De Mortuis

My daughter is named after my grandmother, who died, it occurred to me today for some reason, thirty years ago this week. To remember, with love.

Sometimes I think about how irrevocably that particular world is gone: the kinds of people who used to live on her street, the accents they had, the way they looked (the grandparents I knew were all 5'4" and under). It's not even ancient history to my kids; it's not even a cliche that they're familiar with, the bubbie with the Eastern European accent, the self-abnegating mother ("It's all right, I'll sit in the dark"). That's all gone, along with, for example, the kinds of hard candies in glass dishes that everyone's grandmother used to keep out.

Sometimes I think I hold onto things that no one else could conceivably care about. The way the tile used to look in those old buildings, the fixtures.

Whoosh, time to up the prescription again.