open.spotify.com/playlist/3GscxJfdP1uH5MME9BE15T

Mourning Diary • Roland Barthes
Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son's Memoir • David Rieff
A Sorrow Beyond Dreams • Peter Handke

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my feeling for my children does not surpass my desire to be free of their demands upon my emotions • Anne Sexton

www.goodreads.com/list/show/3427.Eccentric_Mothers

Mothers of America
let your kids go to the movies!
get them out of the house so they won’t know what you’re up to
it’s true that fresh air is good for the body
but what about the soul
that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images
and when you grow old as grow old you must
they won’t hate you
they won’t criticize you they won’t know
they’ll be in some glamorous country
they first saw on a Saturday afternoon or playing hookey
they may even be grateful to you
for their first sexual experience
which only cost you a quarter
and didn’t upset the peaceful home
they will know where candy bars come from
and gratuitous bags of popcorn
as gratuitous as leaving the movie before it’s over
with a pleasant stranger whose apartment is in the Heaven on Earth Bldg
near the Williamsburg Bridge
oh mothers you will have made the little tykes
so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies
they won’t know the difference
and if somebody does it’ll be sheer gravy
and they’ll have been truly entertained either way
instead of hanging around the yard
or up in their room
hating you
prematurely since you won’t have done anything horribly mean yet
except keeping them from the darker joys
it’s unforgivable the latter
so don’t blame me if you won’t take this advice
and the family breaks up
and your children grow old and blind in front of a TV set
seeing
movies you wouldn’t let them see when they were young
— Frank O’Hara • Ave Maria

Why not a mother? When I said a mother,
Methought you saw a serpent: what's in mother,
That you start at it? I say I am your mother;
And put you in the catalogue of those
That were enwombed mine. 'Tis often seen
Adoption strives with nature; and choice breeds
A native slip to us from foreign seeds:
You ne'er oppress'd me with a mother's groan,
Yet I express to you a mother's care:--
God's mercy, maiden! does it curd thy blood
To say I am thy mother? What's the matter,
That this distemper'd messenger of wet,
The many-colour'd iris, rounds thine eye?
Why,--that you are my daughter?
- All's Well That End's Well
“Shucks,” said the bunny, “I might just as well stay where I am and be your little bunny.” — The Runaway Bunny • Margaret Wise Brown

“When I was born, my mother died
She said, “Bye-bye, baby, bye-bye”
I said, “Where you goin? I’m just born”
She said, “I’ll only be gone for a while”
My mother loved to leave in style
That’s why God made the movies” — That's Why God Made The Movies • Paul Simon

"a narcissistic mother lavishes suffocating yet emotionally distant attentions on her offspring. The narcissist, like the schizophrenic, often occupies a special position in the family, either because of his real endowments or because one of the parents treats him as a substitute for an absent father, mother, or spouse. Such a parent sometimes draws the whole family into the web of his own neurosis, which the family members tacitly conspire to indulge so as to maintain the family’s emotional equilibrium. In “the family caught in this way of life,” according to a student of narcissism, each member tries to validate the others' expectations and projected wishes. “This family tautology, together with the work needed to maintain it, is an identifying feature of the family held together by the narcissistic way of life." According to Kohut, such families suffer more from one member’s character disorder than from an overt psychosis, since the psychotic parent is confined to an asylum or at least gets less support from his immediate social environment. Narcissism and the "Absent Father” Families of this type arise in America not just in response to a particular member’s pathology but as a normal response to prevailing social conditions. As the world of business, jobs, and politics becomes more and more menacing, the family tries to create for itself an island of security in the surrounding disorder. It deals with internal tensions by denying their existence, desperately clinging to an illusion of normality. Yet the picture of harmonious domestic life, on which the family attempts to model itself, derives not from spontaneous feeling but from external sources, and the effort to conform to it therefore implicates the family in a charade of togetherness or "pseudo-mutuality,“ as one student of schizophrenia calls it." - Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations

In my experience, there is a special place reserved for mothers who have lost their sons. Theirs is a singular and complex order of torture, unlike any other grief, and the fundamental need to lock oneself away from the world is natural, perhaps necessary. It is a form of self-imposed entombment, adjacent to eternity, where they can better be with the one they have lost...I am reminded, yet again, of Mary Magdalene’s vigil at the mouth of Jesus’ tomb. After Jesus had been laid to rest, the stone had been rolled across the entrance of the cave, and the twelve apostles had fled, Mary Magdalene remained ‘standing there in front of the tomb.’ This silent, helpless vigil is, for me, the single most moving moment of the New Testament. • Nick Cave