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Show Go Love/163 22. Her picture's propped up on an easel beside the casket where O.W. greets guest. Inside the wooden frame, Mama radiates. She'd get up this second and try to make us feel better Say she's so sorry and give us all bear hugs, tell us to cheer up, keep on the sunny side, love wins all. Mama'd forgive us all our wrongs. She'd be dressed in red with her black hair shining on her shoulders, brown-eyed, that wide, real Stepwell grin that nobody can fake, about five seconds from tears of joy or sorrow or rage or laughter. Mama'd know how to run this show. Right now was the moment she'd planned for the Last Will & Testament reading, because she goddamn wrote one about a hundred times, only my people aren't legally minded, so no lawyer ever signed off on the fucker. On good cotton rag, she wrote go love and rejoice and dance all night. She'd mean it to puncture our grief, leaven this moment with laughter. Mama'd start with a joke, a salty one about Baptist preachers and bucky-toothed cheerleaders in baptismals that'd have our insides in stitches, then say something to hit each of us on our nailhead. Joey, she'd tell me, get up and live Life's no mystery: stop thinking and love. Love Lara and Renee with your soul's soul Trace, she'd say, thank you for attending me through all this. You're my own babv to kill the |