02/07/07
Today was a sad day. Sad in a father-who-has-lost-a-son way.
Homer died last nite. Homer, named for Homer Simpson, was an algae eater and he was Mo's favorite fish.  He was the last surviving fish from the time of Mo.

It may seem trivial, but for me it severed one of the last direct connections I had to the bubble of time and space which for me has become "the ordeal".  I can still hear Mo's voice saying "Hi Homer" when I would wheel him into his bedroom in the morning to get dressed.  Like everthing he left behind, a gateway to a thousand memories.  Sometimes when I look at pictures of Mo, I imagine what it might be like for some future distant relative to see his picture and be told that he had had died young.  A sad event in the past of their ancestry, something they can hardly imagine, and that's all they will know of him.  I hate to think of it like that, but that is what will happen.  If there is any consolation, I guess sooner or later we are all forgotten by time.

I remember when our cousins Carrie and Devon brought Homer to our house.  It was around the beginning of chemotherapy and Mo's aquarium was growing a lot of algae.  I was so busy that I left an SOS message on our cousins' answering machine, calling upon their tropical fish expertise to control the algae problem, and so they arrived with the young Homer in a plastic bag full of water.  Homer cleared up the algae problem immediately, for which I was always grateful.  I even bought algae tablets because I didn't want Homer to starve in our algae-free (at least to the eye) fish tank.
I also remember that I started feeding Mo's fish when Dr. Puccetti told us that Mo's resistance to diseases would be weakened during chemo and that he shouldn't handle fish food.  So I have been feeding Homer for about 4 years - it didn't stop when Mo passed away.  At the risk of showing self-pity, and yet to show one of a thousand daggers associated with losing Mo, the loss of Homer is a major event for me - breaking one of the few remaining direct links to life with Mo.  It is the loss of one of the few remaining routines that were unique to life with Mo.  Now I can no longer feed his fish.   I have added other pretty fish over the last 2.5 years, but now that Homer is gone, the tank seems empty, I don't feel much attachment.  I'm considering just giving the rest of the fish back to the aquarium store and closing up shop.  It would be a trivial event in most other circumstances.  I guess when Mable passes on, an even greater link will be broken.  Mable helped care for Mo in so many ways.  Many mornings I would make a clicking sound and she would come into the bedroom, jump on the bed and lick Mo's face to start the day off right - until Mo would say:
"Okay, okay, that's enough".

4/28/2007
Today I packed up the aquarium to take it to St. Vinnies.  As I damp-wiped the accumulated dirt and dust from the floor, and then slid Mo’s bookshelf out so I could unplug the extension cord, I noticed some papers that had fallen behind the bookshelf.  One could only wonder – what secret message from the past did they hold?  Were they from Before or After?  They turned out to be from a code project that I hadn’t seen before.  There was Mo’s gentle handwriting and coloring, soothing my consciousness like soft light from a faded star.  I could hear his giggling and his footsteps as he and his friends ran back into his room at a green alert.  Echo, echo, echo, I could listen forever but I have to let them go.
I wonder how many more of these things are hiding in wait to surprise me every few years.