Gone, but not Forgotten

My mother died seven years ago today. Not a day goes by that my heart doesn’t ache from the loneliness of missing her. Some days are worse than others.

Today is one of those days.

Last night I dreamed about her. I had all sorts of odd little dreams flutter through my mind, but I remember that I was dreaming that I had double-booked a weekend and Mom wanted me to go into another room with her to sort things out. Since we were both already together in a different room, I wasn’t sure why we needed to relocate and told her that repeatedly. But she was emphatic.

That was my mother for you. Things might not always make sense, but in the end one usually saw the reasons for her actions. Not always, but generally there was a method to her madness.

I talk about her often, and think about her ten times that, but I’m always concerned that I’m going to martyrize Mom. She had a tough lot in life and never complained about it in front of me. I suppose that’s one reason why I have no patience for people who complain and don’t do anything to correct their lot in life. Its fine to be in the pity pot, but don’t float in it forever. Tread water, then get out.

I’m floating in the pity pot right now, but I’m allowed that today.

I also have no sympathy for people who blame others for their problems. It won’t make them go away, so accept that life sucks and then do what you can to make it better for yourself. Mom rolled like that. Can’t say that I always do, but I try.

She was 63-years-old. Way too young. She had skipped her first day of dialysis ever, over five years of three times a week treatments. Staff at the center called her at lunch time to rib her about being a slacker. Later, I was told she took it in stride and teased back. I got home from work around 5:30. It was a Wednesday. She was on the couch. It had to have happened sometime after she got off the phone. I like to think that she fell asleep watching bad TV. After all she had been through, going to sleep and not waking up would have been the kindest thing ever.

My mother was gorgeous. A dyed-in-the-wool good-looking gal. I look a lot like her, but there’s something less regal about me, less glamorous. Every single picture I have of Mom, from baby to adult, she’s posing. Not goofy expressions (far from it!) or exaggerated posture, but rather a secret – almost Mona Lisa-like – smile would curve her lips and her eyes, even as a small child, held a ‘come hither’ kind of gaze on the viewer of said picture.

She had poise.

Her sister, my Aunt Fran, told me that my Mom stayed with me for as long as I needed her. That she wouldn’t have left me if I still needed her. One could argue that they always need their mother, but it helped. Not a lot, but it made things easier to bear.

My Mom had two massive strokes when I was a toddler. I have a few vague memories of her prior to her illnesses – sitting at the counter at a soda fountain, riding in the front seat of her Impala as we were going to the Zoo so we could pet the goats despite it being cold out – but I do know that she was told in the hospital that she was going to die.

I was three. I got 23 bonus years with her. I told her often than I loved her, but I’m not sure she knew how much I cherished her. She often said that parents shouldn’t be their kids’ best friend. I couldn’t wrap my head around that at the time, but I get now that Mom was a parent first and foremost.

And she was a great parent. I couldn’t have asked for a better mother.

I only hope that I can be as good a person as she was, despite the gravity of her health coloring her life. I wish she could have written down her story. The people that she crossed paths with, the adventures she had, the ideas that danced in her mind… they were amazing tales. Someday I might write about them, but it would be a poor stand-in for what she could have done. Besides, she would have wanted me to have my own tales to write about. Mom was always looking forward. The past was something that prepared you for the future.

She protested Vietnam, but instead of sit-ins and whatnot, she got a job with the government to see if she could learn information from the inside. She was impassioned about the fight against AIDS, participating in Dining Out For Life, even if it was the only time she had left the house all year. When I told her I made friends who happened to be gay when I went away to college my freshman year, she cried over the fact that when she herself was a freshman, people couldn’t come out for fear of being hurt or even killed. She said I was brave for loving them for who they were, not what they were.

We fought. What parent doesn’t have children who protest being told what to do from time to time? But it was rarely and when I would apologize, she always laughed it off. The older I got, the more she realized that my arguments had valid points. The older I got, the more she became my best friend, despite her attempts to have it be otherwise.

I am so lucky. Our time was short. Our time was corrupted by the unfairness of her health. Our time was so much more special because of the barriers put before both of us – my youth and her inability to read or write. We made time count. We made time together special by taking it down to bare bones learning, entertainment, interaction…

I just wish I had learned to embrace Johnny Cash earlier. He was her favorite musician and I rebelled against her attempts to educate me to the ways of “the man in black” until college. She was so mad. All those wasted years! But better late than never, right?

Actually, I now know better. Embrace what you love. Who cares about what others think. Parents do sometimes know best. I listened, but now I wish I had listened better.

I was too confused in the days following her passing to know that I needed to have this poem recited – by me, by someone else – at her funeral, at her grave, somewhere, somehow. It was very comforting to me then. So I share it with you now:

Encouragement
~Emily Brontë

I do not weep; I would not weep;
Our mother needs no tears:
Dry thine eyes, too; 'tis vain to keep
This causeless grief for years.

What though her brow be changed and cold,
Her sweet eyes closed for ever?
What though the stone--the darksome mould
Our mortal bodies sever?

What though her hand smooth ne'er again
Those silken locks of thine?
Nor, through long hours of future pain,
Her kind face o'er thee shine?

Remember still, she is not dead;
She sees us, sister, now;
Laid, where her angel spirit fled,
'Mid heath and frozen snow.

And from that world of heavenly light
Will she not always bend
To guide us in our lifetime's night,
And guard us to the end?

Thou knowest she will; and thou mayst mourn
That we are left below:
But not that she can ne'er return
To share our earthly woe.

I love you Mom.