Sometimes I Wonder

Memories of my mother surface at odd times, times when I least expect them, times when I'm not prepared for the image of her face, the sound of her voice. I quote her, use her words to make my point, use her wisdom as mine. This is the way she lives with me now.

She lives with me in my days and in my nights. She lives with me at work and at home. She lives with me in ways I never expected and in some ways I did. Either way she lives with me and I am glad she does. I am glad that the memories I have of her have shifted, shifted from her last days to other days, days when she was healthy and active and alive and fun. Days when it would take my repetition of "Mom!" three times to pull her away from the book she read, days when she joked with my children by asking the person at the McDonald's Drive-thru if he got tired of being stuck in that little box that held the speaker, days when she would stop by my house unexpectedly.

I miss her. I don't worry about her now, not the way I used to worry. I know she's not on the floor, she's not hurt, she's not lonely or afraid. I do wonder though, sometimes when I'm alone and it's quiet and I think of her. I wonder if she misses us, if she misses the earth, if she misses life. I wonder this because she loved it all so much when she was here, loved us all so much. This is the way she lives with me now.

Sometimes A Crown Makes It All Okay

There are friends in our lives who allow us to be ourselves, to relax into an evening and not worry about what we say or how we look or what we feel. Friends who love and accept you for who you are and no matter what we feel at the moment it is okay to share it, to talk about it, to live it. These are the friends who stand by us no matter what. Who live with us and love with us, who win with us and lose with us. These are the friends who assure us that no matter what, we are loved. These are the women I was with tonight. These are my friends. My Queens.

The story of the Queens is delightful and quirky and funny and loving. The story of the Queens is a story that culminated tonight in drinks in the fading sunshine on the porch. Laughter and love and catching up with each other's lives. It is the story of survival, whether we want it or not. It is the story of friendship that grew and endured and strengthened and survived. It is the story of stars on a crown and in the sky. It is the story of women. Women who have loved and lost and loved and won. The story of women who have passed on to our daughters all that is good in life and love and loss. It is the story of friendship.

This is where it is okay to say, "I hurt," where it is okay to say "I grieve". It is where it is okay to be loved.

Odd Or Even

My mother liked to add the numbers on license plates. I asked her what she thought about the totals she got and she said odd was good, even, bad. I'm not sure how she came to that conclusion. When my mother went into the Nursing Home I found myself adding license plate numbers occasionally, it made me feel closer to her somehow. Now, it has become a habit and I rarely make it from my house to work or to the store or anywhere else without glancing at the plates of the cars around me and quickly adding the numbers. For me, even or odd is unimportant, over 30 on a Maine plate is the goal!

I think of my mother every time I add a plate. I think of her and how she viewed the world, what simple things pleased her and how I wish I could be more like her. I add the numbers and let that simple act connect me to my mother and it makes me feel better.

Thoughts

I continue to choose seclusion for myself, to prefer solitude and quiet to my usual inclination toward the social, the people, the noise. At times over these past weeks I've worried that this choice, this intentional aloneness is unhealthy for me, a choice or change I should work against, push against until my circle opens wider and I fill it.

In my aloneness my mother is with me, with me intensely, with me in her humor, her smile. Often while I sit and write she enters my thoughts and I picture her here with me, all the times we spent together here in my home, here when we drank tea, watched movies, sewed her baby quilts together. I know this is grief and it will pass.

Other thoughts eke in, welcome or not, and as I grieve for my mother other grief emerges and works its way to the surface, works its way up from where it has been buried, hidden in me. My mother did not choose to leave us, my son did. Months have passed without contact, without communication from him and in those months I relive every moment of his childhood and teenage years and each time fail to find what I search for, fail to understand the reason he would walk away.

So I will keep my aloneness for as long as I need to, as long as it serves me, protects me. I will seclude, I will hide, I will grieve.

Ache

I miss my mother. Beyond belief and from the depth of who I am, I miss her. On the outside I am certain this doesn't show, that I am able to conceal this ache for her as I busy myself with work and home and friends and all the moments and people that comprise my life. But it is there, this ache, this longing, this grief.

Early evening is the worst, the hardest. This is the time that was mine with her, became my time with her and even as I recall how I wished I didn't have to go to her room, that small room that had become her world, I ache to be there with her, be anywhere with her. Have her with me.

The middle of the night is bad, too, those hours when I wake and listen to the quiet of my house around me and know she is gone. Those are the minutes, hours, when I search for memories, memories of our life, not her death. Sometimes I find them and when I do I lose her again.

My sister and I visited with our mother's best friend yesterday. It was good to see her, to hear her voice, have her with us. She misses Mom, too. Misses their friendship, their time. We sat at the table, my sister, my mother's best friend, her daughter and me and ached together.

Watching and Waiting

Last night I sat with my daughter in her world, her world of a local restaurant, a small place down the road from her home in Connecticut, a place where she and her husband and their friends gather and relax and eat (and eat and eat and eat....you've got to try the salmon!). A place where the owner (and cook) emerges from the kitchen and hugs his customers, no, not his customers, his guests. He hugs them and greets them by name, makes sure they are having fun, that they like their food, that he knows who is there so he can return to the kitchen and cook for them.

I sat with my daughter in her world and watched her ease with the people in this place, her place. I watched her ease of being absorbed into the embrace of this community and in that ease I see that she is happy. She has found her place, her home. I watched her and in her I saw the child she was and the woman she is and know that her life is here and now and as she waits, waits yet again for her husband to serve, to serve his men and our country, that while she waits she does not wait alone, she will not wait alone. She has a place where others will wait with her.

I sat with my daughter in her world and watched her. While I watched, she waits. She waits with patience, she waits with confidence, she waits with love, both in her for her husband and around her from her friends. While she does this waiting, while she waits in small blocks of time now as her husband and his troops prepare, she prepares for the longer wait, the big wait. This big wait that comes for her in a matter of weeks will come and through it I will wait with her. I will wait and watch. Watch and wait. And as we do this, as she does this I will picture her in her place, picture her in the arms of her community, in the arms of those who love her, in the arms of this place that has become her home.

Time On My Hands

It has been just over one month since my mother died and I find myself with time on my hands, time I haven't had for a very long time. This time, this time that at one point I wished for arrives at the end of my workday, that time when I used to sit with my mother, drink tea and watch Oprah or Ellen. Those days when I often thought how I would prefer to be somewhere else, anywhere else with my her but where we found ourselves. I never wished for her to be gone, if anything just the opposite, I wished for her to be here, fully here with us again.

So what do I do with this time? How do I fill it and at the same time relinquish the guilt I feel at that part of me that relishes the freedom I now have? The freedom to work late or go home early, the freedom to stop at the store, run an errand or simply go home and spend time with my husband. How do I quell the horror that my adaptation to life without my mother, life after her death is showing the slightest signs of normal, normal after only one month. Does that make me a bad daughter? A bad person?

My sister and I say the word "okay" a lot these days. We say it to each other as reassurance that we are okay, that 'it' is okay, that we will be okay. We started saying it at our mother's bedside one month ago. She said it to me when she left my house this weekend, this beautiful weekend that marked the beginning of summer in Maine, that marked the 35th Anniversary of my marriage. We said it to each other as we visited the cemetery. We said it when we planted flowers at the graves of our great-grandparents, our grandparents and our parents. And we mean it, these okays.

We mean it through our tears, we mean it through our hugs and we mean it through our laughter. Yes, our laughter. Our laughter that is returning, returning with almost the same spontaneity and joy it once had. Not quite full force, but we both know that it will. It will return, all we have to do is give it time.