The limits of family.(brownworth)

Publication: Curve

Publication Date: 01-NOV-03

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COPYRIGHT 2003 Curve Magazine, Outspoken Enterprises, San Francisco, CA 94102 (415) 863-6538

MY MOTHER DIED THIS SUMMER, unexpectedly, after a brief illness. Her death certificate lists "complications of aspiration pneumonia" as the cause of death, a catchall diagnosis used by doctors when a patient has suffocated from lack of oxygen.

Had I been asked to fill out my mother's death certificate, I would have listed poverty as the cause of her death, with complications from gender. My mother died well before her projected life expectancy because she had been poverty-stricken for most of her life. Poverty had damaged her health, assaulted her well-being. Being poor is stressful. Being a poor woman is acutely stressful.

Ethereally beautiful in her youth, my mother had a mind to match her looks. Had she been born now rather than in the 1930s, her intellectual desire and acumen would have propelled her forward, could have mitigated the pall of poverty. She could have grown into a successful woman with power and position. She could have used her knowledge of languages (she spoke several), literature (she was an omnivorous reader who...

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