Twenty Years Past and Still Present

Remembering Mom from a Distance

It was my sister who reminded me that this year would mark the 20^th anniversary of our mom’s death. The day, November 1, would not have gone by without my realizing this, but I was grateful for my sister’s early reminder as it gave me time to reflect. “She just missed so much,” she said, referring mostly to the four grandchildren Mom left behind, three of whom have a few warm but faint memories of her playful, loving presence. While Mom’s body was trying to fight the vicious cancer cells growing inside, her heart embraced grandparenthood, enjoying playing on the floor with trucks, taking a walk in the park, attending tea parties and ballet classes, and singing along to Baby Beluga, all without being the one to change the diapers or put them to bed. It used to be hard for me to see a grandmother walking down the street holding the hand of a grandchild. Now I am happy for them, knowing that the love connection with a grandparent is free of so many of the trials and tribulations of the daily challenges of parenthood. Maybe generation-skipping love is made from the simplest of recipes, not too much preparation or too many steps to follow with potential for mistakes. A gentle stir to bond together is all it takes.

In the more recent years since her passing, besides thinking about all that she has missed (and feeling that she is within all of us too), I find myself lingering on memories of the woman she was, searching beyond the mom she was to me. Every mom is much more than a mother, but until you reach adulthood and start seeing the bigger picture, those other parts of a mom are tiny glimpses in our peripheral vision. Things we don’t really notice until they are gone, when our curiosity may lead us to new perspectives. Perhaps my own settling into post-menopause womanhood makes me less attached to my identity as a mom, making me wish I could talk to her about more general “older woman” topics. I would want to ask about her experience with menopause. I certainly remember her red face during those years but was too young to care or understand that there was so much more changing than her body temperature. I wonder if her hot flash experiences would have helped me through mine. In the least, it would give me a good giggle to share the inopportune moments when the heat rose through our bodies like unwanted water rising in the cellar during a heavy rainstorm. When will it stop?? The sump pump in our basement worked faster than my body’s natural ability to cool down. Mom and I could exchange strategies on the best ways to calm the storm, like wardrobe choices that make for a quick layer removal and glasses of cold water within arm’s reach at all times. Maybe I would ask her a very direct question because it would be nice to know: “what was the hardest part, the hot flashes, the insomnia, the anxiety spikes, or the general insanity? Exactly how long did each last? No insomnia you say? You got off easy.” My experience was that she was a good sleeper. One rule she had was that I had to wake her up after I came home from a high school party, so she would know I returned home safely, still standing and coherent enough to have a quick chat. I never minded that rule. It was kind of fun to see her roll over in her big king-sized bed, opening her eyes halfway with a little smile. “Did you have a good time?” she would ask sleepily. Yes Mom, I did.

The reality of the menopause conversation would be more like those late-night check-ins than some deep emotional sharing of our womanhood. Most likely she would offer some seed of wisdom; something simple like “this too shall pass.” Her short answer would be right. While the insomnia (and related anxiety) comes back around at times and it’s hard, I am more settled into my older, empty-nested self now. It takes time, younger friends. Be patient with yourself. I use more moisturizer for my thinning skin, but these past few years have proved easier than those full-on hormone-swinging ones when my mood felt as confused and depleted as my estrogen.

Imaginary conversations included, I will never stop seeking ways to feel Mom’s presence. For the past year or so I have been using one of her many half-filled journals for my own journaling. I have wondered if I am committing some kind of sacrilege, adding my own thoughts to the private experiences recorded just for her own reflection. But there is a comfort in filling the pages that she left empty; like my thoughts on the blank ones give her old words new life. Her handwriting is often hard to decipher, a combination of her shorthand habits and general lack of care for looking neat or pretty. Every entry is dated. A habit that is so useful to one who revisits the reflections.

Her journal writing is aligned with her personality; she wrote down very detailed descriptions of her experiences but didn’t dive deep into any internal monologue. There are no cycles of emotional struggle in her writing. Much of it describes straightforward reports of moments in her day, albeit with the sharp observations of a photographer’s lens. Somehow it is deeply reflective nonetheless, and her clever humor is present along with her attention to detail. Things like this moment she captured in the Salt Lake City airport when she was on her way to her favorite spa and had a longer-than-expected layover due to a snowstorm:

“I stood in line at the Pizza Hut and got two pizzas for the price of one by pretending to be with the man standing next to me. The cashier asked if we were together, and we said firmly “yes” even though we were “together” for a minute at most.”

Mom’s journal entry dated March 6, 1998

Given that she was a woman who spent the majority of her life untethered to a man, I assume the internal monologue may have been more complex. Years later here I am thinking how old was this man? Did she check for a wedding ring? Did she feel an attraction in that fleeting moment, knowing that they both understood without any exchange of words that they were about to get a bargain by aligning on the collective “yes?” Was the snowstorm so bad that in the screenplay version of this chance encounter they may have sat next to each other all night, empty pizza boxes in their laps, sharing stories?” My questions are so unlike her writing I remind myself to return to the facts – she was always one for a bargain. She was flirtatious too. If the experience led her to ponder any of life’s what-ifs, she didn’t think them important enough to document.

So, the journals have not revealed any big unknown layer of my mom. They have not given me any new sense of the woman that she was because they reflect exactly what I felt, and I think have always felt about her: her power was in her presence. She possessed an authenticity; there was an unpretentious confidence in her character and an openness in her attitude. She had followers, long before social media turned that word into a more superficial metric. I felt she was comfortable in her own skin, yet what lay behind that layer was more of a mystery, and perhaps less comfortable. I think her alluring presence, one that would lead a stranger to stand by her in line for pizza and soon realize the opportunity for a little bit of money-saving mischief, left people curious of wanting more. Like the reflections in her journals, perhaps the experiences themselves were meaningful enough. For those who sought out what lay beneath the shared experiences, I’m not sure how many received a deeper level of emotional engagement.

For me, speaking at both the surface level and from the depths of my emotional attachment to her, I was generally comfortable in her presence and felt the security of her love. That isn’t to say that we always got along or that she never disappointed me. I endured times when her openness turned to harsh judgment and her discomfort suddenly exploded into misdirected anger. Those times were confusing, to say the least, but I know now that a person is seldom without at least a few inherent contradictions. Despite those moments, I think I internalized early on that her presence and love were there for me, and much of the time those things were enough.

Twenty years out from losing her, I enjoyed the sentimental reminiscing through journals and photos and shed only a few tears. I found this loose clipping tucked inside another journal, perhaps written spontaneously on whatever paper was near the breakfast table. Still dated, of course, handwriting and energetic punctuation bringing her back to life:

Fully embracing this declaration, I permit myself to decide that her love for a hearty breakfast has clearly been passed down to her fourth grandchild, the one who is too young to remember her. On many a morning since he has learned to cook the things he enjoys most, I have watched him carefully craft his scrambled eggs for optimal fluffiness, fry his sausage (his preferred meat to bacon, I think Mom’s too), and time his toast. I know now that she is there in the kitchen with us, reminding us that one of life’s simple joys is to dawdle.