C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

A man speaking on a mobile telephone (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Usually I laugh at the weird stuff that pops up in my spam filter. However, this morning I seem to be inundated with crap and the spam filter isn’t catching it for some reason. It’s not that it isn’t easy to spot: Yoda-like syntax and the fourth or fifth word is always twisted around.

But this one annoyed me very much:

Thanks for the shitty surprise reminder, spambot! My mom’s dead. Lung cancer. When I call my dad and he doesn’t answer, the voice mail kicks in. The recorded voice is my mother, saying just two words: my father’s name. After she died (and a long and terrible decline, it was) I wrote some fairly bad and very dark poetry. I mulled mortality’s cruelty and our shared helplessness. I was crying after the funeral when my wife came into my childhood bedroom. I pretended to be asleep on the bed and when she covered me with a blanket, I pretended it was my mom, covering me one last time. Later, I called to hear my mother’s voice again and again and again.

Maybe I should leave a new voice mail message: “I’m sorry I’m not here. I’m elsewhere, or maybe I’m not, but if I could get back to you, I would. If I can’t, know that I tried. I really wish I could talk to you right now. But whatever we talked about, it would all come down to the same thing: I love you.”

PS I reject helplessness to the end. Go here if you reject helplessness, too. And spread the word for Indies Unite for Joshua.

Filed under: publishing, #IndiesUnite4Joshua, Cancer, death, E-mail filtering, Indies Unite for Joshua, mom, Spam, Voicemail