Madrid
6 November 2009
My Mother died yesterday. She was 85 years old. She died in Tucson, Arizona where she’d lived for the past 30-some years. My Dad died in Tucson about 18 years ago.
I last saw Mom in August when I visited her twice, one evening and the following morning. She knew it was me but when I went back to see her the next morning, she had forgotten that I’d seen her the night before.
During her last year or two Mom mellowed into a sweet old lady – my nieces and nephew confirmed this. Certainly the last time I saw her she was exactly that, mellow and sweet with a smile plastered onto her face. Perhaps she’d found some peace, I hope that was the case.
I had a good childhood. My Mom was loving, protective and smothering. It took me many years to get over the last but I did. It wasn’t easy and there was a lot of broken china. Yesterday, soon after I got the news of Mom’s passing I wrote a bit about that broken china. It’s not the time to put that into the blog; it needs to steep a bit. Now is the time to simply record her passing, to be grateful that it was peaceful and that she had her daughter and two of her grandchildren with her when she went.
We were all prepared for this. I knew Mom was going, the doctors told us it was only a matter of time. I’d said my goodbyes but, still, when Meghan, my niece, called to give me the news, I stopped and sat and stared at nothing. There was a hole in the universe as she passed out. Whatever it is that life is made of soon washed over the hole and you would have had no notion that it had ever been there but, for a bit, that hole was palpable and there. It doesn’t mean she won’t be remembered or that she won’t have influence beyond death but the pattern of living was quickly restored. I suspect this happens however many times a day someone dies.
I can’t talk much about how I felt yesterday because I’m still not sure. I can report that I felt her passing and there was regret – about things that I will write about another time – but the feeling was really a combination of gratitude for the ease of it all for her and the emptiness that she left in me. Both for good and bad my Mother was a big part of my existence, more in earlier years than recently, but still a substantial percentage of whatever influences went into making me. That influence is now physically gone but it will never be entirely absent, both the good and the bad; I like to think that the good is more than the bad. I know that my Dad, whose passing I genuinely mourned and still do, still has a big influence, a positive one. My Mom will retain an influence as well; as I noted, not all for the good, but still there.
So, Mom, thank you for loving me all your life and for my childhood. There is much that we could have said and much that we could have done differently but there is no ‘do-over’. I pray that you ultimately had no shadow over the memories, no aching regrets. I have regrets but they are soft and indistinct as I hope yours were, having no greater weight on the scale than the warm memories of Christmases, picnics, rides in the country, family dinners and vacations at Kino. On balance its okay! Be at peace!
