I don’t remember what day my mother died. I remember needing to pick up my youngest child from PreK then heading to Baltimore to find our oldest. She was a freshman at Hopkins. That tells me what year it was, if I do the math.
I have a feeling that it might have been January. Or maybe February. We drove to the small town in Indiana where she had lived, close by my sister Barb. We were inundated with amazing home-cooked food from the parishioners of her husband’s Methodist church. It was the first time I had ever been the recipient of grief food: whole hams, chicken and noodles on mashed potatoes, oatmeal raisin cookies, breads, muffins, things to drink, entire bowls of fruit.
You could never doubt the miracle of the loaves and fishes if you had experienced Methodists in Lapel, Indiana.
I don’t remember what day my mother died but I remember visiting her when she was so, so ill and couldn’t even leave her bed. She could barely eat. We had to coax her to manage even a few mouthfuls. My sister did everything for my mother, even supplying her with piles and piles of old movies from the library that helped to distract her from her pain and fears.
At her memorial service my husband played improvised Celtic themes on a piano, tunes she had loved to hear him play on the harp. My oldest spoke - - I was so, so proud of her. Awed. My youngest was sad and confused, too young to remember much about a grandmother who had lived so far away.
“Why do Dad and Alice and Uncle Evan get to do something in the service but nobody asked me?”
My brother-in-law preached such a beautiful eulogy, made even more beautiful by the knowledge that my mother had been a truly difficult and demanding woman who was ever throwing a monkey wrench into his family’s plans and daily life. Yet he gave her such a gracious sendoff. She honestly did not deserve it but isn’t that what grace is all about?
No, I do not remember what day my mother died. I could Google it, I suppose, if it were truly necessary. Knowing the exact date is irrelevant to me because she died - - was dying - - over such a long stretch of time that one moment of it seems meaningless. And because my complicated feelings about who she was in my life mean that some things are distorted, blurred or omitted altogether.
Trauma can do that to you. If you have experienced that, you know what I mean.
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