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May 06, 2008
Lucky me
My mother's death is something that is with me all the time, although of course like most people with a dead parent I don't talk about it much. I talk to Jeff, because he lost his mother first - and I felt such pity for him. I mention Mom to Erika often, because I know she understands and thinks of her as often as I do, daily, even now that she's been gone four years.
Sometimes when I do talk to people about it, and they're saying how hard it must have been, I find myself trying to explain instead how lucky we are, Erika and I. I also feel terribly unlucky to have lost her, and that it was monstrously unfair, that she wouldn't get to have real conversations with Ethan, would never know Linna, or Dylan. Unfair that other people have mothers who are alive, mothers they complain about, who drive them crazy, when we had a mother who supported us and loved us and saw us as we really are, and she's gone.
And yet, that time when Mom was dying was so precious, in a way that's hard to explain. How lucky, that we didn't have unresolved issues coming between us or that we were trying frantically to resolve. How lucky, that we had the time and the closeness to express our love for each other clearly and often. How lucky, that Mom could finish her life peacefully and gracefully - grace was always important to her - and die at home, as I think most people would choose.
How lucky that we had a year after we knew she was sick and possibly dying. How lucky that she didn't suffer for ten years instead. How lucky that for the most part, she was optimistic throughout that time, until it became clear that she wasn't going to get better.
How lucky that our father, from whom Mom had been separated for almost a decade, still loved her and supported her, and us, through her illness. How lucky that instead of being uncomfortable with our mother's boyfriend, Dad became friends with him.
One of the things that is hardest to remember and also explain is how privileged I feel that Erika and I were there, taking care of her, especially that last day when she didn't wake up. I wasn't yet thinking about how many days and years I would have without her, without talking to her and actually having her talk back. I just loved her, as perfectly, I think, as a person can love another. She was beautiful, not physically, just beautiful. She had no hair, she had a tumor on her chest that was so awful I had found it difficult to look at in its entirety when I saw it a few weeks before she died. She had become thin. But god, god, she was my mother, and I had those moments with her and my sister, those last hours that she still breathed.
How lucky that the last words she said to me were, mumbled: "Love you, sweetie." Even more, how lucky that I already knew.
Posted by ktingey at May 6, 2008 06:41 AM
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