William S. Burroughs: The Cat Inside

  Joan didn't like to have her picture taken. She almost always kept out of group photos. Like Mother, she had an elusive, ethereal quality.
  For the last four years of her life, Mother was in a nursing home called Chateins in St. Louis. "Sometimes she recognizes me. Sometimes she doesn't," my brother, Mort, reported. During those four years I never went to see her. I sent postcards from time to time. And six months before she died I sent a Mother's Day card. There was a horrible, mushy poem in it. I remember feeling "vaguely guilty."