Episode 7: Relief, Autobiographical Obituaries, and Scarlet Hawthorne trees: Ilze's Story
This episode, I stray into possible conflict-of-interest-territory, jeopardizing my journalistic integrity...to interview my mother.She and I sit on the couch in my home living room, a cozy place where we've spent many an evening or afternoon together, watching movies or spilling our hearts, or reading quietly together under pools of warm lamp light.My mother is an exuberant person- honest, and lively in conversation, deeply introspective, and unafraid to share about her life, her past, her truths. While talking, she'd gesture widely, her familiar hands coming down to gently slap her soft, faded jeans. We've more or less had this conversation before, and have been having it for years now- our conversations often wander into the territory of grief, resentments, simple joys and pleasures, and the earnest hope to find spirituality and meaning in life. After our recorded conversation, we continued to talk for another fifteen minutes or so (I wish I had kept recording!), debriefing and further diving in to our thoughts and feelings.That evening, I dug into the drawers beneath the bookshelf in the living room to look through a bunch of old photographs. I sifted through memories of my childhood, and some pictures that aren't my memories but have become such familiar images that they are embedded in my mind anyway. I was hoping to find a picture of all her friends together, but I guess those memories and gatherings will just live in her mind as she remembers them. I did find a photo of her and my dad when they were young in California before they got married. And I found a picture of her with her mother on the visit to Latvia when they scattered her dad's ashes.During our conversation, my mom mentions a line from a poem that are on my fathers' (her ex-husbands') grave. They're from the poem 'The Farewell' which is part of his beautiful collection, 'The Prophet' :"If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song."Our family has inscribed these lines on my grandmother and grandfathers' grave as well:"There are no graves here.These mountains and plains are a cradle and a stepping-stone.Whenever you pass by the field where you have laid your ancestors look well thereupon, and you shall see yourselves and your children dancing hand in hand."
Music: Intro by Jeff Buckingham.
Interlude from Free Music Archive: Chad Crouch, The Bluff Trail
