Friday
Because my mother died when she did, we are able to attend the Bates family reunion in our Maine cottage, which we hold every three years. We will bury her ashes tomorrow in the Turner cemetery, next to the ashes of my father.
When we pour them into the ground, I will internally recite a passage from Hamlet that I owe to my mother. The passage appeared in the final issue of the Sewanee Siren, the town newsletter that she founded and that she edited for 18 years. She used Ophelia’s farewell speech to say goodbye to her readers in 1986 and, changing the words from plural to singular, I use them with her now:
Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies; good night, good night.