It's about that time ...
Scribing at 9:55 a.m. on 2006-01-17
.. today is the anniversary of my Ma's death.
It's strange, yanno, how every time this date spins past me again it seems I'm at a different point in my life. Which is probably just the normal progression of things, but still ...
It surprised me to realize she's been gone for 21 years. She's now been gone longer than she was in my life, and that seems odd, somehow. But it's one of those things you know will happen eventually, right?
My ex told me once that it was 'bizarre' to 'celebrate' (as she called the remembrance of it) the day someone died. I think, perhaps, that it's simply the fact that at that point she had never lost someone or had anything happen to her that she couldn't help but remember, whether she wrote it down or not. Perhaps that's changed now, but I wouldn't hazard a guess.
The dog unit is curled up under my desk, her head on my foot, steaming up my ankle. The house is quiet, and I can hear the rain falling outside in the midst of this odd-weather-winter we're having here in the Land O' Sleet. And somewhere, way back in the back of my mind, I can hear my mother singing one of those Billie Holiday tunes she used to sing late at night in the kitchen while I laid in bed waiting to fall asleep.
I miss her.
I wish my wife could have known her. Although it undoubtedly would have spelled trouble for me if the two of them had ever gotten in the same room. Call it a hunch.
My father died when I was 3 or 4 years old; his memory now reduced to the random flashes you retain from that age .. coming home from work and handing me his keys to play with (for some reason I was unduly fascinated with them, and he humored me). Him riding me through the house on his shoulders. Me sitting on his lap watching the baseball game on TV in the summertime, doors and windows open, and rooting for the Tigers while not understanding at all why the Red Sox played in white socks, not red. His face, so handsome in pictures I can still hold in my hand, is vague to me though. He just .. was. I miss him as well, but in a more esoteric way; rather .. I miss the opportunities that his death took from both of us. The opportunity to know him as a man, the experience of having, rather than being, a father. And as a side note, having done that with my own kids (had them on my lap or draped over my head or any other bodily contortion watching the baseball game and rooting for the Tigers) I know his determination must have been impressive; I would spend the whole game on his lap and I know for sure his legs had to have fallen asleep somewhere around the 3rd inning.
I wish, today, that I could see my Ma. Spend one more day. Kiss her forehead one more time. Let her know I turned out ok. That I'm married now, and a better person than I have ever been able to be. She knows, I'm sure .. or at least that's what we tell ourselves to make our inability to touch the ones we love less painful.
She'd be 87. I cannot picture her so fragile as she might have been by now, and perhaps that's good. Even while she was dying, it never occurred to me that she would not outlive me. I was unprepared when the time came.
I am unsure whether I mourn her loss more for the others in my life than for me.
But I suspect I mourn her loss for me more than I admit.
While cleaning out some things a couple of weeks ago, I came upon an envelope not much thicker than a piece of onion skin. Her handwriting on the envelope identified the contents as a petal from each of the dozen roses that a suitor had given her decades before. As I carefully pulled back the flap and saw the perfectly preserved remains of that hopeful gesture by a young man to my mother, I felt a rush of warmth. She treasured every kindness in a life that didn't offer much of it. In a life no easier or less complicated or more relaxed than mine.
She kept my father's memory alive for me for 20 years; helped me know that I was loved by someone who's face is a vague shadow in my memory. She helped me become the man I am today in a thousand small ways.
Before she died, she used to take pleasure in reading me small bits from the newspaper; the topics varied and were either humorous or outrageous, depending on the climate. As I fell into the trap of being a teenager, I endured, rather than enjoyed, these moments; waiting (what I assumed was patiently) until she was done reading so I could go back to whatever I was doing.
Now, my wife reads small pieces to me while gathering the news and I stop, without hesitation, and listen to whatever she chooses to pass along.
Because I understand now, more than I ever could, the value of a loved voice telling you what's going on in the world.
I miss you, Ma.
Thank you.
