Washington ... But not anymore .. try to keep up. That makes the trip 2174 long tiring miles one way ... the other way although listed as the same distance seems a lot longer.
The hotels sucked .

Back to my family. Yes they were there. Seventeen people in my brother’s one bathroom house.( He built a two car garage with a finished upstairs, heat air conditioning and all, but one bath ... I don’t get it.) It was sad .. but not because we had buried our mother no it was because everyone was so caught up in there own world to see where they were, they were home.

While we were all in Maine... one of the things we had to do was to go through all of my mothers photographs ... some of them from her childhood some of them from my childhood most of them from time in between. There were black and white photos of her in the forties and colored photos of her in her forties. All of her children ... many of her grandchildren all represented .. portrayed forever as still life. No one wanted to look at the photos .. I didn’t understand why.

I went to Maine to bury my mother.