MyLeslieNotebook

Mourning parasol, 1895-1900 . Photo copyright the Metropolitan Museum of Art In honor of the death of President Bush 41 last week, a day of mourning was declared to coincide with the day of his funeral. Federal offices were closed, the stock market took a day off, and the mail wasn't delivered.   And though I never met President Bush 41 nor was I old enough to understand anything about politics or government when he served, I cherished the half-mast flags and the lack of mail.  I love mourning .  That seems like a weird thing to say, especially considering we're ten days from Christmas, the "most wonderful time of the year," right? Maybe. But mourning is healthy. Mourning is cleansing and cathartic. Mourning is an outward expression of an inward hurt. Mourning is part of healing. I remember when my grandmother died: on the morning of her funeral, I woke up and looked out the window to a beautiful sunny day. And it made me mad; I wanted even the weather ...

When we were in middle school, a friend of my mom's asked me and my sister to rake leaves for her. She told us she'd pay us $10 each, if I remember correctly. For a girl who made $4 an hour babysitting those days, this seemed like a deal. Never mind the fact that we'd never really raked anything before other than a pile for jumping... So we started raking. And raking. After an hour, we realized we really stunk at it. Seriously. We raked until sundown, and went home with swollen, red, calloused hands, knowing the next day we still had many, many hours of raking left. Either the job was worth more than $20 or we were just painstakingly bad and slow. (Looking back, I'd say it was us.) The next day my parents drove us over to the woman's house to finish, when lo and behold we saw that the raking was done! Hallelujah! "Who did this?" we screamed in delight. Mom winked at dad and said, "Your dad came over this morning and finished in about 30 minutes....