I Miss My Mom

I miss my mom. And that's about all I have to say about that. I keep the flame alive that somehow if I just miss her right exactly just a certain way she'll come back. I hate this. And I can't stop it yet.

On the Leaving of the Parade

July 13 is a little tiny raft in the sea moored to the ocean floor. The fishing vessels and sailboats are passing by it as it recedes from my view, becoming smaller and smaller, less and less real, (if we are talking about the densely packed real my human limitations are capable of knowing).

I think I'll write badly, or overly maudlin or childish or spell things wrong. It won't matter. It's just me and you, blog. I'm tempted to say "it's just me and you, Mom, and pretend this site is something like sitting by a headstone and pouring your heart out to it. I can't do that if there is even a chance that someone else might read it, though. I can say this. The picture I call Mom Confidential and the Hands are really comforting for some reason. Miss you. I wish there was a sequence of letters I could write to bring you back. I'd spend every waking moment trying get it right. They broke the Enigma Machine's code, didn't they?

From Sheila. . .

So Sorry to hear about your mom. We are on vacation and I have only had time and access to the Internet. I know that it is hard to loose your mother no matter how old we are. Your mom was a great and very strong women. I can remember going to see you in high school and sitting at the kitchen counter with your mom. Sometimes she would make coffee and we would sit and talk for a half hour before I even got to you. Sometimes it was wonderful because my own mother wasn't always at her best while I was in high school. It was nice to know I had an adult who would listen and subtlety advise. I love the picture you posted on facebook.

It is a wonderful and happy picture and really seems to capture her.

This picture was taken of Sheila and Elyse about 1973, probably at the Hollywood Lane parade - the lady off to the left is my mom. She rarely attended any of our Notre Dame Band Color Guard events, so that's my story and I'm sticking to it! :)

"Wouldn't you be upset if you didn't see your mom for six hours?"

That question was put to me by a distraught Valerie when she was about 5 years old and had been taken to the beach by our neighbor Kevin Holland. For reasons lost to me now, they ended up being gone for quite a while longer than planned. It was dark when they got home, and even though Valerie knew Kevin and played with his son Mason all the time, she was upset and tearful.

The question is sweet in it's naivete and a window into a child's perception of time and space (I think my mother lived in Seabeck, Washington at the time) but today it really resonates in my heart. I've come to understand something lately, and that is the perception of our mother's presence. I didn't talk to my mother every day, or even every week. Several months would go by between visits. Neither my mom or I are phone chit-chatters. She didn't like her soap viewing time interrupted or calls at night after 7pm. She never learned to use e-mail. But somewhere, somehow inside of me there must have been a constant surrounding sense of her presence because now that it's gone, I feel the pain and emptiness that something very large and long that was there is not there anymore and really, I think I feel like Valerie did when it was late and dark and she was in unfamiliar surroundings and she couldn't reach out and touch me and she really didn't know where I was. I know I can't touch my mom anymore. I can't see her face again. It's dark and I don't really know where she is.

If there is a Heaven I know my mother is there. If there is a Heaven I would like to think I would go there too so I could see my mom again (and my dad, stepdad, grandparents (known to me and not known to me)well I guess everyone who has died before me that I've been curious about. But, I am still here on earth and I know religion is an abstraction I have struggled to come to terms with. I hope I see her again, but the pain is sharp now. Do other people feel as if their lost loved one should just be coming back home now after all the funeral distraction stuff is gone and silence is the only thing murmuring in my mind? I think I hear the creaking of the door! Is it my mom? I think I'll leave that question open for now.

I wish I could freeze time. It's been only two weeks since my mom passed away, but I have the unsettling feeling that she is drifting farther and farther away. I had the same feeling in June of 1992 after my dad died when we were taken by a boat outside Marina Del Rey to scatter his ashes, but in that situation we saw with our eyes the basket of ashes sinking, the bright red and pink flowers floating up, and the little group of birds that spontaneously circled around the flowers, floating with them like miniature feathered sentries.

Now that all the planning for her service, the exchanging of e-mails and scanning pictures has slowed down, a gray fog of emptiness has descended somewhere around my heart, or all over my "soul". I think of my soul as exactly that thing drawn on a chalkboard in first grade by my teacher, Sister Delores. Has any gringa other than me wondered if the name "Dolores" is meant as the Spanish word for pain or hurt, dolores? Catholics have never shied away from images of suffering in it's liturgy. Anyway, back to the soul thing. It was a rectangular diagram, slightly wider on top drawn with yellow chalk. She meant to illustrate "sin". She did it by scribbling all over the little soul diagram. She then told us about "confession". She picked up an eraser and erased the scribbled marks on the soul diagram to illustrate being cleansed of your sins. To this day I see that drawing when I think of my soul. Funny how those things are burned into our young minds when we are six years old and the subject is salvation.

I want to curl up like a pillbug and shut everything out.

My Mother's Day

The Church sits on a little rise facing the vast blue ocean. It seems to look over the busy freeway and clusters of roadside businesses and see only the sea and sky beyond, even beyond the horizon.

Our Lady of Fatima held the group inside. Friends, family and those who accompanied them filed into the foyer with pictures of my mom arranged on a table, exchanging hugs and quiet greetings. As I walked into the church, I was surprised to see so many people filling the pews, but I guess I shouldn't have been. Groups of Red Hat ladies, friends from Curves, co-workers of Brad, Wendy and Matt, cherished childhood friends since the days of Incarnation School; all reaffirming how special my mom really was.

This particular church reminded me of our parish St. Frances de Sales in Sherman Oaks, where Jeff Reed and I attended school until 1967. The two churches are notable for their simplicity. As a girl this bothered me. I really thought churches should resemble Notre Dame Cathedral, or if that wasn't possible, at least Saint Charles Borromeo, our neighboring parish in North Hollywood. Now, they seem just right, because they reflect the quality I had planned to talk about if I spoke, and coincidentally used by Gretchen in her wonderful remembrance, "she was not pretentious".That's how it seemed the tall mosaic of Our Lady in front of us was. Not pretentious. Calm. Sweet. Even her outstretched arms with upturned palms seemed soothing.

Thank you Father Ramos. Your words about the glittering Sea of Galilee and hills of the Holy Land that you had recently visited were inspiring. It meant so much that my mother's cousin Monsignor Gibson participated in the celebration of the Mass, as well as Julia and Uncle Bill. The music and voice were perfect. I know my mother loved them.
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I miss you so much, Mom. I really can't believe you're gone. My mind plays tricks on me. The thought, "I'll ask Mom" or "I'll tell Mom" pops into my thoughts so often, followed by a stab of pain. Today I had to catch myself as the words became audible. "I'll have to che--" Oh. No. I wonder if the person I said that to noticed. I knew this day would come, but at the same time tried to cling to the idea that it never would.

Now I live in the reality of the sweet sketch by Carol Burnett and Whoopie Goldberg in 1986. Mother and daughter through the years, gradually exchanging roles, but always the tender song and loving embrace as they said goodbye and I committed to memory:

"Where are you going?
Wish that I knew
You're off to wherever
May your dreams come true
Where is wherever?
We never will know
How can I ever let you go?"