MASS

I went to mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Help with my parents for the first time in six years

I didn’t talk to God, but it was a comfort to hear the voices together, their chanted prayers so deeply memorized they don’t even have to think

I cling to every memory now so hard

I’m glad Harry and Bette and Davy have something that can dig deep traces in their memories, and it’s something beautiful, something outside themselves

Mom and Dad took my hands on either side

When I got home I asked them to help me do something

I had a little money set aside from my grandparents, a little from Mom and Dad trying to help me go to New York, and most of it’s gone now to the disease

I asked that if all of it wasn’t gone most of it should go to my siblings’ college of course

But if at least a hundred or something was still left over

Mom and Dad can call the NPC Clubhouse, you know those kids in the tropical shirts, and buy each of them a book, whichever book they wanted

Stories are good at times like these, to tell them, to hear them

I thought of Coop and the notes we made around the house

Stories are always good