Katherine

My mother’s name was Katherine, which led itself to various nicknames including, especially since she was green-eyed, Kitty or Kat. She was to some Kathy and to some Kay. To my father, she was always Katherine, and it is as Katherine that I most often think of her. Well, Mom is how I think of her, but when I think her name, I think Katherine.

Still, I have written a number of dramatic monologues in the voice of an avatar of Mom that I call Kitty. You can read a couple of those here at the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature.

So in place of my usual Friday cat blog, today I give you a link to my friend Georgia’s tribute to my mother, which she calls Katherine. (Alas, this link will expire in a couple of weeks.) Here’s a sample:

Practical and efficient, Katherine decided as her 90th birthday approached that it was time to make her funeral arrangements. This needed to be seen to, as she phrased it, while she was still on her feet. If she left it up to the kids to see to after she died, they�d overspend out of grief, and there was no point in being extravagant just because you were dead.

The family was in a big way planning a 90th birthday party for Katherine, and preferred to focus on living, not dying. But Katherine would not be dissuaded. So one sweltering August day, the two sisters took off work and drove their mother to McDonald�s Funeral Home in Owenton.

On the surface, this didn�t seem too different from other shopping excursions mothers and daughters share over a lifetime. In fact, the funeral home — a 19th century white clapboard with curlicues and a wrought iron fence around the lawn � could be mistaken for an upscale boutique in a tourist town. But the women weren�t there to select a prom or wedding dress or baby clothes for grandchildren. Their frozen smiles spoke the difference as they stepped across the threshold.

In the photo you can see Mom and me with a lapful of adorable puppy. The house in the photo is the old log homestead that features in the Dead Mule poem, “Ars Poetica.”