TOO LONG AGO

me with my mother and father in front of the house I grew up in, in April (Easter?) of 1966, two months after I got out of the military and stopped shaving, and only weeks before my mother died from a heart attack during an operation for the cancer that was growing inside her (but which she never revealed or complained about to most of us as she kept a smile for everyone but our next door aunt who she'd run over to cry with and then put her smile back on)...I was visiting from a Brooklyn apartment supplied by a patron (a woman editor who believed I was was going to write "The Great American Novel") with my wife Lee (taking the photo I assume)...the night my mother died in Saint Michael's hospital in Newark, soon after this shot was taken, with me beside her but when she called out for my oldest brother and me and I said I'm here ma, she didn't recognize me, I made a vow to shave the beard and did and to never have one again, a vow I've kept, as silly as it may seem...I miss her every day...him too most days...