Motherly Intricacies and Things I Know to Be True
Mom, am I still young? Can I dream for a few months more?
When I speak of my childhood and to an extent, my early adulthood, I’m often simultaneously stricken with wonderment and agony. These days my patchwork family and I laugh about my late mother’s quirks as though they were no less than gold medal skillsets. I have been told by friends, acquaintances, strangers who happen to witness my rambling— “your mom sounds like she was a wonderful person”, “your love for her is so beautiful”. It’s disconcerting to have an awareness of the flippant nature of mournful observance contrasted by genuine empathy. Though, I am motivated by a determination to speak of this enigmatic woman to anyone who will listen and experience a secondhand fondness of her.
My mom’s favorite season was autumn, with winter a close second merely due to the spectacle of Christmas. Some days, I feel serrated knife-in-gut anguish when I reserve more than a fraction of a minute to think of my last holiday season with her. Our thanksgiving was spent in hospice. I boarded an airplane that morning-- walking to her bedside felt like an omen I had spent 2 years desperately attempting to positive think our way out of. My sister, far older than me though far less capable of keeping a straight face, warned me that our mom didn’t look the same— I was told not to cry in front of her. It wasn’t a demand or a request, really. It felt as though she were steeling me in a manner that we both knew I was suddenly incapable of.
I spent what seemed to be a lifetime affixing the perfect facade of indifference to my person, but it amounted to nothing during those days. Each developmental stage, a new area to tamp into something as near to imperceptible as it could be. I’d been an incredibly fussy toddler, as the story goes. I’d sob and flail in the arms of anyone who wasn’t my mom. I vividly remember my first day of preschool (my family swears I have an elephant’s memory each time I recite an event clearer than they recall), — my mother attempted to slyly turn away, into the hall exiting the building but I, much like the perpetually frantic child I was, turned in the nick of time and wailed bloody murder. I clasped my arms around one of her legs, crossed my legs tightly, and sat atop her foot. Each desperate sob, a plea for a forever.
When I looked at the woman who’d always been the world to me, I knew that we wouldn’t land near to any corporeal forever with one another. I smiled, hugged her, held my breath as every second crashed further into a sentencing. I cried in the hospice guest bathroom; my clumsy mechanical gait merely an emergency exit tool, a cautious turn into the hallway accompanying the nurse’s station. I sobbed in a way that I can only begin to describe as inhuman. How is someone meant to look into the eyes of a loved one who has a time limit?
My sister and I spent Christmas in her apartment that was slowly overcrowding with our mother’s belongings we’d begun moving from her small apartment. Atop cardboard boxes, photo albums, bins of every moment of our lives condensed, we were most surrounded by snow and the looming guilt of feeling incapable of going to see our mom. We managed to visit her that evening. Her memory worsened as time passed into each night; a telltale symptom of dementia, known as “sundowning”. She didn’t have much awareness of our reality, but she happily picked away at her festive dinner and conversed with us as best she could. This was one of the rare nights she seemed to feel a semblance of peace, her lapses in awareness no longer a terror. Imagine— spending a final holiday with someone who is entirely unaware of its finality in that moment. The holiday season following her death felt like a punishment for crimes we didn’t commit nor ever intend to.
Our mom died the following February. Every particle of snow seemed ascended into eternity with her when I returned for the aftermath of a sequential loss unfathomable for most. The following October somehow felt more vibrant and livelier than I did. I don’t remember much else of it. That November is one of the few memories seemingly entirely lost to me. December was no more than conditioning myself for a forever that I have now expected to amount to no more or less than a vacancy. This October wasn’t my own. This November hasn’t been my own. I have lived month after month waiting for anything to be handed to me, a missing gear or puzzle piece— anything that will allow me to feel like a person again. I’ve been subconsciously intent on biding my time. Though, I have no expectations or awareness of what I am lying in wait for. December is currently unwritten by myself, and I am approaching it with trepidation— no expectations, no hope, though that should not be mistaken for a hopelessness. I only beg what and who I love to stay or return any time we dare to pull away. I have not felt capable of much else.
There are many things I know to be true: my mother loved Scrabble, she bought every John Grisham novel as though they were grocery store newspapers, Charlie Wilson provided the soundtrack for her years of devoted motherhood. She loved horror movies but none of the satanic stuff. She anticipated and set mental reminders for cable airings of her favorite creature features-- Jaws, The Fly, Jurassic Park, Deep Blue Sea. I watched The Silence of the Lambs and The X-Files far before I reached middle school— when my mom sat on the couch or curled up in her bed, television remote her scepter, I watched along simply to have more time in a day with her.
My dad and I recently giggled with awe when recalling our golden lady’s competitive streak seemingly reserved solely for Scrabble. Decades of storing 7-letter words, and easy winners, in a board game specific rolodex within her mind. I can’t recall a single time I defeated her, even temporarily ending her reign of linguistic superiority.
My sister and I have spoken several times of our mother’s zeal for Christmas. Santa snow globes, miniature ceramic sleighs filled with Hershey’s kisses—more so for her liking than ours—, stockings always overstuffed. As a child, I didn’t understand that my mom worked overtime stacked onto overtime to buy everything my sister and I wanted. I quickly resigned to indifference upon learning that Santa isn’t real— that revelation only made my mom that much cooler. I comfortably lived with the knowledge that I always got exactly what I wanted for Christmas simply because my mom loved me to the point of exhaustion. In her last years, she worked part time as a cashier and despite the pleas of my sister and I urging her to quit, she remained in a job she shouldn’t have felt the need to ever have. She inevitably told me, simply, that she wanted to make extra money so we could have a full Christmas tree the way we did when things were better. I assured her of the one thing I knew to be true that day; no explanation, limitation, or naysaying ever outweighed what I knew to be true-- my mother’s love for us could have upturned the earth on any slightly inconvenient day, perhaps with a not-so-kind person.
As a child, I routinely hid Scrabble letters under my legs when I was a kid. I was always so eager and convinced I could win against an adult woman who personified the term “bookworm”, or I’d settle for outdoing my sister nearly a decade my senior. But even with an array of consonants stuck in the clammy crevice of my knee and thigh, our mom would win in a landslide. She always knew I was cheating-- I have never been a convincing liar or adept at sleight of hand-- but never cared much as it was only motivation for us both. We always believed in one another’s determination and resilience more than our own.
Her love always repotted me when I, or some cruel act of another, yanked my roots straight out of the soil. I want no more than to do the same for her. Even now as I lay beside a portion of her ashes mixed into a metal heart, tucked neatly in the back of a stuffed memoriam teddy bear I paid an astronomical amount of money for, without hesitation I seek to live my life in her honor— no straight-A report card, certificate of accomplishment, or unexpected career achievement will compare to the earth I intend to upturn every chance I get. She never expected less than a wildfire of me. Any day now, I’ll finally have that wildfire safely accommodated. Seemingly no more than a flicker— there she’ll be.