The Scent of Honeysuckle

I walk down the street in my neighborhood when I’m stopped in my tracks by the scent of honeysuckle. Suddenly I am that magical age of six, running through the secret passage between a honeysuckle hedge and neighbor’s fence back in Murray, Kentucky. Honeysuckle always does that to me, but these days, in Chicagoland, the scent of honeysuckle is much more elusive. Most of the varieties of honeysuckle that grow this far north aren’t fragrant, though I occasionally catch a drift of the scent.

I think about other gardens I’ve been in throughout the years. Last summer we spent 10 days in a house on a cliff on the coast of Spain. The garden was filled with edenic trees: orange and lemon, honeysuckle, jasmine. In the thick night air the fragrances would come alive, particularly the jasmine, whose potent, exotic fragrance transported me to places I’d never been. Every night I would go out to the garden to drink in the fragrance, hoping it would somehow stay with me. In some ways the memory of it did help to pass the long, bitterly cold winter that followed. Scents have a way of transporting us back to distant memories in a way that no

other sense does. But it’s also the most difficult to conjure; while we can bring up images or sounds in our minds, it’s much more difficult to bring up scents. But as I walk down the street drinking in the fragrance of an early summer evening, I realize that while I can’t bring past fragrances to my nose, I can still remember the feeling they brought. Just remembering the jasmine brings me back to that garden in Nerja for a moment and I feel a deep-down gladness for having gotten to be there at one moment time.

Back to the present. We’re constantly in the process of reliving memories and adding new ones. I think about being in the yard with my daughter a few weeks ago. I was pushing her on the swing; she was laughing and I could sense in her that exhilarating swing feeling of flying and freedom. The last few blooming lilacs wafted over to us and filled the air for a moment. I drank it in, storing the scent in my memory bank. And it occurred to me that just maybe, decades from now, she’ll be walking down the street when the scent of lilac will bring her back to a perfect early summer day, flying high in a swing and laughing with her mom.

June 2014

Birthdays are always wistful

I'm getting ready for Nick's birthday, pulling out decorations, getting the gifts together to wrap, cleaning house.  This yearly ritual makes me feel so close to my mom and grandmother.  I'll put his gifts on the same bar/dining cart that my mom always used, that my parents received as a wedding gift.  I'll think of birthdays and Christmases we celebrated in Germany, and how Oma always put my gifts on her bar cart.  Those little details are a thread that goes through time and connects us all.

I'll use some of the same wooden birthday decorations that my mom used for my birthdays, as well as ones I bought for Nick's very first birthday.  I'll think of all the birthdays they were used for, including Alex's bittersweet first birthday, a month after my mom died.

Tonight my dad and I will stay up late doing last minute preparations.  We'll share stories and memories and analyze the past, present, and future.  We'll have a glass of port.  Someday that will be another tradition that I will remember and carry on.  I'll go to bed feeling blessed that my dad and I can share these moments, and that I have a dad who helps me find the meaning in all of it.

My mom would be over the moon proud of Nick for his love and understanding of history, culture, current events, and so on.  All the things she hoped I'd be interested in, he is passionate about.  So just now as I was leafing through the newest Winston Churchill biography, Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill, that I got for Nick as a birthday gift, all I could think was how much I hope that wherever her spirit is, she knows and sees and feels glad.

And just like every year, I cry a little bit at her loss and the memories.  They're cathartic tears.  In our everyday life there isn't the time or the need for tears anymore.  We've grown, and we've grown used to her absence.  We now get to choose the parts of her that we want our lives to reflect.  So a few times a year it feels really good to feel flooded by memories and emotion.

Tomorrow is Nick's birthday.  We'll miss my mom, but it will be ok and we'll have a terrific day.  I'm so grateful that she taught me how to make life meaningful, how to accept sadness, and how to celebrate with abundant joy.  Today I'll let myself feel a little sad, and tomorrow I'll wake up with joy in my heart as my son turns eleven years old.

Tea

In my tea cabinet, tucked away with the other teas, are several tea tins of loose tea that my mom had given me.  Recently a friend took one out and pointed to the expiration date - 2010!  Possibly not the sort of thing I should have sitting around in my cabinets.

Yet I can't toss the tea.  I think there's something comforting about opening the cabinet and seeing it there.  I think it's given me the feeling that she's going to come by and make herself a cup of tea (in the most complicated way involving two teapots that always drove me crazy, of course).

It's been six and a half years since my mom passed away.  It's long enough that life feels normal and the sadness isn't at the surface.  But for a little while longer, I'm going to let myself indulge in the feeling that I'm just waiting for her to arrive at the door and make herself a cup of tea.

Five Years

Today is the five year anniversary of my dad's phone call.  I remember it so clearly.  I remember almost every moment of those two days (was it really only two days?) so clearly.  I remember not wanting to leave the hospital, because it was my last link to her.  I remember wanting to think about her every second.  Which is good, because there was no escaping it.

For months after my mom died, I would wake up in the morning and the knowledge that she was gone was like a physical punch in the gut.  Every day it hit me - "Gone.  Gone."

For a few years I went through months- and even year-long phases of feeling a certain way.  I went through a phase of missing her and deeply regretting every minute not spent together, of feeling grief all over again anytime I went somewhere she would have loved, like Taltree Arboretum or the Japanese Garden in Hyde Park.  My anger at her loss from Nick and Alex's life was intense.  During that phase I also felt like I was understanding her more and more by the day.

I went through feeling guilty and angry with myself for not cherishing our time together more, for being critical when I didn't need to be, for not always understanding where she was coming from.  At the same time, I had this realization that I never would have allowed myself to fully see her side while she was alive.  I think that's the curse of many mother-daughter relationships.

I went through a phase of being angry with the world - angry at anyone who hadn't seemed compassionate enough, understanding enough, sympathetic enough.  That anger could often be irrational, and I mostly bottled it up and felt bitter.  And I felt (and continue to feel) incredibly grateful for those friends (and sometimes people I hardly knew) who got it, who made me feel loved, and  who validated my grief.  I'm still amazed at the people who hadn't been through a similar loss and yet had such deep empathy.

And I went through a phase of being angry with my mom, for all of the regrets of our relationship.  It was like the flip side of the coin to my anger with myself.

And then all of those feelings, the hard-core grief, the anger and the resentments, began to fade.  We were in the "new normal".  The missing her isn't so raw anymore.  It's always there, but life actually feels normal again.

Family History and Complicated Feelings

    I never would have guessed the degree to which my relationship with my mom would continue to grow after she was gone.  I constantly understand new things about her - things I don't think I ever would have understood while she was still alive.  I needed some distance.  It's ironic and a bit sad, but also likely common and inevitable.

    I avoid books and films about World War II.  My family history and my mom's identity are all wrapped up in the war, and I'm not ready to go there yet.  There are feelings that for now I still need to put in a box; feelings about Germany; family; history; family history; German history.  It all feels complicated and overpowering and frightening.

    While I've gained understanding of my mom these past 4 1/2 years, I haven't thought that deeply about her mom, my Oma.  I think about her often and fondly, and I cherish the memories of bringing Nick to see her.  But I don't spend a lot of time trying to figure out who she was beyond being my grandmother, or analyzing her actions and her life.  Possibly I need this time to "be" with my mom, or maybe those thoughts are also in that box.

    Tonight, though, I was hit with all sorts of emotion.  I'm reading a novel about a private detective in 1930s London, and the main character is in the midst of figuring out who a young man is - a young man who was a soldier in the First World War.  Various characters describe the horrors of the war and the personal aftermath for the boys (they were just boys!) who fought.  Suddenly it was as though I could see my 20-year-old grandmother and her beloved fiancee; what he must have felt in the fighter plane; how it must have been hearing the news of his death; how those feelings could have led her to fall in love with - or at least form an attachment to - his best friend.  That series of events created our family.

    As I write, I realize that part of what makes it hard to confront family history is that it's my mom who used to discuss it and analyze it.  She made sense of everything and answered my questions.  I've absorbed so much of my mom over these years; maybe I'm afraid of absorbing these complicated things.  Or maybe I'm afraid that I just can't figure it all out on my own.  How do you come to terms with so many things without the person who made sense of them for you?

Identity

Since my mom died, I have struggled a lot with identity.  I've always had identity issues.  I've always tried to figure out who I am and where I fit in.  With the loss of my mother, these identity issues were intensified.  Suddenly the words daughter and granddaughter (my mom and grandmother died within 35 days of each other) meant something different than they had before.  Suddenly I felt like I needed to be something different than I was before.

How I felt was like a kite whose string has been broken.  My mom anchored me in so many ways.  She guided me (usually more than I wanted her to).  She was a Grandmother in every sense of the word to my kids.  She was a tie to family history.  She was someone I could fall back on.  She was loving and hands-on with the kids.  Meanwhile my grandmother was someone with whom I'd always been extremely close, who had good advice about my kids, who shared with me many of her own joys and sorrows about life, and parenting, and growing old.  She also shaped the German side of me; because I had her, I felt truly German.  These two women shaped who I am and how I live my life.  Their presence was always there.

I guess the key is to figuring out how to still be all the things I was before without them here anymore.

We are well into Year 2 of Life Without Omi.  There has been a palpable change in the nature of my grieving since the anniversary of her death, as I sensed there would be.  Now that I have a little distance I've been thinking a lot about that first year, and especially the first few days/weeks/months.

For the first few weeks, it was as if I was living in a haze.  Her loss was there with every breath I took and word I uttered.  I started watching TV as I fell asleep to anesthetize my mind.  I woke up every morning feeling like I'd just had a load of bricks dropped on me.  My first thought every morning was, "She's gone.  Oh my God, she is gone."

Everything felt hard.  Taking care of our daily lives felt hard.  For the first two weeks I had a lot to occupy my mind: phone calls to make, funeral planning to be done, the obituary to write, my eulogy to work on, plans to make with out-of-town friends coming to her memorial service.  I was deeply present for all of this, but at the same time I felt like I was floating.

I also felt very alone, especially after the memorial service.  I had a few close friends who really took care of me, but overall I felt very alone and isolated.  In fact, isolation was one of my main themes that first year.  Brian happened to be in the busiest few months of his entire career between teaching, coaching, and a grad school class that had double the workload of any other class.  Plus he runs the homework center and sits on the school improvement team, which meets frequently.  My dad left for a two-month-long trip, which I actually felt was very good for him to do.  But it left me feeling extremely alone and isolated.

In part because of the isolation, I felt extremely angry.  At the time I felt extremely resentful of anyone who did not seem to care or reach out to me in the way I felt should have been proper.  My mom happened to be one of those people who insist on going above and beyond to help others, so I felt especially hurt and angry that not too many people did the same for me.  At the same time I felt grateful to the friends I had who rallied around me and showed me support, helped with the kids, and grieved with me.  These friends will always have a special place in my heart; I will always be grateful to them for keeping me from sinking too deeply into my grief.

Looking back, I don't know if I would have been less angry if I had felt less isolated.  Anger is a stage of grieving; I just didn't see the forest for the trees.  I believed my anger was the result of specific situations; I didn't realize it was because of my mom's death, as crazy as that sounds.  In fact, I felt very shocked that I accepted it so quickly.  I didn't try to bargain; there was never a second when I didn't believe it was true; I didn't blame the doctor who possibly (probably?) made the mistake that killed my mom.  So I didn't think I was angry about her loss, just sad.  I think that's a protective mechanism.  To have felt that anger directly about her death would have put me over the edge, so instead I took it out on other people and situations.  The only truth I know is that grief is a complex, living thing, and the only way through is time.