Mom loved birds. All sorts. Some of the plainest and most
common she called LBBs, or Little Brown Birds. I have always loved that she
made something special and lovely out of the ordinary. That is what she always
did—with birds, with her gardens, with people, with me. She taught me to bloom
where I am planted, that I can learn something from any place or space that I
find myself in. She taught me that when I felt too much, or became overwhelmed
by all the bad and terrible things in the world, that all I needed to do was to
make my own nest, and work on small things—in my home, with my people, in my
community. She taught me that small changes, small things done with great care
and love, had an impact on the world. She was an amazing woman, and she taught us
well.
We had our tough times, Mom and I, but I’m fairly certain
that one of the reasons I exasperated her so much is that she and I were of
similar mind, and by that I mean stubborn and independent. She used to tell me,
in my more trying moments, “I hope you have a child just like you!” and in
2003, when my second child was a year old, I asked her, “Is it possible I could
have TWO children just like me?” There was a long pause, and then she said
(with something like glee), “Oh, yes. Yes it is.” And she should know. Because
she had five children, just like her.
But as infuriating as I may have been, she encouraged that
independence. When I was in preschool, I decided I was old enough to walk the
several blocks to school by myself. I do not remember if I snuck away or if she
told me I could go, but I set off on my own. It was only as I went to cross the
street and looked both ways that I realized she was following me. She left
enough of a distance that I could feel independent, but was close enough that
she could save me if she needed to. She has always been my safety net, always
the one I’ve come home to, always the one to comfort. So it was a great honor
for me, in her last days, to be able to help comfort her.
At 4:09 p.m. on Friday, March 25th, 2016, one day
after her 58th anniversary of marriage to Dad, Mom quietly died. It
had been a busy few days; she had come home for good from the hospital only on
Wednesday, her last wish to be at home. That day, my sister Cheryl tells me,
she stared out her front window for hours from the hospital bed set up in the
living room. Visitors came and went, there were bites of homemade pudding and
strawberry and saltine cracker. And there was waiting.
Even when a death is impending and expected, even when the
last few months or years of life have been full of pain, when it suddenly
starts happening in earnest, when the focus becomes getting busy dying instead
of getting busy living, it all seems too sudden and fast. In the last three
weeks, I felt my mother’s rapid decline and started grasping, gasping,
desperate to keep her close.
Birth, living, loving, dying, death. They are all messy and
natural and mundane, and yet feel like they should be so much more important.
How dare the world continue to go on as if nothing is wrong when I am losing my
mother? I will never again smell the hollow of her neck that I associate with
comfort; never hear her say, “I love you,” or “Oh, for fun!” with a clap of her
arthritic hands when she finds something particularly enjoyable. I tally the losses,
all the little things I wish I’d realized were for the last time, and I find
myself mildly insulted that her garden hadn’t violated every law of nature and
exploded with blooms a month or two early, just for her.
My mother taught us, all of us, about unconditional love.
She taught us both in word and in action that people are who they are and are
worthy of love regardless of their imperfections. She taught gentleness, but
was the fiercest mama bear, and we, all of her children, learned from that, and
our children, her grandchildren, may or may not appreciate it. She was a
matriarch who ruled with a wide open heart and knotted apron strings, who
taught us well and then let us find our own wings to fly, even when those wings
took us in a direction she’d rather we not have gone—and then, even then, she
loved us anyway.
I have said, and heard this echoed by my sisters, that I
want to be exactly like my mom when I grow up. I feel so lucky to have called
her friend in my adult years, although the road there was rocky. Her love of
flowers, trees, and all things nature (except for squirrels) is something she
passed on, as well. I will always feel most at peace with my hands or feet in
the dirt, smelling soil rich with life and potential, coaxing plants from seed
or bulb.
Last Friday morning didn’t feel special. We all ate
breakfast, I rubbed Mama with essential oils, gave her medication and sponged
her mouth out with lemon water. She had visitors in and out, and the hospice
nurse, and then the bath aide came, for a “spit and polish.” They left, and Dad
and Cheryl went out for groceries and tulips.
Mom died not fifteen minutes later. It was so quiet, and
gentle, and unexceptional, the leaving of this exceptional woman. A deep
breath, and then another, and then no more. I held her in my arms, told her she
was loved, and let her go, my head on her chest, listening to her generous
heart beat its last beats. And then I smelled that spot at the hollow of her
throat, and I rubbed her down with oil and tears and so much love.
I am my mother’s daughter. I am reminded of this every time
I look in the mirror, every time I hold my children close, every time I dig in
the dirt or feel too much or bake a loaf of bread. I am my mother’s daughter,
and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I do not share the same beliefs as most of the members of my
family, but I do know that my mother lives on—in her progeny, in her gardens,
in her teachings; in the love she shared with my father. And I have found great
comfort in the words of writer and performer Aaron Freeman, who states,
“You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the
physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so
they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to
remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no
energy is created in the universe and none is destroyed. You want your mother
to know that all your energy, every vibration, every BTU of heat, every wave of
every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You
want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid the energies of the
cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
And at one point, you’d hope that the physicist would step
down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and
tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the
particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your
hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off you like children,
their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a
loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced
from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those
photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged
neurons whose energy will go on forever.
And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much
of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves
with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that
flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even
as we who mourn continue in the heat of our own lives.
And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you...that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound, and that they'll be comforted to know your energy is still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone. You're just less orderly."
