Best of The Daily Siege: Mamere’s Last Picture, 05/18/2006:
“We called my grandmother Old Ma. Occasionally Mamere, but the Cajun wasn’t used too much. She was old when I was born. Even my mom, her daughter, remembers her as having always been old. Poor people age faster than the other classes. They live dog years.
1908. She was born Mae Mary Dugas in Paincourtville, La. Her father was Clete Dugas. I was named after him, but my name was anglicized because it wasn’t cool to be Cajun back then. When she was in her teens she found herself in the French Quarter, meeting my grandfather when he busted her stealing cream cheese from the back of his dairy truck. They raised seven kids in a tiny four room shack in New Orleans, near the Ninth Ward.I find great beauty in the brutal honesty of this picture, taken on her deathbed. It’s a white trash memento mori. It’s the picture of a long life well lived, worn, slipping into that deep sleep you can only get from being bone tired. Soul tired. I still have the blanket she’s wrapped in in this picture, and on bad days when I’m feeling sick or scared or in need of peace, I take naps in it and awake comforted.
Night night, Mamere, seven years too late. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to say goodbye. I’m sorry I was ever ashamed of where I come from.