page from a notebook

[Geoffrey]

lizzytysh wrote:
>I've just PM'd you with my email address.


Thank you, Elizabeth. Am back now, as my sister has returned home, just as everything here has returned to its normal chaos. I have a lot to catch up with, but have answered your mail and hope all is now satisfactory. On Monday we learned that our dear mother had died.

Yours sincerely -
Geoffrey

[imaginary friend]

Condolences re. your mother Geoffrey. No matter what her age, the loss of a mother is a great one.

Sheila

[Geoffrey]

imaginary friend wrote:
>Condolences re. your mother Geoffrey. No matter what her age, the loss of a mother is a great one.

Thank you, Shiela - and under normal circumstances you would be quite right. However, my use of the expression 'dear mother' was sarcastic - for under no stretch of the imagination could the domestic environment she created be described as normal. Her death came as a surprise, but the real sadness is that the news gave my sister and I but a minimal feeling of 'loss'. On Monday we learned that mother had died over three years ago; in my family that is merely one strange fact in a long series of strange facts.

Geoffrey

[Cate]

HI Geoffrey - I'm glad your sister was there and you heard the news together, so you each had another capable of understanding to commiserate with.

x
cate

I suspect that all families are strange, although some seem stranger than others.
If someone reads and thinks that their family is not strange that's only because they are the strangest of the bunch and all the rest simply seem normal by comparison.

[Violet]

Hi Geoffrey.. I'm sad to hear about your mother.. and of all the strangeness of families, your family being no exception, it seems.. when one tries to consider how a family might actually be instead, with everyone there to help each other through whatever it is life tosses us, then it really is a sad thing to realize how this is seldom the case.. anyway, somewhere deep in side you, you have the memory of being a small baby with a mother, a mother you needed very much.. and now that mother is gone, though maybe you experienced the reality of that loss a long long time ago, and this is just a kind of outward confirmation.. anyway, should some sadness come up for you around all this, it might be a healing thing.. just realize this should that happen..

sincerely,
v i o l e t..