On a Tuesday morning last year, while on a coffee break, I went to the outgoing phone bank in my office (I was working in a call center and so could neither receive incoming lines use a cell phone), I called my father to check on my mother, who had been in the hospital with pneumonia contracted while under taking chemotherapy. My father told me he was glad I had called and that I should come home, but didn’t want to say why. I asked him if Mother had died and, after I repeated the question a few times, he said yes.
Okay, there’s the bare facts. I wrote about the aftermath here, if anyone gives a damn. Right now I just need to vent.
It’s been a hard year. It’s been frequently hard for me to keep my mind off my loss, not least because my job is a less than a five-minute drive from the cemetery where Mother is buried. I’m torn between thinking that I should go by there once a week at least to tend the grave, and thinking that doing so is neurotic, and not caring whether it’s neurotic or not. (I only go by once a month or so.)
Her grave is both a source of comfort and frustration for me. Comfort, because in a way I am glad Mother died when she did; she had been in torment for years – literally the entire life of her youngest grandchild, then aged eight–so her death in that sense was a blessing; it was the end of her suffering. But though the grave is the physical symbol of that bit of mercy, it is also vexing to stand there, because her coffin was placed within a steel vault–I presume to retard decay. I had found some comfort in the thought that Mother’s body would decay, because then it would become part of the Earth again, and thence part of flowers and worms and birds and cats and the rest of the food chain. That’s the only sort of immortality I believe in.
It’s hard to say where I am with the rest of the Rhymers at this point. Of my four full sisters, I have grown closer to my baby sister, which is no surprise; she’s always been my favorite person, and our shared grief has strengthed our connection. But one of my older sisters and I have grown more and more estranged as time has passed. We argued quite a bit during Mother’s final illness, and since her death she has grown as frustrated with what she sees as my apostasy as I have with what I see as her racism and narrowmindedness. We’ve gone from being each other’s best friend to barely talking, and this past weekend’s events (which I’ll write about another time) may have been the proverbial camel-crippling straw.
But there’s good stuff too. I had just begun dating one girl in particular when Mom died, and what I thought was going to be a typically Skald superficial and doomed relationship grew into much more, as my then-gf showed that, despite her bitchy persona, she loved me. We got married a few weeks ago. That’s both a happy and a sad thing. I wish Mother had met her.
Anyway, I just needed to vent. Thank you for your attention.
