Time in a Bottle

 “There is a sacredness in tears.  They are not a mark of weakness, but of power.  They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues.  They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition and of unspeakable love.”       –Washington Irving

For Christmas, my daughter, Alecia gave me a Tear Bottle.  Deeply touched by its beauty and symbolism, I was curious about the origin of this unique gift.  I discovered that they were prevalent in ancient Egypt and Rome, where mourners would collect their tears and bury them with loved ones to show honor and devotion.  They re-appeared during the 19^th century Victorian era, when tears were collected in bottles with special stoppers.  It was believed that once the tears evaporated, the mourning period could end.  

As the final days of this year slip away, I think that the Tear Bottle is the perfect symbol for 2010.  In an earlier blog, I deemed this the Year of Loss for our family.  Losing our mother was devastating,

and probably the worst of a year that will forever be remembered as one of the most difficult and challenging of our lives.

Loss has taken its toll. What we know now about the indignities of dying and the loneliness of grief has changed who we are; as individuals and as a family.  At Easter, we gathered for the first holiday since our mother’s death.  A family friend commented to my sister that she could hardly bear seeing the pain on all our faces.  On Christmas Day, I saw that same pain on the face of my sister-in-law, Wendy.  You see, she is reeling from the death of her father just three weeks ago….the waning year's final insult.   

I long for some ritual to help me bid farewell to 2010; sending it off into oblivion with all the drama and emotion it deserves.  Secretly, I still like to imagine that this year might have been just a bad dream. 

In the incredible mind-bending film, Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio uses a spinning top to distinguish dreams from reality.   For me, the Tear Bottle is my talisman. It commemorates the reality of this year’s journey, my dreams for what lies ahead, and all the tears that have been shed along the way.

Longing for Home

I'm dreaming tonight of a place I love
Even more then I usually do
And although I know it's a long road back
I promise you

I'll be home for Christmas
You can count on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents under the tree

Christmas Eve will find me
Where the love light gleams
I'll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams

Dreaming of Mom (my Christmas Angel) and home....

Days of Future Past

“Our memories are the only paradise from which
 we can never be expelled.”

It feels like she has been gone longer, but we have just passed the nine month mark…and tomorrow will be a melancholy Thanksgiving Day for our family.


It is still hard to imagine that my beautiful mother, dressed in her casually elegant style will never again arrive slightly frazzled; relieved at having survived the harrowing drive through city traffic. She will never again unload enough food from her trunk to feed Pharaoh and his army. She won’t sit with each of us through the course of the day, asking and listening; living a little vicariously through our stories and adventures.


She won’t be there to bask with us in the delicious once-a-year smells that signal our homage to tradition. We won’t pass around my sister’s picture books, reminiscing about time and people now gone. And without her, who will insist that we all gather in a circle to share what we are most thankful for?


A year ago, we came together at my brother’s home for what would be our last Thanksgiving with her. It was also the day I should have realized she was dying (denial trumped by hope). The moment I walked into the house, I was ushered to the back bathroom where my visibly shaken sisters were trying to fix my mother’s hair and put some make-up on her ashen, hollow face. She was struggling to breathe, and while we tried our best to move through the motions of the day, the air was heavy with fear and concern.


Sadly, we won’t be together this Thanksgiving. Perhaps we are still feeling a little lost as we continue to ponder our new roles within our forever-changed family. I long for someone to lead us, but it isn't time. Maybe we have convinced ourselves that our sadness entitles us to this limbo. For now at least, we have chosen to honor our grief over our mother’s memory.


So my Dad is going to join my two sisters. My brother is driving his family to California. For me and my husband, our blended family of eight daughters, their men and a grandbaby will put us in the center of our own Thanksgiving.


My oldest daughter, Joni Rose, trying to ease the stress and sadness of this day for me, offered early on to host. She wants to cook her first turkey. Of course, she has her own ideas of what she wants the day to be. Casual wear and comfortable shoes will replace high fashion and high heels. An open house and buffet table will replace our formal sit-down dinner. Friends and extended family will most likely come and go throughout the day.


She has also told me that she does not want us to sit around in a circle to share what we are thankful for. But even without the circle, my list of thankfuls is long. I might not be able to say it out loud tomorrow, but I am so thankful for the precious memories of the family we used to be. And I will stay hopeful for the family we can become.

Lost in Eugene

Some people have an amazing sense of direction. Without a landmark (mountains, ocean, buildings) to gauge their whereabouts, they possess an internal compass. They relish the adventure of finding new places, not quite sure where to turn next, but confident that their destination is patiently waiting for them to arrive.


Others can’t find a place they have been to ten times with a map, directions, and a GPS. (My husband would prefer I not divulge which one describes him here)


On this particular Saturday morning, I know exactly where to go. This is my second visit in four months and I have visualized the road and our journey many times before today. I am behind the wheel of the shiny silver Camaro my daughter Joni Rose insisted we rent to drive the scenic miles ahead. We are excitedly on our way to the Oregon coast…or so I think. My aunt Judy is going to meet us at her beach house later, as Joni and I have a little boutique shopping to do first.


I can’t wait to show my oldest daughter the breath-taking green forests, foggy cliffs and crashing surf of the Northwest Pacific. I follow the winding road from Judy's house through the trees, down the hill and turn onto the main road to begin our adventure. Joni and I are talking and all of a sudden I realize…I AM LOST!


None of the roads look familiar and the way I have mapped in my mind is very wrong! At first I feel stupid, as this is shocking to my directional superiority (yeah, I’m that one) and then I get anxious. I have NO idea where to go and it throws me into a slight panic. Joni is trying to be calm (we have no map) and I am wracking my brain trying to remember how I got the directions so wrong, how I could have made this mistake, and what the hell I should do next.


In that moment, my cell phone rings….it is Judy. “Angie, are you okay?” she says sounding slightly worried. “No, I’m not. “I am quite lost” I tell her. “What?” She is surprised. “I have no idea where I am and which way to go!” I confess.


As she calmly talks me through my navigational faux pas (I was headed in the exact opposite direction), the scenery starts to look familiar again. Joni whispers over our conversation, “Why did SHE call? I look confused. “Why did SHE call US?” I ask Judy, and she says something about the last gas station before Florence. I look down. The gauge reads half a tank, and my heart has stopped pounding. ”See you at the beach” Judy says and the call is over.


“Don’t you think that was strange?” Joni asks. “Why did she call at that exact moment? And how did she know we were lost”?


Later, at the beach house, I ask Judy about it. She tells me that she doesn’t really know what made her call; she just felt that something wasn’t right, and she dialed my cell phone instinctively. She said her first thought was, “This is stupid…they just barely left. “And”, she said “Angie will think I am being a Mother Hen”.


Her words pierce something inside me, and I blink back tears. It is a sign.


Throughout my life, I’ve had many days of feeling lost and alone. How often my phone would ring with my Mother on the other end. She would explain she had been thinking about me and somehow sensed I was struggling and maybe needed someone to talk to. It felt like she was tuned in to my soul.


I stand in Judy’s kitchen wondering if it is possible that Mom somehow transferred her loving intuition to the one woman in my life she knew would carry on for her.


A mother hen? Surely she knows how much I still need one.

End of the Innocence

I don’t know when it happened…that moment I realized I would be okay. All I know is that gradually it has become easier to breath, to sleep, to laugh, to feel.. I’m still not as brave as before, but I have picked up my dreams and am again making plans for the future.


But only after days and days, and nights of something else. My mother’s death was the beginning of a journey with no destination…only the slogging will to make it through the day and then tomorrow, and the next day, and then the next.

After the public rituals of grief were over and friends and relatives retreated to their own lives, I returned to mine forever altered. The sun hiding behind a cloud; the world around me was suddenly moving at a different pace. I was quite certain it was being powered by society’s oblivion to anything meaningful.

I was sure part of me had died as well.

I would awake each morning unsure whether I could do all that was still expected… empty, heartsick, emotionally exhausted. I mistakenly thought that returning to work would be best (not)! Five days a week spent shoving down my feelings, pretending to be normal…really? Struggling to remember things, to complete simple tasks, I couldn’t make even easy decisions. By the end of the day, I was fighting back tears, and grief was waiting in the parking lot to envelope me again. Sleep was the only reprieve, but until a few weeks ago, I couldn’t remember the last time I slept through the night.

Since her death, I have carefully avoided places my Mom and I last went together. Minefields of blue pain; they were (and still are) not to be disturbed. For months, venturing into public made me anxious… I would pray no one would speak to me. Crowds are still just cruel; all those people moving about and not one of them the person I so desperately long to see just one more time.

So much of the music I love, songs I shared with my mother, the soundtrack of my life, is still off limits. The piano sits silently, gathering dust. Last played for Mom on Christmas Eve, it is hard to imagine when I might ever walk by and feel like playing it again

My phone is ringing less now, but it used to sound every day with my Dad, the King of Pain, on the other end. I scramble to answer, aware that my loss is dwarfed by his loneliness. I want him to feel free to grieve with me. Listening to his desperation, I search for words that will comfort him for about 2 seconds after they leave my mouth. Worry and sadness weigh heavy as I shoulder the burdens of the oldest.

Yesterday I caught myself thinking that I need to call Mom this week, and for an instant I felt that old excitement until I remembered. I still lay in bed at night trying, in the darkness, to remember the sound of her voice. When my sister recently asked me how I felt about beginning the process of dispersing Mom’s stuff, I started shaking at the thought of even opening her closet. .

I have staggered through the darkness with the wind of loss and longing howling in my mind. I have dreaded, confronted and survived each painful anniversary during this First Year, and the most difficult ones are yet to come. I have been afraid and lonely, vulnerable and diminished. Against the storm, I carry a flickering candle that burns with memories of home, childhood, and the undying love of my mother and the family she left as her legacy.

Today is October 20…eight months since her death. Missing her even more than I ever imagined, it is my soul’s desire to keep my promises and make her proud.

I love you Mom…I am okay.

Sir Galahad and the Truth

I have tried three different times to write this story. There are reasons I couldn’t tell it until now. " You can’t have peace until you have all the pieces". Some of this story I knew; some of it I did not. Thanks, Judy for helping me with the rest.


Even as a little girl, I knew my mother and grandmother didn’t get along. I overheard painful conversations between my parents often followed by mom crying on the bed. Living only a few hundred yards from her mother-in-law, Mom was sure our lives and activities were constantly being scrutinized, judged and ridiculed. My opinionated, feisty grandmother did little to contradict these fears, and over time, the air became thick with misunderstanding and mutual distrust.


My grandmother’s family parties filled my mother with dread for weeks in advance. Positive she would be greeted with only cool disregard; she became almost physically ill. I was relieved for her when they were over.


For 30 years, my grandmother played the grand dame, keeping her daughters close, with my mother always on the outside. In fairness, my mother’s hurt turned to bitterness, and she would set her jaw; unsmiling in an attempt to look dispassionate. It made her appear haughty, cold and unapproachable.


Oh, how it must have hurt her when, during one of our legendary arguments, I “ran away” to my grandparents for solace, blurting out all my mother’s alleged crimes against me for my grandmother to distribute as juicy family gossip. (Teenagers are arrogant and stupid, and for a time, I was their Queen)


Only after my grandmother and her iron influence had passed away, did my aunts begin to reach out to my mother. She cautiously accepted their invitations to shop and lunch. I believe she never completely abandoned the dreams of a 19-year old newlywed, so hopeful she had married into a family that would embrace and accept her.


Here’s what I didn’t know. Ironically, my grandmother had been treated as an outcast in my grandfather’s rigid and righteous family…always. Never seen as worthy, women in-laws were simply viewed as outlaws. Surprisingly, even the wife of my grandmother’s favorite son (not my dad) had often felt like an outsider! My mother was convinced that only she had been singled out for rejection…but this sad tradition of exclusion had been going on for generations.


When my dad told me he was having lunch with three of his four sisters and his only brother, I thought…how nice, they will visit, make awkward small talk and reminisce. I guess that is how the afternoon started. But at some point, my father decided to speak up. Finally, it was time….


He spoke of the hurts my mother had been too proud to confront when she was alive. He told them of her isolation and the years of desperate loneliness. While my mother tried to pretend that their acceptance and friendship was not important; he believes it would have changed her life...so do I. He asked how they could have ever pretended to care about him while treating his wife with such disdain.


They listened with their hearts. The sisters were anxious to try to explain my grandmother’s possible motives and their fear of her wrath or rejection. All shared their own perspectives and spoke openly of their regrets. There were apologies and many tears. In the end, Dad, the oldest, led his siblings to forgiveness and a hopeful new beginning.


For all he said and did that day, my dad is a Hero. He is my shining knight and I have never been more proud of his kind and quiet strength. As he described  this moving family gathering, we both wept for all that had been lost;  for my mother, for the years of heartache, and for the healing catharsis of truth.  

I like to imagine that she was there somehow; beaming as he finally found his voice…for both of them.

Loss after Loss

You may my glories and my state depose, but not my griefs. I am king of those.”
~ William Shakespeare


Come Friday, my girls and I will gather under my gazebo to celebrate what would have been their father’s 77th birthday. We will order take-out from his favorite Mexican restaurant and share memories precious to us. Their dad and hero died when they were just teenagers, and watching me cope with losing my mother has stirred up their pain and exposed their wounds again. In the last three weeks, they have each chosen to get a tattoo. Symbolic words and pictures of their loss are now and forever etched in their skin

Our family just passed the six-month anniversary of my mother’s death. But it is one year ago today that we really lost her. She never could fully recover from hours on a heart bypass machine, and the damage already done so many years before.. And during some of the most agonizing days of our lives, we have experienced other losses. If we were Chinese, it might be our Year of Loss:

My husband lost his job in June.

My youngest daughter, so triumphant in recovery, lost hers before that.

My husband and I lost our trip to Rome; at least for now.

My sister lost her boss and friend to retirement and shockingly, lost the opportunity to replace her. She also lost her sweet cat, Leo to old age.

My youngest sister lost what she thought was her dream job after a couple of nightmare months. She left discouraged and disgusted.

My brother lost his career’s passion to the company that was forced to surrender after 20 years. His wife is losing her father to lung cancer. He has stopped experimental treatment to enjoy whatever time he has left.

If mom was still alive, she would suffer our losses with us; sometimes taking them even harder than we did. She would listen to our despair and empathize as only she could. She would patiently talk us through the slings and arrows, and softly remind us that everything happens for a reason. She would tell us that we deserved whatever we were seeking...joy, resolution, victory, or peace.  She would then valiantly bear testimony to her belief that we would most surely find it.

If only she could be here when we did.

Humility 1, Hubris 0

There is a theory about the magic of 3’s. Supposedly you have to hear, see, or experience something three times for it to sink in; for it to become part of your consciousness. I can prove this theory with the extraordinary happenings of last Thursday…and I have witnesses.

To review:  It was August one year ago, almost to the day that I sat across from my Mother having “the” talk…the “what if you die” talk. I asked her to choose a sign, a way for her to let me know she was still around me if she did not survive the reconstructive heart surgery she was facing on the 25th. She was quiet for a few moments before choosing the mourning dove and its melancholy song.

I.

Fast forward to January. Eight of us have come to Florida, one month before Mom would leave us all. It is early, and my husband and I are alone on the pool deck, drinking our morning coffee. My escape from the agony of watching her decline is coming to an end, and I say to him, “I have to go home now and watch my mother die.” He points up. There is a mourning dove sitting on the wire above the yard. “She knows” he says.

II.

My father, husband and I are standing at my Mother’s grave.  I am feeling rather annoyed by this ritual as I feel only emptiness and silence here. We place flowers near the wreath and cherub that mark her place, still without a headstone. Suddenly, the mourning dove’s song fills the air. A butterfly begins flitting around us and settles on her grave. It flits away but returns with a partner. Now two butterflies are darting around the three of us, then lighting again on Mom’s grave. This happens for several minutes, and I ask out loud, “Why are they only landing here?"

III.

It is Thursday evening. I am sitting outside under our gazebo, having drinks with my sweetie. My brother calls and we chatter about our weekend plans. As I walk inside to fix another cocktail, the conversation goes where it often does now; to talk of Mom and the painful anniversaries of August. He tells me about chatting with my youngest sister over the internet in the wee hours the night before, and I remember that our middle sister’s blog had a time stamp after midnight that same night. I was awake as well, still haunted by the hope of last summer and the defeat we couldn’t see coming.

I complain to him that I haven’t heard a mourning dove for weeks and that I want more. The birdsong isn’t enough and lately there has been nothing, only quiet. I walk back outside. In that instant, a mourning dove begins singing. It is insistent, singing so loud my brother can hear it over the phone. It  is a different song than we have ever heard before. We marvel at the message our mother is sending, interrupting our conversation to say, “I’m here, I’m here…I’m HERE!” We hang up and the singing stops…just like that. I walk outside a few times after to listen…she is gone.

I know that the butterfly is symbolic of rebirth after death. But I didn’t know that in ancient Christian lore, the dove is a symbol for mother. Or that Gypsy folklore holds that mourning doves are messengers – singing of love to the living from the spirit world. In daughter lore, it is my magic 3.

I hear you Mom, Finally, I do.

Get Up, Stand UP!

For the last several months, our quiet middle class neighborhood has been under siege. The home next door was rented to a liar, his sourpuss wife and a couple of mongrel boys with skinhead haircuts. They proceeded to create a private junkyard, innundating the property with trucks, trailers, a boat, four-wheelers, a work van and a 30-foot dilapidated motor home parked on the front lawn! Yard maintenance was apparently a foreign concept, although bike ramps, blankets, trash and cigarette butts littered the dead grass. I was the first to confront Rich, a gangly, loud-mouth who couldn’t look me in the eyes when I said, “you don’t intend to park all of these vehicles here, do you?” He assured me that everything would be moved and rambled something about being nice, quiet neighbors. Thus began the Assault of the Transients, complete with more lies and a F*** You attitude that made me seethe every day

When they broke the fence between our homes moving their boat for the umpteenth time, I asked my son-in-law to access public records at the county to find out who owned the home. Shockingly, the four owners live only three blocks east of us; apparently oblivious in their beautifully manicured neighborhood.  That really ticked me off! After three drafts of my letter (the first including several profane, sarcastic phrases), I drilled down to a straightforward outline of each violation and a plea for action and compliance with basic neighborhood standards. I cc’d everyone on my street. I waited.

Imagine my elation when I discovered that the liar, his sourpuss wife and the mongrels were moving! Was my letter the last straw? Had some of my polite elderly neighbors called the city or the landlords to complain as well? Rich bragged that they had found a bigger, better house in some poor unsuspecting neighborhood on the other side of town…I had this vision of them driving away in their dirty, noisy diesel truck as the neighbors danced in the street with middle fingers waving in their rear view mirror…Oh joy, oh rapture!

Last evening, a young girl and her father knocked on my door. They came in response to my letter and they wanted to know how they could make amends. I invited them in. We accepted their apologies and came to a new understanding. They said that my letter would be helpful in the lawsuit that Rich is threatening. We exchanged phone numbers and they promised more thorough screening of potential new tenants.

Admittedly, I am feeling heady about the power of ONE. I channeled my disgust and anger by speaking out and standing up for my rights. My cocky bravado was tempered by a painful realization. The person who would enjoy this story most is not here to tell it to. My mother would relish the twists and turns of this politically-incorrect neighborhood saga. She would laugh with me at the ironies of Rich and Co. (they own a cleaning service?!) and we would bask together in the victorious resolution.

She would be proud of me…and that is what I miss the most.

More than Angels Watching Over Me

Losing my mother has made me question everything I believe about what happens when we die. In the first few weeks after she left us, I buried myself in books about grief and life after death. I stayed up late nights reading about famous psychic mediums making contact with the deceased. I devoured women’s tales of vivid dreams and visits from their dead mothers; I even plowed through scientific studies of NDE’s (Near Death Experiences). I wanted answers.

After five months without her, I only have more questions.

WHERE IS SHE? Is she in paradise or some other dimension? Was she transported to a far-away planet, or a world where indestructible spirit energy flies free?

Is she trying to keep her promise to show me signs of her continuing existence? Or like the girl in The Lovely Bones is she caught in “the in-between”? Perhaps she has not accepted her fate or learned the skills needed for this kind of communication. For my Dad’s sake, could her spirit be lingering in the home they shared? Was that her voice he heard calling him from the study? I hope so…

Maybe she is in the middle of a Peacock family reunion with her parents and the brother and sisters that went before. (I like to think she went in search of Bob with tales of our daughters and the father-longing that has colored their lives)

There is only one answer I can't accept: that all that is left of her is simply lying in the quaint Franklin cemetery next to the pine tree and her in-laws.

Wondering, waiting, hoping. I still believe she will come through…

The One Left Behind

My dad called me again yesterday in tears. He had just come home; walked in the door, and called out, “Dolly"? He knew no one would answer, but after 54 years of loving my mother, the rituals of familiarity still remain.

They met on a blind date...Dad enthralled by my mom's beauty and brains; Mom surely won over with Dad's kindness and shy worship of her. These may be just my impressions of how their dance began, but I know this: their love and companionship filled his life with joy and purpose. All the spaces she inhabited in his heart and home are now replaced by 24/7 loneliness.

Remember the melancholy song at the end of My Fair Lady?

I'm so used to hear her say
"Good morning" ev'ry day.
Her joys, her woes,
Her highs, her lows,
Are second nature to me now;
Like breathing out and breathing in.
I've grown accustomed to the trace
Of something in the air;
Accustomed to her face.

These days, Dad talks to a picture of my Mother he keeps on the kitchen table where she sat for their ritual morning discussions. He cries his way through my wedding video to see her sparkling and beautiful…and alive. The sound of her voice reading poetry is low and lyrical. He listens to the recorded funeral service where all of her children spoke in tribute about the Mother we knew.

He reads her journals, and I have to remind him that sometimes Mom wrote down feelings she didn't want to share outside the pages. Her journals began as records, then as railings. Sometimes bordering on sanctimonious about the shortcomings of those around her, she was sadly, most unforgiving of herself. In the months before she died, her writings had mellowed and are full of gratitude, forgiveness and love.

He is trying to find her, to hold on to what they were and to keep her with him until their reunion. He aches for her touch and wonders how long he will have to carry on alone. We all watch, helpless and hindered by broken hearts of our own.

Is this heaven?

It was the trip we talked about taking when my mother was well again. Now it would be a bittersweet journey for my Dad, my husband and me.. After years apart, my Dad would be reunited with his baby sister and see the Pacific ocean for the first time. My husband could finally meet the heroes he had been hearing so much about.. And I would reconnect with the aunt who was the idol of my childhood. All this happening against the backdrop of the stunningly beautiful Oregon Northwest and the beach at Seal Rock.

Since the first time I saw the ocean at 18, I have been a disciple of the waves. I cannot stay away from the water for very long, and during times when leaving the desert was not an option, I ached for the sounds and smells found only at the beach. The last time I tried to describe these feelings to my mother, she told me that she wanted to see the ocean with me. She wanted to see it through my eyes. I promised her we would go.

It is Sunday, Father’s Day and four months to the day since her death. Our party of five is standing on a beach that is unlike any I have ever witnessed. It is cloudy and dark. Fog is hovering over the water and an eerie mist is rising from the sand. I feel like I am in a dream. The wave’s mantra echoes everywhere and down the beach a cathedral of rocks has been bared by a rare low tide. Oh, how she would love this…

We have come to pay tribute to her; to bury our sacred capsule beneath part of a huge tree washed ashore and permanently anchored in the sand. A hole in the tree leaves a window to the ocean. We take turns digging silently and then stand in reverence with our regrets. As we walk away to the rocks towering in the mist, it starts to rain. I carry a glass cylinder with a picture of my mother inside. I will scramble to the top of a rock to throw it into the sea.

For all my efforts to find my mother since she went away, to feel her spirit, experience her energy or will her into my dreams, it was finally by the ocean that I felt closest to her. I believe it was her love and longing for us that created the ethereal landscape on the beach that day. Her essence was as tangible as the rocks we gathered as mementos.

As if any of us will ever forget….

Time in Wonderland

My three daughters and I escaped the city last weekend to initiate what we hope becomes a new tradition. We called it The Girlie Getaway. We didn’t plan anything other than to spend time together. We shared iPod music from Frank Sinatra to Lady Gaga. We polished toenails and French-braided hair. We soaked in the hot tub, cooked a big breakfast, gazed at stars (and planets) only visible in the mountains, got a little drunk and celebrated as the walls came down. Each brought something to contribute and I believe, something to leave behind as well.

Renting a weekend condo with No Boys Allowed was largely inspired by what didn’t ever happen between my mother, my two sisters and me. For all my presumed oldest-daughter closeness to my Mom, there is so much I didn’t know about her. Underneath her shoulds (there were many) and secrets, I like to imagine that she was a little more rebellious, a little less reserved, and a little more like me. I also imagine that my sisters and I could have forged deeper relationships with her and with each other if we could have spent time together; just the four of us. I am dealing now with who she wasn’t, and am haunted by questions I either never thought of or cared enough to ask her.

Unable to distinguish my motivations from epiphany or insanity at this point, I simply want my daughters to know me. I want us to feel safe together and to support and encourage each other. Most of all, I want them to know the unconditional love that my Mother was never able to fully grant me or my sisters.

As our foursome curled up for a Saturday matinee, I didn’t know how female-empowerment-appropriate our choice would be.  It was a beautiful version of  Alice in Wonderland. At one point Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter says to Alice, “You used to be much more..."much-ier." You've lost your much-ness.”

Oh, I know what it’s like to lose your much-ness...some of mine went with my Mother. But when I am around the amazing women in my life; my daughters or my sisters, I feel like I have a good chance of finding it again.

Goodbye again

She was in my dream last night; my beautiful Mother, with the voice I ache to hear, and the presence that filled my life and my heart whenever she was around. She was back in the hospital, and I was relishing the music of her voice as she was recounting the mundane things about her care and the hospital staff. Dad went to get her prescriptions. Next she became very sick, and then near death. As we began gathering around her, she was strangely lying face down in her hospital bed. She was unmoving, silent, and we were trying to decide if she was “gone”. All of a sudden, she miraculously rose and began walking around, completely healed.

She wanted me to help her find the doctor we had dubbed Drama Queen, a portly gray-haired man who had scared my mother into the surgery that I believe hastened her death.. Ironically, in real life he could only exhibit a lack of patience with her when she was most afraid, and with us whenever we challenged his God complex. When we found him in the dream, sitting in the lunchroom, I said to him, “You didn’t even realize she died, did you?” He looked up at us, and even though my mother was standing right beside me, I realized he couldn’t see her.

Next she and I were in the hall, and she was sitting in a chair, and I was kneeling in front of her, holding her hands. She said to me, “I am just not ready to leave all of you”. I said, “Mom, it’s okay” and I woke up.

With love I lied…it’s not okay, and in some ways, it will never be okay again. I swallow my tears, get up and off to work, and make a silent appointment to cry at the end of the day.

It was Enough

How do you celebrate Mother's Day without your Mother? Especially when she has only been gone for a short time, and you can't remember why you didn't realize that last year (when you only bothered to call and send a card) would be her last? Yes, it's only a Hallmark holiday, but my feelings of being orphaned are looming large. My daughters would be my salvation. They burst into my home with all their youthful energy, yummy food, cards and gifts. Andrea, the youngest reminds us of the reunion Mom is most certainly having with her mother after more than 50 years, and I weep at the thought. They present me with a beautiful Pandora bracelet that will be created over time with charms of love, experience, and remembrance.

But something shifted on Mother's Day. Two truths permeated my sadness. The first was this: My mother is never coming back. My head has known this for some time, but my heart finally surrendered to that reality. It sounds absurd, I know, but grief is awful and strange, exhausting and lonely and yes... absurd.

The second is this: My Mother loved me enough. She loved me with all she had until the end. As the oldest, I not only had her the longest; I was the first beneficiary of her hopes and dreams as a new mother, and later, she became my friend. But she wasn't just trying to love me through my mistakes, my misadventures, or even my triumphs. She was trying to love me enough to outlast her; to fill my heart with the love and strength I would need to live the rest of my life without her. Despite her childhood, the ghosts of poverty, anger, sadness, and years of quiet decline, she gave her whole heart to the cause..

It's up to me to pass on that spirit to my Joni Rose, Alecia, and Andrea; the kind that will outlast me, sustain them when it is my turn to say goodbye. I know now that I won't live forever. My mother was my buffer from that truth as well.

I have made so many mistakes, like my mother did, and in forgiving her, I must also forgive myself. But there is time to learn from my regrets and do better...for me, and for her.

Oh, how I long to hear her voice. I think this is what she would say if I could share my epiphanies with her: "Get on with it, Angie...I know you can do it!"

Singing in the Pain

With eight daughters ranging in age from 31 to 18, it is amazing that I am not yet a grandma. However, as of April 2, I have a new g-baby, albeit by marriage. Her name is Elijiah Scout (yeah, it’s weird) but we will call her Ellie. I don’t know what she will call me (my grandmother answered to Muzzie) but I will think of something original and appropriate to the politics of being the wife of the Grandpa.

My oldest daughter is still reeling emotionally from two miscarriages, and my heart aches for her when she talks about how everyone around her is pregnant. She is being confronted with the reality of wanting something she can’t get easily and she is used to getting what she wants. She isn’t spoiled, but she has high expectations for herself, and sees this as some failure or reflection of imperfection. I only know what an amazing mother she will be someday.

On the fringes of the ritual blessing of the g-baby, I find myself in a church; familiar with all the Sunday traditions of my childhood, making me miss my Mother and wondering if “this is the place” where I can find her, feel her, or perhaps, even please her just by being here. The organist is playing hymns I have played, and my heart starts to hurt. I instinctively grab the hymn book and sing in the voice of my mother; not the melody, but the harmony. I am 13 again, sitting by her on the piano bench, showing her the notes as she pecks out the alto part, repetition overcoming her lack of lessons. I realize singing the under-notes is symbolic. My mother loved the under-notes of life. She trained herself to hear what was below the surface. She could find the harmony while listening to your solo. Her beautiful voice is silent now, and I know the music will never sound the same..

Observations on a Friday

1. Thank God for Medicare (and supplemental insurance)! I am certain the devastation of losing my mother would have only been exacerbated had we been left with the $300k in medical bills she incurred trying to stay alive.

2.Thankfully, Obama (what a pompous ass) and Nancy Pelosi(wicked witch of the west) did NOT railroad their Gestapo healthcare reform too soon. My mother was at least able to access care vs. being deemed too old to waste resources on…(don’t even try to tell me this isn’t going to happen in the future)

3. It is good to believe in something. My father has seemed to avoid believing in anything for 78 years; Mom believed enough for both of them. Grieving my mother’s death, he is searching for answers and some proof that my Mother lives on. So can you only grow through pain and loss? I’m not sure, but it is heart-breaking and yet rather fascinating to watch. I have a friend who shared two of his favorite sayings with me (he has cancer): "Enlightenment is nothing more than the complete absence of resistance to what is" and "It's as easy to gain enlightenment by falling off a bar stool as through meditation."

4.I will leave letters and videos behind for my children.. After surgery in August, we lost pieces of my Mom’s lucidity, and she became more child-like with only glimpses of the funny, savvy, independent person she was before. During the last month of her life, she often was confused and scared, which haunts me still. It probably sounds stupid, but I longed for her to tell me that leaving us was going to be okay, that she had made peace with her imminent death. I wanted her to tell me how to grieve her, how to best honor her when she was gone. While she outlined her funeral plans and wrote some notes for her eulogy, I wanted a letter, a video, to hear her voice, her wisdom, and her love left for me in some tangible form.

Meeting in the Mists of Grief

He loved me before we ever met...at least that is what my husband tells me. He is a brave man, falling in love with me through an old-fashioned letter-writing courtship courtesy of a high-tech dating site, Match.com. Feeling safe enough to be my gregarious, opinionated, sarcastic self, I met my match in his super-smart, dreaming, tender heart. My mother said he was the best looking guy I had ever dated..."and that includes high school" and she knew before I did that he was the ONE. I think my mother must have sometimes been terrified that I would run him off (I had become quite good at that) and she was always an unabashed cheerleader for the relationship she knew would make me happy.

Now that she is gone, I wonder if my husband knows how much it meant to me for my mother to love him so. He can only hear my version of the relationship dramas that played out in the years before him. Thankfully, mom was never compelled to share with him the worries, disappointments, and frustrations she most surely endured watching me chase the wrong guys, all while being their wrong girl.

My husband's parents are still alive, even though they are older than my mother...I am envious, with no one to blame for what feels like an unfair circumstance. Consequently, he isn't in this place where pain and tears are constant companions; where days aren't measured by sales made or tasks accomplished, but by how all happenings great or small, are so lonely without my Mother to share them with.

So he listens to my cries and my regrets. I can't talk about the happy memories yet; those come later I assume. He tries to say the right thing, and I am quick to tell him when he has missed the mark. We are speaking a different language, living in the same house, on separate planets of emotion.

I love him for trying. I love him for the innocence he has that I no longer do. I know he has been with me for some of the worst days of my life, and that I won't run him off. I am so glad he knew my mother, and that she knew him. It has been two months since she died, and I know I will never be the same woman he fell in love with....he loves me anyway.

Listening for the Mourning Dove

Spring is painful this year. It has always been my favorite season, It was my mother's as well. She loved the symbolic promise of new beginnings, the rebirth of nature and the chance to once again work to beautify English-style flower gardens in her yard on the corner.

Through the dark cold fall and winter of my mother's open heart surgery, and her doomed fight to recover, she and I talked about where she would be in the spring. On the days when she fought to breathe, or was having her lungs drained...again, or when the fear in her eyes made mine fill with tears, I told her that I believed she would welcome this most glorious season with renewed health and a healed heart. I shared with her my vision of seeing her walking briskly through her neighborhood. It seemed to help us both.

Before her surgery, we devised signs that, if she didn't survive, would let me know she was still near. She immediately chose the mourning dove's song. (She also told me that she would try to move objects in my home that were tied to her in some way).

Spring has arrived today. The birds were singing louder than before outside my window this morning, chasing away the last signs of a freak snowstorm, and heralding the tulips as their heads peeked out of the wet dirt in my front yard. Mourning doves? Not yet. Moved objects? Only a picture of my mother that I moved to the counter to greet me when I walk in the door alone at the end of the day.

Wherever my mother is, I hope for her a spring rebirth that is free of all the infirmities and indignities of her last months on this earth. She deserves a spring more magnificent than anything imagined in this dimension. I will try to picture her walking briskly there, maybe with family or friends that went before.

I ache for her, and I will keep listening for the song of the mourning dove...

What Happens on Day 50?

I watched my mother die...we all did. Gathered around as she took her last breath, we witnessed the softening of her face as her struggle subsided, and wept as the battle was lost. Like soldiers, we are traumatized by the ravages of what can happen to the human body and we are joined by our longing for a peace that may never come.

A breast cancer survivor of 31 years, my beautiful mother fought to stay among us, determined to win once again as she had so many times before. It was not to be. Over the next days, weeks and beyond, I will write about her, my heart-broken father, my sibbies, my journey into the valley of grief, and my hopes for what is on the other side.

I will write about my husband, my daughters, a new g-baby, and about what happens on Day 50...