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For the most part today I was alright up until the moment I saw the card, a Christmas card my mother sent me some years ago, that posed the question, "Son, where has the time gone?"
Where did the time go? Thirty-six years. Thirty-six years I had my mother. At any given moment I knew where she was, I knew more or less what she was doing, and I knew that no matter what, no matter how badly I screwed up, no matter what went wrong in my life there was someone, somewhere, who would help. She would have advice. She would have suggestions, she would have, if push came to shove, a place for me to go if there was nowhere else in all the world left for me.
She died a week ago at 12:43AM, Sunday morning, October 23 and last night at 12:43 I lit a candle. I placed it in a stained glass lantern in my bedroom and let it burn until it at last winked out.
Where did the time go? A candle burned down. A life burned down until it too at last winked out. It was a long time coming but it's not as though that makes it any better. It makes it worse in some ways, because I remember these last few months in which she had no energy, no appetite, had to be forced to eat and threw it up when she did, was jaundiced, and how she spent the last two weeks of her life in the hospital with tubes stuck down her throat, tethered to vials and bags and machines. I had to be reminded of what a radiant smile she had, especially considering how rarely I saw it any time in the last several months.
Perhaps the worst thing about losing someone you love dearly is the way that death transforms every vestige of that love into a stabbing little knife. She died Saturday night and it was Friday before I made it a full day without breaking down at least once. I keep seeing the artifacts in my life that prove I had a mother who cared for me and cared about me. Over the years she bought me books, clothing, jewelry, shoes, and more, and she sent me cards. I can barely stand to look at any of them. I could barely stand to go to her house just after she died, in search of a book with a poem she wanted read at her funeral. I saw a can of caramel frosting in her kitchen there and I knew why she'd bought it. She delighted in making cakes for our birthdays -- mine, my brother's, his wife and his kids, my stepbrother and his wife... She bought the frosting fully intending to make someone a caramel cake. She bought it because she loved us.
It's still there on the kitchen shelf. I remember her apologizing for having to ask my stepfather to run to the store to get me a cake from their bakery for my birthday in August. She just hated that she felt too weak and sick to do it right and make it herself.
It's almost as though the day is full of minor missiles. You never know when the next one will hit, from where it will come, or how much damage it will do when it hits. For instance, I have two jars of applesauce in my refrigerator as I type this. My mother made the applesauce and canned it herself, and I'm loathe to eat it because there will never be any more. When I went to her house I saw the last green beans she canned, still in their jars lined up on a towel, there on the counter where she left them. We buried her in a yellow dress, wearing one of her favorite bracelets.
Minor things. They hurt.
Just before she died, and when we knew she would be dying soon, my partner and I left the hospital to get some supper. When we were leaving I found a makeup compact she left in my car one of the last time she rode in it. I cried so hard that I could barely stagger to my partner's car to hand it to him, and beg him to keep it until I could bear to look at it again. The day before that he had to hold me on the couch in our living room while I wept until I was screaming. And the night she did die (she died while I was watching Coraline in fact, after we came home after spending twelve hours at the hospital the day they removed the life support), after we received the news he asked me to turn off the light so he could hold me in our bed. I couldn't make it. I was reaching for the lamp when the weight of what had just happened truly hit me and I couldn't continue, so he had to hold me while I wept with the light burning.
And of course I would be remiss to not mention the visitation, which is a special kind of hell in which the deceased's loved ones are expected to shake hands and hug people and offer or accept comforting words while standing less than three feet away from a corpse in a box. I had to do that, and I had to do it while a dvd of our favorite pictures of our mother played on a large television screen, and while the music she had chosen, or someone had chosen, played and promised reunions in heaven some fine day. I stood there and shook hands and hugged people, standing next to my mother's dead body in a box, for two hours. The event drew a fine crowd but as they are wont to do, the event drew to a close... until I and my partner were the last people left and the dvd showed those pictures to no one, no one was there to be comforted by promises of the music. To be there, alone, about to abandon her the way everyone else already had, was perhaps the most pathetic, pitiful, and wretched experience I have ever been a party to. I will be able to relive it in exquisite detail any time I want.
I could tell you more, of course. I could tell you of how I'm certain I didn't call enough, didn't visit enough, didn't pay enough attention. I could tell you of what it was like to go in and have that final conversation, one-sided because by that point, she could barely squeeze your hand and speaking was already a skill beyond her grasp. I could tell you of the funeral. I could tell you about a lot of things, but this is already quite a long and wandering skein of words -- I'm known to chain the demons of my heart, if not my mind, in letters.
What it comes down to is the question posed by the Christmas card, which now resides in the wooden box I bought especially for the safekeeping of all the mementos of the fact that I was blessed for thirty-six years with a mother who loved me dearly and did her level best to do right by her children and by everyone else as well. A good woman, and a woman whose absence leaves the world a darker and colder place.
Son, where has the time gone?
Where did the time go? Thirty-six years. Thirty-six years I had my mother. At any given moment I knew where she was, I knew more or less what she was doing, and I knew that no matter what, no matter how badly I screwed up, no matter what went wrong in my life there was someone, somewhere, who would help. She would have advice. She would have suggestions, she would have, if push came to shove, a place for me to go if there was nowhere else in all the world left for me.
She died a week ago at 12:43AM, Sunday morning, October 23 and last night at 12:43 I lit a candle. I placed it in a stained glass lantern in my bedroom and let it burn until it at last winked out.
Where did the time go? A candle burned down. A life burned down until it too at last winked out. It was a long time coming but it's not as though that makes it any better. It makes it worse in some ways, because I remember these last few months in which she had no energy, no appetite, had to be forced to eat and threw it up when she did, was jaundiced, and how she spent the last two weeks of her life in the hospital with tubes stuck down her throat, tethered to vials and bags and machines. I had to be reminded of what a radiant smile she had, especially considering how rarely I saw it any time in the last several months.
Perhaps the worst thing about losing someone you love dearly is the way that death transforms every vestige of that love into a stabbing little knife. She died Saturday night and it was Friday before I made it a full day without breaking down at least once. I keep seeing the artifacts in my life that prove I had a mother who cared for me and cared about me. Over the years she bought me books, clothing, jewelry, shoes, and more, and she sent me cards. I can barely stand to look at any of them. I could barely stand to go to her house just after she died, in search of a book with a poem she wanted read at her funeral. I saw a can of caramel frosting in her kitchen there and I knew why she'd bought it. She delighted in making cakes for our birthdays -- mine, my brother's, his wife and his kids, my stepbrother and his wife... She bought the frosting fully intending to make someone a caramel cake. She bought it because she loved us.
It's still there on the kitchen shelf. I remember her apologizing for having to ask my stepfather to run to the store to get me a cake from their bakery for my birthday in August. She just hated that she felt too weak and sick to do it right and make it herself.
It's almost as though the day is full of minor missiles. You never know when the next one will hit, from where it will come, or how much damage it will do when it hits. For instance, I have two jars of applesauce in my refrigerator as I type this. My mother made the applesauce and canned it herself, and I'm loathe to eat it because there will never be any more. When I went to her house I saw the last green beans she canned, still in their jars lined up on a towel, there on the counter where she left them. We buried her in a yellow dress, wearing one of her favorite bracelets.
Minor things. They hurt.
Just before she died, and when we knew she would be dying soon, my partner and I left the hospital to get some supper. When we were leaving I found a makeup compact she left in my car one of the last time she rode in it. I cried so hard that I could barely stagger to my partner's car to hand it to him, and beg him to keep it until I could bear to look at it again. The day before that he had to hold me on the couch in our living room while I wept until I was screaming. And the night she did die (she died while I was watching Coraline in fact, after we came home after spending twelve hours at the hospital the day they removed the life support), after we received the news he asked me to turn off the light so he could hold me in our bed. I couldn't make it. I was reaching for the lamp when the weight of what had just happened truly hit me and I couldn't continue, so he had to hold me while I wept with the light burning.
And of course I would be remiss to not mention the visitation, which is a special kind of hell in which the deceased's loved ones are expected to shake hands and hug people and offer or accept comforting words while standing less than three feet away from a corpse in a box. I had to do that, and I had to do it while a dvd of our favorite pictures of our mother played on a large television screen, and while the music she had chosen, or someone had chosen, played and promised reunions in heaven some fine day. I stood there and shook hands and hugged people, standing next to my mother's dead body in a box, for two hours. The event drew a fine crowd but as they are wont to do, the event drew to a close... until I and my partner were the last people left and the dvd showed those pictures to no one, no one was there to be comforted by promises of the music. To be there, alone, about to abandon her the way everyone else already had, was perhaps the most pathetic, pitiful, and wretched experience I have ever been a party to. I will be able to relive it in exquisite detail any time I want.
I could tell you more, of course. I could tell you of how I'm certain I didn't call enough, didn't visit enough, didn't pay enough attention. I could tell you of what it was like to go in and have that final conversation, one-sided because by that point, she could barely squeeze your hand and speaking was already a skill beyond her grasp. I could tell you of the funeral. I could tell you about a lot of things, but this is already quite a long and wandering skein of words -- I'm known to chain the demons of my heart, if not my mind, in letters.
What it comes down to is the question posed by the Christmas card, which now resides in the wooden box I bought especially for the safekeeping of all the mementos of the fact that I was blessed for thirty-six years with a mother who loved me dearly and did her level best to do right by her children and by everyone else as well. A good woman, and a woman whose absence leaves the world a darker and colder place.
Son, where has the time gone?
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