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Sometimes texting is the only way to tell a tragedy:
"he doesn’t call my brothers who are 10 minutes away. he emails me from 1500 miles in distance. he types in ALL CAPS his s.o.s, his plea, his prayer..."
These raw sentences open the post "1970," on the blog the spirit of the river. Blogger Meredith Winn's story of crisis is unfolding, raw. Like a disciple of Pynchon, she sounds halfway into her tale when the reader joins.
Winn shares an agonizingly slow-motion crisis--a mother's disintegrating mind and the rest of the family's unravelling grief. This writer's prose is so spare she doesn't even need capital letters. But her message is beautifully wrought, as unwavering as the Alzheimer's disease that is tearing her mother out of the family's arms, day by day:
"the looming loss is bigger than all of us. it makes us do strange thins. fathers weep. brothers talk. sisters become mediators. mothers become children."
Our hearts break with hers as the blogger reaches through the phone, 1,500 miles away, to comfort her parents. Fails. And then travels through time to connect with the young woman her mother now thinks she is.
In 1970.
For her gift of few words and ability to connect grief with family memory, Meredith Winn is our BlogHer Voice of the Week.
Thanks to everyone for continuing to send in your nominated posts. Remember to nominate individual posts, not entire blogs, and keep them coming! If you want to check out all these posts, check out the BlogHer Voice of the Week archive.
Best,
Lisa
For Elisa, Jory, and Lisa, BlogHer Co-founders
Lisa Stone BlogHer Co-founder Surfette BlogHer is non-partisan but our bloggers aren't! Follow our coverage of Politics & News.
