Without a doubt, the biggest even of my life was the loss of my mother. Losing my father was no easier, and I would never be so petty as to rank one above the other, but it just so happens that I was particularly close to my mother. She fought a long battle with illness and I was with her every step of the way and so now my memories of her become more than simple recollections of a woman that I loved but the recollections of a journey toward the bittersweet end of that woman's life. A journey that we took together.
This will be the first of several postings on her and on this journey.
The Empty Spaces
If you see me walking around and I seem lost it's because I'm looking for her in places where she'd been. I went a few days ago to the hardware store where she'd worked. I expected her to be there. She, of course, wasn't, but if everything in the store was just as it was when last I saw it, why did I not see her there standing behind the counter? You cannot, to my satisfaction, explain to me what death is and what that process really means. All I know of death is that people who once were here are here no longer and I can't find them no matter where I look.
My mother never understood why I would chuckle a little whenever she'd get upset with me and call me a son of a bitch. She rarely got upset with me. Not as much as she had a right to, certainly. I daresay she should have been more upset with me and more often, but when she did get upset she'd call me a son of a bitch and I'd chuckle.
My mother would listen to me drone on about comic books and movies and all kinds of meaningless things and never once did she tell me what I loved in life was silly and she never seemed disinterested.
We would watch television together. This wasn't typical television viewing and we would talk during the movie and make fun of it. We'd watch kung fu movies we rented and westerns and anything that tickled our fancy. One of our favorites was a movie from the 30's called "The Half-Naked Truth" and there was a song in it we really liked. Here it is.
It's the only version of it I could find online and you have to kind of wait for the song, but Mom and I walked around the house singing this to each other for years. It was one of a million private little in jokes you have to spend a lifetime with someone to accrue.
My mother could draw beautifully. I saw things she had drawn, but only ever saw her draw once. When she died we found bags from dollar stores filled with sketchbooks and colored pencils, none of which she ever got the chance to use. Sometimes I wondered if Mom had regrets in life, and that maybe all along she wanted to be an artist and couldn't because of her family obligations. I feel a little better about it now. After our journey together I know that while she may have had regrets she wouldn't have traded anything in her life, especially her family, for any career as an artist.
My mother couldn't sing to save her life. My sister can sing and she loved that. She's listen to Betsy at choir concerts and smile, not only proud of her talented daughter, but satisfied that there was, after all, a little justice in this world.
The entire time she was sick, my mother never complained. Not once.
If I sit in a quiet room and there is nothing to distract me, I think of her. I miss her. I miss my father, but in different ways. There are living people I can't see and I miss them, too. It's only now, having lost so much and not having had a real home of my own in years that I understand why my mother held on to her family so tightly.
My mother called me "Buddy" or "Pauly". I just called her "Mom".
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