Rating: ★★★★☆ Tags: Mystery Detective, General, Fiction

AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE
APRIL 28, 2011
– Diary entry –
J
ust got to keep on keeping on
, that’s what Mama Mo
says, and when she says it – her sureness, each word
emphasized, as if it really were a viable life strategy – the
cliche´ stops being a set of words and turns into something
real. Valuable. 
Keep on keeping on, exactly!
I think.
I do love that about the Midwest: People don’t make a
big deal about everything. Not even death. Mama Mo will
just keep on keeping on until the cancer shuts her down,
and then she will die.
So I’m 
keeping my head down
and 
making the best of
a bad situation
, and I mean that in the deep, literal Mama
Mo usage. I keep my head down and do my work: I drive
Mo to doctor’s appointments and chemo appointments. I
change the sickly water in the flower vase in Nick’s father’s
room, and I drop off cookies for the staff so they take good
care of him.
I’m making the best of a really bad situation, and the
situation is mostly bad because my husband, who brought
me here, who uprooted me to be closer to his ailing
parents, seems to have lost all interest in both me and said
ailing parents.

---

Nick has written off his father entirely: He won’t even
say the man’s name. I know every time we get a phone call
from Comfort Hill, Nick is hoping it’s the announcement that
his dad is dead. As for Mo, Nick sat with his mom during a
single chemo session and pronounced it unbearable. He
said he hated hospitals, he hated sick people, he hated the
slowly ticking time, the IV bag dripping molasses-slow. He
just couldn’t do it. And when I tried to talk him back into it,
when I tried to stiffen his spine with some 
gotta do what you
gotta do
, he told me to do it. So I did, I have. Mama Mo, of
course, takes on the burden of his blame. We sat one day,