Pictures

Me, cutting my hair in the tiny bathroom in an apartment I shared with Brad on 

1st Ave. Preparing to shave it off for my mom. Brad is taking the picture. 

A young girl with a shaved head. 

One of 2 polaroids that were taken of me and my mom after I came home

and shaved her head for her. 

The lace ribbon with the feathers hung across the back of her brass bed.

Her bed faced two glass doors that led to a patio. 

She liked to watch the birds.

The picture of her on the dock on Shelter Island. 

The one I put out on the dining room table when she was sick in bed.

Her last Christmas, a month before she died. Sitting on the couch at home

with Mary Francis's son, Gerry, who was about the same age Desmond is now.

Gerry is holding onto her necklace with her wish to be a Grandmother. 

I think of this picture often, imagining her reading to Desmond.

She is wearing her black fanny pack that  held her medication and pump.

She is also wearing a wig, a scarf that her friend Maureen gave her that I still have, 

and a sweater she wore a lot in the end, I have kept that too. 

I wear it once in a while.

My mom standing in front of the sign at Burzynski's offices. 

(I have been spelling his name wrong. Sorry, Burzynski. )

Me, my mom and my sister on our back stoop in Valley Stream when I was Desmond's 

age.  I still have that skirt my mom is wearing.