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Author: Anne Cassidy

The Word

The Word

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It’s been more than a week now since my mother passed away. The wake and funeral are behind us. Closets have been cleaned, clothes sorted, papers boxed for another time. The Kleenex box is almost empty. This is not a good time to run out of tissues!

What I’m searching for, I realize, is not closure but continuance. How will Mom go on? I can save a few of her sweaters and dresses, plenty of photographs and other memorabilia — but what I want most are the words she’s written.

Father Linh, who said Mom’s funeral mass, wisely made the Word his theme. “In the beginning was the Word,” he said. In the Word we find eternal life.

Mom started the Museum of the Written Word. She dealt with words all her life. She didn’t write as many words as she had hoped. But she encouraged others to write them. One of them was me. I best get on with it.

Eulogy

Eulogy

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I don’t even know if I’ll be able to go through with it, but I hope I will. Today at Mom’s funeral I hope I’m able to stand up and say a few words about her. It’s a sad duty, but an important one. Because she can no longer speak for herself, we must speak for her.

But how to do that? How to sum up a life in a few paragraphs?

No choice but to plunge in, to type words on a page, print the page, edit the page, add some new words, remove some old ones. No choice but to try and do it. Because the eulogy is not just for the person who is gone, of course; it’s for all of us still present, all of us who must keep on living.

People and Place

People and Place

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The long drive west, this time with new eyes. Wondering how often I will make this trip with Mom and Dad both gone. Still, when the people are gone, the people become place. So visiting the place becomes a way to be with the people.

Here in the house every sight my eye lights on is filled with thoughts of Mom. Here is the dining room with its Chinese screen print, the vase I bought her in New York City’s Chinatown, the bird prints that go back as far as memory.

In the family room, her books on writing are stacked on the organ bench. I can barely look at them. Those were the books whose ideas we’d talk about for the Museum of the Written Word, some of them I gave to her. Books on Cuneiform script or the Dead Sea Scrolls. The books stand for all of Mom’s projects, all the big ideas she had and never quite completed.

At home in Virginia I’m well insulated. Here in Lexington, I’m raw. This is what we must do, I know; this is part of grieving. To look, to see and remember, is as painful as it is necessary.

Curiosity

Curiosity

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In Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about the word “passion,” how overused it is, how intimidating it can be. “Just follow your passion.” “Discover your passion and then everything else will follow.”

Of course, this is poppycock. It implies that the creative life is a matter of being swept away by something rather than working away at something. Gilbert suggests that instead of focusing on passion, we focus on curiosity.

I believe that curiosity is the  secret. Curiosity is the truth and the way of creative living. Curiosity is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. Furthermore, curiosity is accessible to everyone.

What a comfort it was to read these words. So obvious yet so overlooked. So simple but so true.

When Walking Won’t Do

When Walking Won’t Do

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Walking is usually a tonic. It lifts me up and out of myself. But there are limits to its powers, which I discovered yesterday.

I had debated whether to come into the office at all, knowing it would be difficult whether I was home or downtown. Deciding it was better to be distracted, I made the trip in and was, as I had hoped, pulled into the demands of the day.

About 1 p.m. I received a nasty email. Nothing horrible, just an alumnus complaining that his book was omitted from our authors page, the kind of thing that happens occasionally when you deal with large volumes of information. The sort of thing that would usually roll off my back. But yesterday his unkind response put me over the edge.

I tried walking but my Kleenex got a bigger workout than I did. I cut the stroll short, made my way back to office and completed the work day as quickly as I could.

There are walks that inspire and walks that comfort and walks that sometimes must just be endured. There are days like that too. I think I’m in for a few of them.

(Photo: Claire Capehart)

Suzanne Concannon Cassidy, 1926-2015

Suzanne Concannon Cassidy, 1926-2015

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My mother died on a crisp autumn Saturday afternoon a few minutes before 3 p.m. She had been ailing for some time, but the end came quickly.

When my father died, it was easier to put the words into some order, to describe the indescribable.  But for Mom — a writer, the founding editor of two magazines and creator of the Museum of the Written Word — I’m having trouble. She was my mom, after all, and I was so close to her.

Last Sunday I slept on a strange little pull-out couch next to her hospital bed. I woke up throughout the night and looked at the glowing orange numbers of her pulse-oxygen meter. Admittedly not the most restful sleep.

But at about 5:30 a.m. I dozed again and dreamed that Mom and I were taking a trip together. She was driving a car — barefoot and in her hospital gown. At some point I realized this was not the best way to be tootling around the countryside. “I should take the wheel,” I said to myself. And I did.

It was not a subtle dream, but it was comforting.  It was helping me know that life will go on. I’m not sure exactly how, but it will.

Continuous Loop

Continuous Loop

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In the hours I’ve spent at Mom’s bedside recently I’ve found myself staring at a TV screen playing a continuous loop of nature shots. There is some New Agey music that goes with it, what we used to call Muzak, only with an airier, lighter touch. But the sound is usually turned off, so I’m looking at photographs without the benefit of soundtrack.

One thing I’ve noticed is the similarity of the shots. Though the landscapes may be of mountains, seascapes or red-rock deserts, the foreground is usually green. There’s a reason for that, I believe, something to do with our earliest origins, the safety of enclosure giving way to an open view. Splendor in doses. Domesticated wilderness. 

All I know is that it is mesmerizing. I look at Mom, I look at the screen, I think of all that can be held in a head and a heart.

Best Egg Roll in Wyoming

Best Egg Roll in Wyoming

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I’m taking a virtual vacation today, remembering the June trip out West, stopping for the evening in Gillette, Wyoming, after a late-afternoon stroll around Devil’s Tower.

There had been that feeling at Devil’s Tower, one I hadn’t experienced in a while, of being truly free. Usually I book accommodations in advance, but this was the last full day of the trip and I wasn’t sure of the itinerary. So there were 50, 70, maybe even 100 miles of open road ahead and no sure resting place. I knew there would be some place, of course, but wasn’t sure what place.

The place became Gillette because the bones were weary and the motel was the right price range (cheap!). And the restaurant became Chinese because it was the one across the street. 

But the waiter — he was the magical player in all of this. “Have an egg roll,” he urged, his smile lighting up the almost dining empty room. “We don’t just have best egg roll in Gillette; we have best egg roll in Wyoming.”

Well, that did it. The egg rolls came, and they were indeed delicious. And I thought about the randomness of travel, all the fun and funky experiences it opens you up to. All day there had been red rocks and curving roads and grand open spaces. And now, on top of all that, I was tasting the best egg roll in Wyoming.

Appearance of the Bull

Appearance of the Bull

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“There’s an old Mexican adage,” the doctor said. “The appearance of the bull changes when you enter the arena.” He admitted he could find no confirmation of this saying or its lineage, but it’s something he thinks about when he talks to patients and families. “It’s something I try to keep in mind,” he said.

What he meant was that it’s easy to say you want no extreme measures taken at the end of life when you’re not at the end of life. But when death is pawing the ground in front of you, when it’s charging right at you, when it’s close enough that you can spy its wild-looking eyes, its flared nostrils — well, that’s another matter.

“Yes,” he said. “I try to keep that in mind.”

And now I’m keeping it in mind, too.

View from DAR

View from DAR

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A wedding Saturday at the Daughters of the American Revolution headquarters building in downtown D.C. Temperature in the 60s, crisp flag flying, the Washington Monument etched pure and clean against an October sky. This is what I saw from my seat on the portico.

You know, you live here for a while, you deal with the traffic and the cost of living and the general headaches of a major metropolitan area — and you forget, far too often you forget, the beauty.

But on Saturday I didn’t forget. How could I? I took it in, deep breaths full of it. And I took a few photos to preserve it.