I hate that saying. It smacks of manipulation and passive-aggression and brings to mind the not-too-flattering image of a self-centered, nasty sort of person with multiple unresolved issues. But I like it as a title, so, there you go.
My mom lives in a different city, and I visit her, on average, once a month. During this visit, I make it my business to make Mama happy. This wasn't always my mission on my periodic visits to town. Rather the opposite, in fact. When I was younger, I considered it an unpleasant necessity to sort of stop by for a few minutes, just to say hello. Hanging out with Mom was not exactly on my Top 10 list. I imagine that's not necessarily unusual. Well, at least I hope it isn't unusual. Otherwise, I'm a truly horrible person, and nobody wants to be a truly horrible person. But I digress. Nothing unusual there, either.
Over the years, though, I have become better acquainted with my Mom, the woman, as opposed to my Mom, the mother. Not that my Mom was a bad mother, by any means. It's just that, you know, she was my MOM, for crying out loud. So, naturally, she didn't know anything, she understood even less, she messed with my business, she gave me advice I hadn't ask for, she disapproved of things I approved of, she gave me "the look," and so on. Oh. Wait. I'm describing me, the way my children would. Oops. You know how you swear up and down that you will NEVER be like this or that or the other? Ya. There you go.
My Mom, the woman, is kind, caring, compassionate, patient, and wise. And she's also funny, which, who knew? In fact, she has a wicked sense of humor, which she uses to maximum effect with a simple look, accompanied by a well-timed grunt or chuckle. I love her. I'm so glad I still have her, and I'm so grateful that I can hang out with her, chat with her, do small things to delight her and help her, and chauffeur her to places she needs to be. It can never be enough, but I hope it has made up a tiny bit for the earlier times.
Yesterday, it was not raining. Months and months ago, Mom and I had purchased beautiful new silk flowers for Daddy's grave. We had a fabulously wet winter, much to everyone's relief after three years of drought, and every visit to Mom was punctuated by rain showers. You don't walk out to the middle of a cemetery in the rain and squish through the uneven sod around sunken grave markers with an 88-year-old, silver-haired lady. Unless it would please you to pace nervously around the emergency room for the rest of the day and then rearrange your schedule so you can nurse her hip back to health.
But yesterday morning, it was gloriously unraining and even, perhaps, intermittently sunny and warm. So we drove off in my Little Blue Bomb to Lawncrest Memorial Park to visit Daddy. It's been almost five years since Daddy's death, but the sight of his name on that plaque always nonplusses me a bit. It's so surreal. Confusing. He's there, but he isn't there. He's with Jesus, dancing, but his body is in the ground. Dust to dust. Not sure how all of that works with the cement, in-ground, crypt-thingies that are required now, but there you have it. It's so final, but not.
I verbalized my thoughts and feelings to my mom and asked her if she thinks and feels the same things, and Mom seems very philosophical about it all. She doesn't seem to have any trouble wrapping her head around the reality of his departure. The caregiving years have melted away, and the memories that are deeply implanted surface in dreams. She dreams about him often, she says, and things are like they always were, then. She dreams of ordinary, younger married life, with her husband beside her doing ordinary, younger married life things. And she wakes up, but he isn't there. It seems as though he ought to be, but he just isn't. And then she remembers, and, somehow, it's okay.
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