when your mama has passed on....

Springtime...with the tulips and buds and blossoms, it's amazing, year after year, yet....

 Mother's Day.  You'd think it'd get easier, as the years roll by without her.  The grief has softened, but I still get the punched-in-the-stomach feeling when I remember, again, that she is gone.  It's not as often, but sometimes out of nowhere, the frustration of not being able to ask her about something, coupled with the knowledge that I will never ever, on God's green earth, go shopping with her again, ouch.  I see her there at her house, waiting at the door, with her big "pocketbook" hanging over her arm...she was the only one I ever knew who consistently called her purse by that name...it would be filled with useful things, she was Grandma TicTac, she always could pull something out of there for a fussy grandchild.

When I was a kid, she would grab a wet washcloth on the way out the door, because you had to be clean and neat when you went bye-bye...wonder where I got THAT FROM.

My mother had time for everyone.  She was a birthday rememberer.  No detail was too boring for her, she would be there when I got home from school, ready to hear about it.  My friends liked her more than they liked me.  Once, I had this sleepover party upstairs in my room, and wait a minute, where were most of the girls?  They had one by one ended up downstairs, talking to my mother.  

Her birthday was in May, and she loved lilacs, so I miss here most in the spring.  

My mother had a tough life.  Her grandmother was Irish, "off the boat" Irish, my mother used to say.  My mom had red hair, which never went gray, it dulled a bit, but she died at 69, still a red head.  Her own mother died of cancer when my mother was 14 years old.  She had one older sister, one younger brother, they went to live with their mother's sister, and their dad left and went to Florida, then Alaska, I never met him.  (My father's mom died when I was a toddler, his dad years before that, so I had no grandparents).  My mother always felt abandoned, because she was abandoned.   Her father had no right to just leave those kids like that.  He kept in touch, sporadically, from a little town in Alaska, sent us the weekly newsletters, it was fascinating.  His "new" wife sent my mother a picture of his gravestone when he died, and that was that.

Favorite memories:  being little, her hanging the clothes on the line.  Sitting on her lap reading stories.  Her standing at the stove, making pancakes in the cast-iron frying pan.  

She died when Miss Charlotte Claire, our #15, was a newborn.  My mom had a rough time of it.

Breast cancer, double mastectomies, cancer in lymph nodes, age 44

Heart attack, then triple bypass, which resulted in damaged kidneys, kidney dialysis from age 60 to when she passed at 69.  NINE YEARS, three days a week!  

Her heart couldn't handle the dialysis anymore.  She was just worn out.  She was afraid of having a stroke in the chair, she wanted to go on her own terms, not that she had much of a choice...she left that dialysis center one last time, in an ambulance, on a Friday night, and by Saturday morning, she had decided:  no more.  She was settled nicely into a bright sunny room in the palliative care hall, and we all visited all week.  She was so happy, said she could finally eat whatever she wanted to, ha.  She loved having everyone there.  One friend arrived, hesitant to step into the room, after all, visiting a friend who is dying is rather awkward...but my mother saw her and said, "Come in, I'm DYING to see you!"  

My mother was not afraid to die.  She was very confident of where she was headed.

The doctors told us she would lose consciousness, but it didn't happen.  The night she ended up dying, Thursday, she tried to get up out of bed, she sat right up and tried, she said, "I'm going to Jesus now!"  No, we told her, she didn't have to get up, He was going to come right to her bed and fetch her Himself, when he was ready.  She was very happy about that.  He did come for her, in the wee hours...

I was glad for her.  She had suffered for years.  For those years, you wouldn't have known how much she suffered, because she was still the birthday rememberer, and the person who listened.  She was the fun grandma, who read stacks of books to the grandkids, and still went with me to help at doctor's appointments, and on shopping trips.  She would come here and spend the night, and pay one of the kids five dollars to bring her bags to her room, or make the bed.   

I was glad for her, to be rid of her earthly body, her feet starting to blacken with diabetes side effects, her vision going, so tired from the dialysis.  

But then who would I call when I was making dinner?  Who would go to Kmart with me?  Who would remember my third grade teacher's name?  Who would care about the little details of life?

I'm thankful that I had a mother who taught me how to listen, how to love, what's important in life.  She was absolutely thrilled by the simplest things in life.  She didn't esteem herself very highly, but everyone else loved her.  She made friends everywhere.  Not a day goes by without me thinking of her, of comments she would make, of how much she would have gotten a kick out of things like how little Wulf follows Paul around, "helping" him fix his fishing pole, or Ophelia doing her stomp-y dance, or the sweetness of Ben and Ashley's little girls...

Sometimes I see women out and about with their moms, and I want to whisper, "Be good to your mom, don't take her for granted, be thankful for today, for this very outing..."