While I’m reading, a sentence will grab me and force me to stop. I pay tribute to other authors by sharing their Damn Fine Sentences with you. Then I recount a memory the words bring up for me. It’s about how books connect with your life.
*****
“It was the summer my living mother sat unknowingly on the doorstep of a sudden vanishing.”
———Hanif Abdurraquib
——--A Little Devil in America
Mother was adamant that she didn’t mind dying. She’d never fully commited to being on this heavy earth in the first place. So after the lump in her breast turned ten, I wondered why she fought death as fiercely as a toddler fought sleep.
The last day she she set foot in the living room, her spirit group came over for a final visit. The women she’d meditated with sat at her feet in solemn communion. I knew she’d die after they left.
She didn’t.
I heard her on the phone. It was a stream of conscious soliloquy, wrapping up the loose ends of a long friendship. She seemed to seek permission for her leavetaking. I knew she’d die after she hung up.
She didn’t.
Dad took her for a last drive into the foothills. They struggled into the starry California night. Dad teary, her shuffling with one hand gripped around his arm. I knew she’d die while they were out there.
She didn’t.
She fought on until her weakened body finally took down her will. She’d been waiting for an estranged loved one to come through our front door … waiting for them to appear at her bedside … waiting for them to forgive her.
They didn’t.
*****
“It was the summer my living mother sat unknowingly on the doorstep of a sudden vanishing.”
———Hanif Abdurraquib
——--A Little Devil in America
Mother was adamant that she didn’t mind dying. She’d never fully commited to being on this heavy earth in the first place. So after the lump in her breast turned ten, I wondered why she fought death as fiercely as a toddler fought sleep.
The last day she she set foot in the living room, her spirit group came over for a final visit. The women she’d meditated with sat at her feet in solemn communion. I knew she’d die after they left.
She didn’t.
I heard her on the phone. It was a stream of conscious soliloquy, wrapping up the loose ends of a long friendship. She seemed to seek permission for her leavetaking. I knew she’d die after she hung up.
She didn’t.
Dad took her for a last drive into the foothills. They struggled into the starry California night. Dad teary, her shuffling with one hand gripped around his arm. I knew she’d die while they were out there.
She didn’t.
She fought on until her weakened body finally took down her will. She’d been waiting for an estranged loved one to come through our front door … waiting for them to appear at her bedside … waiting for them to forgive her.
They didn’t.
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