by Joshua Murphy

Created on: December 10, 2008

One Less Good Person:

I'm writing a eulogy for someone who is still alive. I'm writing down memories so I don't forget them. I'm paraphrasing wisdom so that I may pass it along to the next generation like a dominant gene. My mother is dying and I have known it for some time now. It doesn't make things much easier, knowing, but I would obviously choose it over some horrific unforeseen tragedy where goodbyes are left unsaid.

I remember the feel of her warm, dry hands and her weak grasp as I kissed her goodbye the week before. I can still see the arms attached to those hands that look as though they are limbs out of place, limbs belonging to a woman many decades older in a nursing home in Florida somewhere. Her body had long since betrayed her.

I remember her jade eyes with flecks of emerald and that hair that she treasured so much. She was a vain woman despite her core of insecurity and humility, long admired for her looks. Those looks had held in tact, even through this cancer, up until the last month or so when her once glowing, oval face became dry and gaunt and her lips lost their fullness and seemed to be getting sucked into her face as though everything was just caving in and giving up in the wake of this horrid disease.

I'm writing to remember days and times and dates and places and things I know I will soon forget. I'm doing this because I have seen how quickly things pass through and people pass by and loved ones pass away.

Sometimes I stop by my mom's house where she lives with her husband of ten years. I've moved out now and am on my own, but I had made it a habit to visit at least once a week and call her everyday because I didn't want to ever regret not picking up the phone to see how her day was even when I knew it was exactly the same as the one before, just slightly worse. When someone has been sick for a long time it is easy to forget exactly how serious their condition has become. It is easy to forget that while they whither away like a flower on a desert floor, you stand by with an empty watering can, just watching, grieving impotently. Such was the case yesterday.

My mom and her husband were at church as was the case every Saturday night and after it would be out to some generic chain restaurant for middle-class people where a collection of upper middle-class, middle-aged people would dine, always aware of the price of each main course and every side dish. They would discuss the sermon from that night, their families, and their jobs, always in

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