my family

my mother been gone

My mother’s body died today. With the lack of hospital care available to Black people at the time and parents lying to children to keep them working the land a little longer, her body was 90 or 89 or 91 years old, depending upon which document one chose to believe. I think we’re gonna go with 90. It’s a nice round number.

But the mother I knew died years ago. I mourned her then, when she died—the woman who I spent hours upon hours alone with.