It’s been nine months since last we updated this site, and nearly that long since my sister and I have been able to write.
You see, on February 17, 2021, we lost our mother.
We had just punished the world by releasing The Crypt of the Magi, a ghoulish retake on one of my mother’s favorite short stories, “The Gift of the Magi,” by O. Henry.
Both my sister and I have been working on independent writing projects for some time, but this was the first time either of us had published anything. It seems that, through our partnership, we were able to overcome our individual hangups, and actually get something done.
Mom was so proud. Ridiculously proud, because the book itself is such a silliness. Everything about it made us laugh, and we hoped other people might laugh, too.
Well, Mom got sick. Until the very last moment, I thought she’d pull through. A combination of illnesses, plus something new. I didn’t believe it was possible to grieve so much. It was like waking up and learning that the color blue had disappeared forever.
(But is it forever? Of course not. But this side of heaven, you see, it’s difficult.)
We weren’t the only ones with our legs knocked out from under us. We have two other siblings, who happily remain uninvolved in our silly writing venture.
But we also have a 92-year-old father, who immediately fell so ill that he ended up in the intensive care unit. Our family spent the next six months in emergency mode, trying to get him through his illness, spending an enormous amount of energy and focus and attention and spare resources to get him back on his feet again.
And somehow, through all of this, we started to heal. A little bit. Writing this makes my chest feel all tight and strange, and I find I am breathing through my mouth, attempting not to cry. Because, you see, I’m at my father’s house (which used to be Mom’s and Dad’s house) (and now I’m crying) (and now I’m back in control of my self), and I don’t want to make a scene. But I remind myself of one of Mom’s favorite quotes, by Julian of Norwich: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
When Dad told me that Mom had passed away, nine months ago, he said he had been reading The Crypt of the Magi, our ridiculous book, to her while she left us. Literally the last words she heard were from the softcover version of her children’s first published work together.
Well, how do you get over that? It’s both the sweetest, and the saddest, thing ever.
Mom loved us. LOVES us. And we love her. And maybe she won’t mind that we found ourselves joking through our tears, that our first book has killed before, and it probably will kill again.
So, as we continue to heal, and as we get back to our writing together, we’ll keep trying to pull ourselves together, to laugh again, and to hold our mother close, who probably is the biggest single reason for our dark sense of stupid humor.
So I write this wholly inadequate letter to you, to our mother, and mostly to my sister.
Thank you, dear reader(s), for waiting patiently as Sultana and I restart our writing business, get back into our stories again, and get our hearts back in order. We have a new adventure on the way, and we’ll get back to the other stories once we can remember what we were writing about, back in the days when we still had our Mom.
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