A Mom, or a Mother?

Five months ago, it was a Monday afternoon.

Five months ago, I was stressed. I was preoccupied with multiple major projects at work. I was maybe getting a little shrill with my colleagues. I was struggling to get shit done before I flew out to Florida for the holidays, to visit my sick mother.

Five months ago, I paused in my busy workday to send my eldest sister a text, grousing about all of this…and then another text, grousing that our mother was even then calling me.

Five months ago, my middle sister called me, and I learned that it hadn’t been my mother calling me. It was my mother’s neighbor, calling to tell me Mom had died.

We’ve gone through our first Christmas without her, and our first New Years. We have gone through her birthday. My sisters have gone through their first birthdays without her. Most recently, we went through our first Mothers Day without her. That was a weird one, Mothers Day. I’ve always been a little oblivious to the hype of holidays like this one. But I’m not that oblivious.

I came across an article on CNN last week: “A Mothers Day…Whenmother is Gone”. I started reading it, but stopped about halfway through. All of the sentiments within were good and accurate ,they just didn't apply to me. Because halfway through the article it occurred to me: I don’t recognize the mothers that this woman is talking about. This hasn't got a thing to do with me.

Five months ago, the woman who gave birth to me passed away. Since then, I have cried. I have missed her from time to time. I have visited her childhood home, and spoken to people who had known her for years. I tried to understand who she was as a child, a young woman…and then I realized I was focusing so much trying to know who she was before I was born because…well, I couldn’t understand the woman she was after I came around. I turned deeper into her past to try to understand and know how we came to be here, now.

I tried to feel deeply grief-stricken, and failed.

Five months have passed, and I have accepted that I don’t mourn my mother. I mourn the mother that I never had, or else the one that I stopped having when I was ten. I mourn the loss of Elaine. But I don’t mourn the loss of my mom.

I'll Have a Side of Heavy Thoughts With that Church Supper Recipe Book, Please

When going through the Momster's house after she died, trying to sort out paperwork and medications and throw out food and dodge felines, my sisters and I came across all manner of interesting items. I remember many rosaries and an ungodly yet entirely predictable number of books, wrapped-up gifts for someone's children (also predictably, not us), cat toys galore...I had to buy a Sherpa soft-sided pet carrier and a duffle bag to haul home my curious inheritance, which includes:

And also, this:  

Now, you might be wondering, what on earth does this calorie-laden publication have to do with the Melmeister's recovering-alcoholic and very dead mother?

The answer of course is: EVERYTHING.

And it also leads to another question: what on earth was my mother doing with this? I'm guessing it was just an impulse buy at the grocery store or Walgreens or something; goodness knows I'm susceptible to this as well. But why did she get it? For all the church socials and intimate get-togethers she didn't go to? Did she want to whip up some of the recipes? History is, and shall remain, silent about this. But tonight, as I was lazily flipping through the pages, I felt, vaguely, the presence of a ghost. Not an actual ghost, of course, but rather an insubstantial but mournful wraith of all the things that went undone in her life, all the things she didn't achieve on her "Bucket List" that she threw together after her diagnosis, and which we found the night before I flew back to California. This Taste of Home magazine, all of a sudden, represented all of her life she hadn't actually, actively lived; the deeds left undone, the words unsaid, the profundities unwritten, the roads not taken, the dinners not cooked. But, I daresay, all of it imagined. 

And perhaps, even feared. Who knows? Maybe it was the fear that kept her from doing all that she thought about. But I know that in more than a few ways, my life does mirror hers: I am a person who embraces an internal, solitary existence--I'm surrounded by people yet regularly retreat to an inner landscape as unpopulated as I can wish for-- I admire and acquire pretty and pleasing things and then let them go unconsumed and unenjoyed, and I imagine the life I could lead, that I want to lead, some day, but don't. Not right now. 

My mother's right nows ran out. She had no more some days left.

And some day (ha), I won't either.

All Moms Go to Heaven...?

Sometimes--usually when I am listening to Middle or reading something that Eldest wrote--I stop for a moment and think that I'm simply not mourning my mother enough. I didn't shed that many tears to begin with, and since I've been back home in California I've shed basically none. And not only that, but I find  myself thinking of her very little. It's like, "Hmmm, my mother has died...oh dear, I forgot to get such-and-such done at work the other day, and I need to call so-and-so, and what part of my monthly goal list do I want to try to tackle today? And hmmm...that's right, how about that, it's almost been a month since Mom passed away."

I assure myself that I'm not a sociopath, because I feel bad, I feel ashamed for not feeling more than I do.

But this is what does happen. Some evenings--usually right around twilight--I start to feel a little blue. A little unmotivated, a little nostalgic, a little lost. I feel compelled to listen to sad music that reminds me of my mother. I start thinking about my sisters, my grandparents, my past. I begin to think of random things that I never cared about before, but now will never be able to ask--Did you catch fireflies? Tell me what Ohio was like when we were little. What was it like growing up in the 50s and 60s? The mopey-blues pass quietly (their passage smoothed by a half-bottle of wine, some unabashed moping, and a night of sleep), but they're still lingering.

Yesterday, I was getting my nails done and making idle chit-chat with the technician, a friendly-faced Vietnamese woman named Yvonne. I happened to mention that my mother had passed away over Christmas, and Yvonne kindly and earnestly said, "I will pray that she go to heaven."

I thanked her. And then, fleetingly (but not for the first time) I wondered if she had.

And then tonight, I found myself thinking, I don't know that she went to heaven, but I hope wherever she is, she's surrounded by cats and books and garlic cheddar biscuits and music she loves.

The Darkest Hour...Is Just Before You Leave for the Airport

But coming in a close second is the hour (or two, or three) before the point just before you leave for the airport. That’s the time that I am experiencing right now. It’s a little after midnight, and I have a few hours left before my brother-in-law drives me to the airport and deposits me into a post-holiday melee, loaded down with an unhappy cat and a bagful of a few of my mom’s possessions, most of which she acquired during the last year.

My sister wrote something beautiful to describe her initial processing of the death of our mother. It was a piece filled with raw honesty, insignificant details that stood out, and all the pathos that you’d expect from a piece of prose describing the death of a parent.

What the hell could I write—can I write? How can I explain how my initial reaction was not heartbreak but rather startlement? There were no ruminations about the coffee my mother would never drink. There was only a few moments of dizziness, a gritting of teeth, a hasty decision to limit who I told the news to for a while. Later, there was my good friend NavaJo swooping in to see how I was doing, my husband picking me up so I wouldn’t have to drive home, three ill-advised martinis at Acqua Piazza (NavaJo joining me again). And then, a few more days of work before I could catch my already-scheduled flight home.

For all her flaws, my mother deserved more than how I was and am able to mourn her. And that will be a shame that I must own and shoulder.

We do the best we can with what we have. We play the hand we’re dealt.

With this in mind, I wrote the Remembrance that my sisters will read at her service tomorrow. It’s the one thing, other than sorting through her paperwork, I felt like I could do. For all I know, it might be the only closure I can get. So I slapped it together tonight while Mary sorted through Mom’s paperwork and found her bucket list and cried and Sarah looked on and kept watch over us. And then Mary went to bed, and I listened to the sound of her broken sobbing, and occasionally glanced over at Mom’s checkbook, which seems like the saddest reminder of what has happened—the only thing sadder was eating the prime rib that she had bought for us for Christmas dinner.

And underneath it all is the greatest shame of all—I love my mother, but I am terrified, fucking out of my mind terrified, of becoming like her.