my godmother

[semioticghosts]

I'm writing a letter to my godmother Mutz, who's always been an important person in my life. She used to arrive with laundry baskets full of books for me from the library, where she was the librarian. She let me read disappear into the stacks, arrange three stools in a row and laze around reading all comics available (considered inappropriate literature by my mother, due to the speech bubbles being seen as limiting proper expression - what did they know?). She used to stay that she was eating some extra bread and butter so I could be carried more comfortably on her hip. She was ample, and allowed chocolate, and smelled of patchouli and lived in a city with museums to which we went, joyfully.
When I was visiting with her, I could be whoever I wanted, however I wanted, not feeling I needed to please (story of my life otherwise) and stuff whatever I wanted into the ever-greedy maw of my mind.

Now she's in the hospice, dying of cancer, angry with the world. She has never quite felt understood and wanted, and she suffers the regrets of a life some of which she hasn't had the chance to live. She always made me feel understood and wanted, me and the generations of children and adults who came to her library and left with their lies a bit richer than when they came in.

I'm writing her letter at the moment, saying some of those things, though I hope she knows.

To imagine a world and her not in it is beyond me.