So, January 11. Not one of my favorite days of the year. It's a day that I'd love to just stay home and pull the covers over my head and let it pass right by. Kind of like how hotels skip the 13th floor.
Fifteen years ago...can it be fifteen?...Yep...literally just did the math...fifteen years ago, January 11, 1997, my mother died.
In an ironic twist of fate, I will be going to a wake for the mother of two old friends and beloved clients on my mother's anniversary. So much for crawling under the covers!
Most people will say things like "She's always with you." Or "She's at peace, now." Then there's my all time favorite, "She looks so beauty-ful." (Always the elderly relatives.) All I think is, "She looks deceased."All I will say to this woman's family will be "I know." Because I do.
These are nice sentiments but they don't make the survivors feel any better as time passes. No words can make the loss of a loved one, especially a parent, any easier.
My husband always says that it doesn't really get better, that feeling of loss, but it does get easier. Sometimes it's easier and sometimes not.
There are days and times and situations where she doesn't even enter my mind. But I'll smell someone cooking or hear an old song or take out one of her bowls and it all comes flooding back. Or as in the case of the aforementioned, we talk about the care giving. All the smells and sights of that part can hit you like a minivan falling from the sky.
It was a long time before I started seeing her and dreaming about her as she was before she got really sick. Then one night I had a dream and we were in the kitchen in the old house and I could smell her and feel her warmth and we were dancing to one of our many songs, "Old Cape Cod" only we were singing the words the way I heard them as a child, "Old King Kong," and she was smiling and it was wonderful!
It's hard to get past those awful memories of how it all ended. It's hard to see our loved ones as whole, well human beings once we've watched them wasting before our eyes. It's amazing to me how these big, strong personalities can be reduced to something so small and frail and helpless.
I had some tough times with my mother and our relationship was not always perfect. But my memories are. I have memories that are filled with tastes and scents and sounds and light and laughter and love.
I remember, as a small child, when I would have trouble sleeping, I would sneak out into the living room to watch old movies. She'd send me back to bed and sit by me and rub my back and tell me to think of the happiest times and places I could remember and go there. She always tried to make me go to a flower-filled meadow but I always wanted to go to the beach or have a tea party.
There are times when I am walking to my apartment during dinner time and I just know someone is frying meatballs or chicken cutlets and I know she's near me. In the winter, I buy Cream of Wheat and make it the way she used to and I am transported to the kitchen of our apartment at 5 Friendly Ct. I have so many great memories of that kitchen! And one that involves a not-quite-dead mouse.
I remember the huge parties with tons of food and tons of people and everyone laughing. She made even the most mundane leftovers into a fancy presentation.
And there was always music playing. The soundtrack of my childhood is mottled with show tunes, Enrico Caruso, Jim Neighbors (did you know Gomer Pyle sang opera?), Jerry Vale, Perry Como, Dolly Parton, The Platters, Tammy Wynette, Barbara Streisand, The King Family and Guy Lombardo and Lawrence Welk. On Sundays she would blast Italian music while she was cleaning the house.
I have many memories of being terrified of my mother and wondering when we...OK when I was going to screw up and inspire her wrath.
But I prefer to look back on the good times. The times when she made New Year's Eve special by making little hot dogs and letting us drink egg nog and go outside at midnight to bang pots and pans and scream "Happy New Year" at the tops of our lungs. Or the time when we all rented bikes in Atlantic City and took a ride on the boardwalk and Steff and I had a head on collision and my mother didn't know how to stop the bike so she rode right past us! Or the times she got down on the floor with us and played with our games and barbies. As we grew up there were endless card games at the dining table. And always laughter.
She ruled with an iron hand but she had the soul of a child and a heart of gold.
I like to think that the sheer "motherliness" of her rubbed off on me a little bit. That's why I was always type-cast in the school plays. It makes for the bones of a good caregiver.
She was always a "second" or "other" mother to friends and family. Always willing to take someone in for a year or a week or a month. One bathroom and three bedrooms and there was always room.
The house always seemed bigger when she was in it. The world always seemed bigger too. I miss that bigness. I miss her big, broad smile and her more than ample embraces and her deep, throaty laugh and that low, booming voice.
I miss her scrawly, chicken scratch handwriting and the smell of her perfume and the sound of her voice.
I do think of her and miss her every day. Just not every minute of every day. Sometimes I feel her with me and sometimes I wonder where the hell she is.
So tonight, I pray that I will see her in my dreams and we will be dancing and singing and laughing. Heaven.
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