Mom

My mom died on July 24th. She was 67 years old. As I try to reflect on her life, it only makes me wonder at the mystery of it. My mother wasn't given to telling long stories about herself, at least not to me. For example, I didn't learn until the day of her memorial service that she was born in New Haven. She was a private person. I got the impression that she didn't have a lot of good memories of her childhood, so I rarely asked her about it. She told me little bits and pieces - that her family was very poor, that she wore hand-me-down clothes and the other kids made fun of her and called her "Sand drain," that they lived across the street from the dump and had no hot water so they had to heat up water on the stove to take baths.

When I was very young, of course, my mom was with me all the time. But the older I got, the more I got interested in science and other things and she couldn't understand it all. So she let me go and do my own thing. Besides, she had my younger brother to take care of.

From the time I was 4 or 5 until I became a snotty teenager, my father became my hero, the smartest and the coolest person that I knew. My mom had to take a backseat to my dad worship. I don't know if it bothered her at the time, but I know in later years she would often get exasperated with the three of us - my dad, my brother and me - and wish, only half-jokingly I think, for a daughter to talk to, a little more femininity to balance the scales in her favor more.

As the years went by, my mother retreated more and more into herself and her world, which chiefly revolved around the television shows she watched. It was a slow and steady receding. My mother was queen of the VCR. She'd have two of them going at the same time while she watched a third program on one of the several sets we had (including one of those little tiny black and white ones in the kitchen). Later on, in the era of the DVR, she complained when she ran out of hard drive space and sometimes she *still* taped things on VHS. She had my dad downloading her favorite old movies and music to put on discs for her. This went on for quite a long time.

The last time I saw her, in her hospital room, my mom looked beyond gaunt, skeletal. It was heartbreaking. My dad had warned us, but it was still a visceral shock. To see someone dying is one thing, but to see your parent dying and in pain is a very singular experience. It isn’t something I’d wish on anyone.

I dream about her a lot now, and I know I will probably do so for a long time. Last night my unconscious tried to trick me into believing she had somehow survived and was still around. At first I simply allowed her to sit and smoke and drink her coffee. Then as the dream proceeded, and she gained strength, I began to be fed up with this deception. I told her that she wasn’t real, she was dead, this was some kind of hallucination. My words didn’t seem to do anything. I was barely convincing myself, let alone her. When the dream ended, she had retreated to the background, but was still there, stubbornly refusing to be gone.

Thinking about it now, I just miss her terribly and wish I could have her back. But it’s a selfish wish. If she were still with us, she’d be suffering. She had suffered enough. It’s only fair to let her rest.

I did my best to stay positive when we visited her. We talked, we made jokes, we told her we loved her. We watched America’s Got Talent on the TV in her hospital room. She told us how much she hated the hospital food.

In what turned out to be our final conversation, my mom asked me to tell her about my life. I told her about my job, about how I felt appreciated and cared about. I told her I had a best friend and we looked out for each other. I told her that I was trying to date and looking for someone special. I told her about how my cat was doing - still happy and healthy, but getting more snuggly and affectionate as she got older. She knew how I had struggled for years with depression and being unemployed for a long time, so I think it gave her some comfort to know that her child was getting along okay in the world as she was getting ready to depart it.

Before we said our goodbyes, she asked if we’d come back and visit again. We said yes, of course. We had every intention of coming back to see her. Ten days later, my mother died in hospice.

The following week, my father brought her back to Connecticut. At her service, I lost count of how many people showed up for her. It made it much easier to take when the pastor started talking about the afterlife and how she wasn’t gone. I was disappointed and a little bit angered by this, but it wasn’t my funeral, and at least her words were brief and they seemed to be a comfort to many of those in attendance.

The next day, my father, my brother and I took my mom out for one last drive. We brought the urn to a place in the woods in Cheshire and helped her to her final resting place. I watched my mother's ashes - gray like dryer lint - mix with the muddy, brown water of the Quinnipiac River, which flows through the town she grew up in and the city where she was born. She was home.