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Well, blimy. I've had a month to ponder how I was going to write this diary about my Mom. To be more accurate; I've had ten years and one month, since she died over ten years ago.
Here I am on my third draft. The first was too "me" oriented, the second was too unfocused. How does one sum up the life of one's mother, one's feelings about said mother, and her tragic death in one diary? One really needs an encyclopedic volume-based work of writing to do it justice.
So I'm going to try something different for my third try. Here are a series of stories about my Mom. Hopefully you can glean some sembelance of who she was and how I felt about her from these stories.
A funny story about Mom:
She was in art school. Her major was photography, and the assignment was to transform something ugly into something beautiful through photography.
My Mom had a lot of cats, and a lot of mice in and around her house. The cats would frequently kill the mice and leave them for us to discover around the house. One day I came to visit Mom and opened her freezer for something. "Mom!" I screamed. "There are DEAD MICE in your freezer, in a zip lock baggie! What the hell!"
"They're for a project," was all she would say. She was a woman of few words.
Thank God I was not around for the execution of the project; I only saw the final result. She boiled the mice on the stove to remove the skin and meat from the bones, as she only needed the skeletons for the project. I can't begin to imagine what her kitchen must have looked and smelled like that day.
Once she had the skeletons clean and dry, she melted some chocolate, poured it into foil cupcake cups, and plopped the mouse skeletons into the cups. Their tiny skeletal feet and tails poked out of the chocolate. Then she photographed her macabre candy treats. It was gruesome and disturbing, and she got an A on the assignment. Her instructors sole comment, "Only you, Cynthia..."
A short memory, sad only in retrospect:
Coming home from school in kindergarten. I had notices that I was told by the teacher we absolutely HAD to show our parents. I entered the living room, where my Mom was lying on the couch, curtains drawn, facing the wall. I alerted her to the urgent notices, she turned, and put her hand out for the papers. She glanced briefly at the notices and handed them back to me. "Ok," she said quietly, and turned back to the wall. As an adult, I recognize the sad loneliness of this memory. As a small child, I remember thinking proudly that my Mom was the fastest reader in the world!
A moment of laughter:
We were on a road trip, my mother, brother, sister and I in the car. My sister was describing a mishap in junior high science class. They had been doing some kind of experiment involving magnetic dust, and my dopey sister wondered if the dust would stick to her newly acquired braces. It stuck. The image of that dust flying up to meet my sister's braces and my sister's subsequent frantic, fruitless attempts to remove the dust from her mouth had my mother in tears laughing. My mother was not a jovial woman; I don't have many memories of her laughing. She laughed even less after she and my Dad divorced due to my father's relentless philandering, and we hadn't seen my Mom laugh in a long time. She had to pull over twice, she was laughing so hard.
A moment of great Mom wisdom:
I was in college, dating Mr. Wrong. He was encouraging me to throw of the oppressive, dictatorish ways of my parents by rebelling in stupid and totally meaningless ways. My mother, who tolerated no dissent in her house, had a moment of great clarity and wisdom, and told me I needed to live elsewhere. She gave me the money to get a cheap apartment in the city I was working in, but that was it. I still needed to save up for college in the fall, and pay my expenses with my pitiful college summer job salary. I had a miserable summer. Mr. Wrong crapped all over me, I was broke as hell and lonely to boot. It was possibly the most formative summer of my whole life. I never got to tell her how much I admired her for her getting me out of her house that summer.
Mom and Hubby
My Mom and my husband are both people who tend not to like most people. They loved each other right away; it was one of the ways I knew I had found the right man for me. My Mom could be scary and intimidating, but my husband never blinked an eye over it (of course, that was before I met his mother...). My husband can be outspoken and has an outrageously irreverent sense of humor. It can be off-putting to some people. My Mom thought he was hilarious.
Where I was a disappointment:
My Mother loved me; of this I have no doubt. She was just a hard woman to understand sometimes, and she and I are so fundamentally different that I felt like we lived on different planets sometimes. But I know how fiercely she loved me. With that being said...
Me (ridiculously enthusiastic): "Mom! We found the greatest Mexican place ever in Coolidge Corner! We bought one for you and drove all the way here so you could try it! You're going to love it, trust me...!"
Mom, opening the Best Burrito Ever: "There are onions on this. You know I hate onions." She shakes her head and gives me that look that freezes my heart; an obvious judgement that I couldn't possibly care about her and forget her great hatred of onions.
Another:
We're living in Phoenix, and she's coming to visit. I tell her she has to, absolutely has to visit Sedona. I imagine that the artist in her will be stirred by the color and magic of this area. We drive out there, and I'm chatting incessantly, as I am wont to do. I'm sure I've worn her down by now; she's not much into chit-chat.
As we turn that curve in the highway where the first glorious rock formations come into view, I'm watching for her reaction, waiting for her heart to thrill like mine the first time I saw them. She's aware I'm waiting, and sighs. "Are we almost there?"
I'm crushed.
Our last visit:
I was married, and had just had my first baby. My husband, baby and I went to see my Mom for Christmas to introduce my son to the family. This was a bad winter for my family. My grandfather had died a long, painful, lingering death three years before, and it was horrifying for my Mom. She would tell us, over and over, I don't want life support, don't let me suffer like that. Ok, Mom, we would say, don't worry, we hear you. Then my Grandmother, who had fought off breast cancer, a heart attack and bowel failure, became very ill and simply wouldn't let go. She had a will as big as the cosmos, and she wasn't going to die, and that was that. It was a grisly, bewildering sight, and it was killing my Mom. She fell ill herself that winter, but it was kind of a general malaise. No doctor could diagnose her, and they were giving her the distict impression that it was all in her head and she should go back to her shrink.
She seemed sad and tired on that visit. She wore a mask whenever she held the baby, which wasn't often. She gave me a bunch of her jewlery; she had got rid of her birds, her last dog had died recently. She showed us a photo collage she had made recording his death. It was gruesome, even for Mom. She watched me carefully with my son, and finally said, in a weird tone, "You're a good mother. You'll be okay."
I think you can see where this is going, as my Mom was a text-book case. Right out of the book. Here were my reactions to her actions on that last visit. 1) She's sick! Of course she doesn't want to hold the baby! 2) Oh, Mom never wore any of the jewlery anyway; she's just clearing out drawers. 3) Thank God! Those birds were a health hazard! And finally, 4) Jesus, Mom, what'd you think I was going to be?
Sweet bliss of denial.
She shot herself in the head two months later. It was February 8th, 1999, six days after my 29th birthday. There was no note. As I said, my Mother was a woman of few words. She played her cards close to her chest.
After the memorial service:
There was no funeral or church service. Mom had been very clear about that--she felt that religion was the cause of most of the trouble in the world. Personally, I think it's easier to commit suicide if you have no religious beliefs. It means you're not worried about heaven or hell. I think that my Mom was looking forward to a well deserved eternal rest.
After the memorial service that we had in her honor, with only the ashes in a pretty box on display (also a very clear request of hers) we all went back to my Mom's house for some good Greek food--the cure for all that ails the spirit. My friend Ann-Marie was there. I'd known Ann-Marie since birth. She was thirsty and asked for some water. I went absent-mindedly to the cupboard to get a glass, and absent-mindedly filled it water. When I handed it to her, she gave me a very funny look. I focused on the glass for a minute and noticed that the rim was completely covered in a fine layer of bird feathers. My Mom was two things most assuredly: an animal lover, and a total slob. We burst out laughing and didn't stop for several minutes. There were more than a few tears streaming down our faces.
Looking back:
What could I have done? Could I have stopped her? Would it have mattered if I had?
I have no real answers. I have my suspicions. I think she had a predisposition to depression, and that life had worn her down. Some people have those internal resources to lift themselves up from life's disasters. She tried, mostly for our sake, I think. If it had been solely up to her I think she would have done it a long time before she did. We found a book on self-euthanasia hidden in a drawer after she died. I wondered how long it had been there.
I fantasize sometimes about how we could have gotten her out of that filthy, lonely house, and convinced her to come live with us. We could have gotten an in-law suite; she could have had her own space. My husband could have cooked for us all; she loved that about him. I could have talked her into all kinds of activities that she would have loved. She could have found a new lease on life, maybe even dated for the first time after my Dad left. She could have gotten to know my kids, they would have loved her. She was such a unique human being--there was no one like my Mom.
In reality, she never would have moved, and even if she had, she would have hated living with us. She would have made us miserable and worn us down along with her.
But everyone deserves their fantasies, don't they?
Here is a link to the previous Grieving Room diaries