Good-bye, Kitty.

Mother loved the word "shit." She used it constantly and it drove my dad crazy. "Kitty, I wish you would watch your mouth!" When I was in high school, she starting using the word "fuck" - at least she started using it around me. This REALLY drove my dad crazy. Years later, he finally gave in and started using profanities himself. "Fuck it," he said, "it's the only way I can stand to be around all of you!"

Mother loved to read. I don't remember a time that she wasn't reading. She would read three or four books at any given time - one by her bed, one on the coffee table, and one in each bathroom. She also loved cigarettes. She smoked MORE brand. "The great thing about these cigarettes is that they go out if you aren't puffing on them." Like books, she had an ashtray in basically every room in the house, each with its own cigarette. She would move from room to room, leaving one cigarette behind, only to pick up another and light it.

Mother loved to make things. She made paintings, landscapes mostly. She made and designed quilts. She knitted throws and crocheted lace. During the 70s, she was active in the contemporary Appalachian arts & crafts movement. Mother had a reverence for the past, and believed in passing things (knowledge, skills, objects, etc.) down from person to person, generation to generation.

On Thursday, July 9, mother died. There's a line from a Laurie Anderson song, "When my father died, we put him in the ground. When my father died, it was like a whole library had burned down."

Good-bye, Kitty. World Without End, this is for you.