On Screens

Will Your Eyes Be Opened?

I really did once find a highway at the end of the earth

When you die will you have your eyes open or closed? My mother died with them open. She spent her entire life, it seemed to me, with the television on, drifting in and out of depressions, dark spells, at times, great joy and enthusiasm at others.

I held her with my eyes partially open. Awake but not yet sober. I watched the year of her death happening as one watches a grainy…