A Long and Rambling Post

I'm looking back at old photos.  There are so many things I can see now that I wasn't able to see for many years.  I am surprised to find that even though my mom has died, our relationship, in a sense, continues to grow. I see new sides of her; I remember things she told me that I didn't necessarily hear at the time; I understand her more freely than I did while she was living.

What I see when I look at the old pictures is a happy, somewhat carefree (though I know she was always very disciplined), optimistic and bright young woman full of love for her family.  I have always had very happy memories of childhood, but my mom and I had some rough years when I was in high school and college, and those years unfortunately took years for us to recover from.  Either because of human nature or my personality, the rough patches somehow outshone the happy moments in my memory.

But after my mom died I was able to see her with greater clarity.  Almost immediately upon getting The phone call, I started to see my mom in the context of who she was - not as my mother, specifically, but who she was as a person.  They talk about "your life flashing before your eyes" when you have a terrifying experience; in this case I was losing my mom, and it was her life that was flashing before my eyes.

After my dad's dad (Opa) died, I remember my dad talking about reclaiming the memories of my grandfather in his prime.  The recent memories of my Opa were sad ones; he slowly grew old and senile and sick, over a period of many years, to the point where my vibrant, energetic grandfather was just a distant memory and not the person he was any longer.  But slowly over time, those images gave way to memories of Opa in his earlier years.  For some reason, that process came very quickly for me and I was flooded with incredibly memories of my mom from early on.

Our relationship had begun to grow stronger in recent years, but then all at once it was put to an end.  Because there is no looking forward, and because I am an analyzer by nature, the thing that is left for me to do is to look back.

Depending on my mood I see the good or I see the bad.  Thankfully it is most often the good that I see.  It's amazing how much can be learned about someone after they die, in some unlikely places.  For years I felt like my mom had

15 Years

I'm sitting in the living room, listening to the Out of Africa soundtrack, having a glass of wine, with candles lit.  This is my favorite room in the house, and also it's the room that feels like an homage to our families.  I used to think of it as the room that felt like my parents' living room, which is beautiful and has a very distinctive vibe that I love.  But actually it is a beautiful melding of both of our families.  Brian's grandparents' sofa, end tables, and arm chairs; my parents' walnut table with embedded stones that they bought when they married in 1969; the credenza Brian and I bought for our first house in Munster, which is my favorite piece of furniture; our record collection; my mom's coffee table books; the paintings by my great great aunt Erna; my favorite paintings from my grandmother's house; the cuckoo clock from the Schwartzwald that my sisters in law gave me for my 50th; and family pictures from both sides of the family.  Also three plants that I have managed to keep alive for multiple years, including a rubber plant from a Munster friend who we know through my dad's Brooklyn roots.  I saw a post from a few years ago about not wanting my house to be a museum of my parents' things.  This room feels like the thread tying it all together.  We will be empty nesters in just a few years and will likely be downsizing, and I realized this is the one room I'll probably miss the most.  It's also Brian's favorite spot for a Friday evening cocktail or Sunday morning coffee. 

15 years.  There is so much my mom missed.  Most of all, she missed getting to hear her daughter (ie me) say the words every mother hopes and deserves to hear: "Mom, I get it now."  My relationship is so different than mine was with my mom - it's so much easier, so much less drama.  Of course Alex isn't me as a teenager, and I'm not my mom.  I've tried to avoid making some of the same mistakes (although in doing so I have made different mistakes, which I suppose is the way of the world).  So much of what I resented about my mom in the past I now understand as an adult and as a parent.  When I was lighting candles tonight I flashed back to New Year's Eve when I was in my late teens or early 20s.  My mom, Oma, and I were at Rainer's apartment, and I really wanted to light candles in one of the beautiful candelabras our Tante Erna had made.  Oma said no, because the wax would be a pain to clean.  I was thoroughly bummed out because I wanted to make things at least a little bit festive.  My mom was caught in the middle - I could tell she really felt for me, and she was frustrated with her mom, but she didn't want to create stress with her mom.  At the time, I did understand that my mom felt bad for me.  But now I have the perspective of all three of us - I remember the feeling of being a teenager aching for more excitement and feelings lots of FOMO (which wasn't a word yet but was certainly a feeling), I know the feeling of being the daughter caught in the middle of wanting to appease both child and parent; and I understand the feeling of wanting to keep things simple and not wanting to add more work.  Even though I'm not yet (hopefully someday) a grandmother, I can only imagine how joyful but also taxing our visits must have been.

My mom has missed Alex's life - almost her whole life.  Thank God she at least got to meet her, but she never got to know Alex, and Alex never got to know her.  Even though she knew Nick, she missed out on all but 4 years of his life.  She never saw our new house.  She also missed on these dark days of hate and divisiveness of our country.  She was an immigrant, and she advocated for immigrants' rights in what seems now like a very calm era.  She knew that her experience as a white immigrant from Germany was worlds away from what it would be if she came from a different part of the world.  Before "white privilege" was part of everyday vocabulary, she understood that she had it.  All the hateful rhetoric, attacks on journalists and immigrants and watching our Capitol get besieged, and what has happened to her beloved, world-class institution of Indiana University, would have devastated her.

She would have been especially devastated by the losses of Juliet and Carrie.  Juliet was family to her.  She died when Juliet was engaged to Chris, and their engagement party just a month before she died made her so incredibly happy.  She would have loved to be a part of Juliet and Chris's beautiful wedding, and she would have been so happy to see the beautiful life they built.  She would have felt so deeply for Cindy, Diane, and Bob, and for Nick and Cynthia and Ada and Jasper, as they came to terms with a life that would include the memory but not physical presence of Juliet.  She would have kept Cindy in her heart, and she would have known how to share her empathy for Cindy and her joy for any step towards happiness that Cindy took in this new normal.

She would have been devastated when Carrie had her stroke.  She would have felt deeply for Linda and Dan, for John, for Sarah and Jon and Carrie's nieces and nephew.  Carrie's celebration of life would have resonated deeply with her.  She would have been so proud of Carrie's academic success and her political passion and work.  And she would have mourned deeply when Carrie died.  She would have also found joy in Cindy and John forming a bond and falling in love.

I read an article in The New Yorker years ago that when a person dies, you start to measure their loss by all of the things they have missed.  That resonates deeply.

And what of me?  I know there are so many things that would have made her really proud.  I know she would feel deeply for my being my dad's only support.  I know she would want to be my support and my sounding board.  I know I would have had a hard time letting her.  I know our relationship would still not be perfect, because there was this weird thing between us that was hard.  But I also like to think I would have let her in just a little bit.

All The Stuff, and we we can't let go

 In the almost 10 years since my mom died, we've lived with a quasi-museum of her Things.  I've been able to give away or donate a few things here or there, but nothing meaningful.  I want to let go of more things and I think I'm ready to.  But it's so hard!  I'm realizing how wrapped up my identity is in these things.  But as I was having a minor identity crisis over giving away the 1966 "How to Analyze Fiction," it hit me that I'm not just letting go of pieces of the past or my parents, I'm acknowledging that I might be different than who I feel I was expected to be.  Wow does that feel a little heavy.

 

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.