A SHORT MEMOIR
 
back to main WRITINGS page Eudora Welty passed away on the 23rd of July, 2001. I found out just afterward when I read a post on an Emily Dickinson listserv I belong to. It was sad news. You may wonder, why would I be saddened by the passing of a 92 year old woman living in Mississippi? — I’ve never been there, we had never met, most likely she had never even heard my name. Why? Because she was a writer: a great one. I had just finished her book The Optimist’s Daughter about a week before, which made the news even more poignant. During the time I was reading it, I would relate the story to my wife or read passages aloud during dinner or before going to bed. The reading aloud was difficult: my emotions welled beyond my capacity to speak. We were intimate and wonderful: a gift from Eudora, I know it. There is a term that writer’s like to bandy about: a writer’s voice. I don’t know if I could define it, maybe nobody can, but I do know that her short memoir One Writer’s Beginnings is a perfect example of it. I can still see myself sitting on my sister-in-law’s downstairs couch actually hearing her speak, feeling the vibrations of her voice. It made me cry, yet there is hardly a sad word in it. It made me laugh, yet there are no jokes. It made me dream, yet it is all very real. My oh my, I could smell the Mississippi air! Often, when reading Eudora, the words seem to go away, the pages too, even my mind’s images evanesce so that all that is left is a nothingness of emotion and beauty. And then there is her rhythm; but it is not so much a rhythm or a pulsing as it is a tempo, a flowing. Perhaps it is the same tempo and flow of the Mississippi River. Or, perhaps, I see the Mississippi flowing as it does because of the way she wrote. My wife described her best: of all writers, she is closest to thought. I suffered a loss – we all did – and possibly a little regret: why had I never written her a letter? I had always intended to. Why had I never gone to meet her? I had always wanted to. Yes, I suppose I do suffer a little regret. Perhaps someday our journeys will cross and I will let the smile in my eyes say “Thank you”. And then she’ll smile, I know it. back to main WRITINGS page back to SITE MAP back to SITE MAP EULOGY for EUDORA by DWIGHT BERNARD MIKKELSEN copyright © 2001 NotesLinger Arts