Written Words In Love and Death
Temperment: Pensive
Days Left Til Mercer Return:61
Record: "Iris" by the Goo Goo Dolls

There's a man. A friend of our families...really a friend of my mother's. An old man...perhaps almost 80 but well over 60. He is from Alaska, and goes by the name of Norat. Decades ago Norat fell in love with an Italian woman and they got married. They spent many happy years together, and were able to celebrate 51 years of marriage. She passed not too long ago.

In the letters that my mother receives from him he speaks of her often. What a refined and elegant lady she was. How full of class and wisdom. Always perfectly kind and loving. The Lady Norat.

The Lady Norat, in her years,perhaps months, near the end of her life, was placed in a nursing home because Norat himself could not care for her himself. While she was staying there she wrote him many letters...letters of reproach and regret. Letters about how he had failed her time and again, how things should have been different...letters that could destroy a heart.

He loved her, loves her...Norat spends his days looking at her pictures and thinking of her...but thinking of how he loved her and her charms...or the things he could have done differently?

This is the story my mother told me today. This story of love and death...this story of letters.

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I shifted through papers and junk trying to organize "my room." I put it in quotation marks because really it's not anymore. I dumped out a bag full of papers. Inside I found a notebook I used to carry to school. Inside that notebook was an envelope from one Junior Trillo. I smiled and wondered what silliness could be in this letter. Junior's letters always make me smile because he never really has much to say but he tries hard to write me. The letter is dated Febuary 12th 2003. I read the letter and start to cry. I remembered this letter.

Junior knows that I really don't like Febuary for a lot of reasons. One of the most compelling reasons is because my grandfather died that month like most of you know. Junior sent me a letter to get there the day that my grandfather died, full of encouragement and understanding. Junior always had a way with details.
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I looked around the papers some more and found a birthday card from my evil grandmother. She put a curse on me when I was a baby. My father made her angry one day and told my dad that she hoped that something horrible would happen to me to pay for his transgressions against her.

My grandmother never really did care about anyone but herself.
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In this same stack of papers I found a journal. I opened it to see if it was one of mine and saw that it was my mom. It was from the days following my wreck. In bold letters and underlined in Spanish it said "you wanted her to die. you're so selfish. you'd kill your own children?" I closed the book and decided that it wasn't mine to look at.

My father blamed my mom for my wreck. It was something that happened...

Letters of love and death...I sat there and just thought...the story of the Norats', my mother's journal with my father's accusations, Junior's understanding...I didn't feel well still don't feel well...

The words in my mother's journal...didn't phase me...whether they were really my father's accusations or my mom's guilt I'm not sure...but what I do know is that I don't understand. I wonder if it has to do with my evil grandmother's curse.

I don't understand so many many things...

The pile of papers got left on the floor...to be dealt with some other time....all except the letter, the journal, and the card. Letter is in a notebook full of letters from all my friends. The Journal is in my mom's room. The card...was burned.

So many things...I don't understand.