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.

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.

Eulogy

When I was 14, my mom took me on a mother-daughter train trip through Switzerland.  We spent one week hiking in the mountains, exploring gorges and glaciers, and most importantly talking and laughing.  I have thought about this trip often through the years because my mom had given it great significance.  She viewed it as a stepping stone to adulthood, and would frequently recommend a similar bonding trip to other women with daughters whom she met through the years.  Looking back at the trip, I remember beginning to understand and appreciate my mom.  I began to understand what lay behind my mother’s unwavering self-discipline, and she showed me how adventurous and funny she really was.  The combination of discipline and adventure really defined her life.

My mom grew up during a difficult and complicated period for her homeland, and this experience of living her earliest years in wartime never left her.  Her mother, my Oma, lived her entire life as though the war had just recently ended, and that’s how my mom was raised, and me too, in part.  From the time she was a little girl she was extremely disciplined with her household chores and education.  She never needed reminding, as her daughter someday would, to take these things seriously.

It was my mom’s disciplined ambition that enabled her to go to work for the city government in Königswinter at age 16, working long days and studying at night while many of her peers were following American pop culture and going to parties.  It was her discipline and enthusiasm for learning that got her a position in Bonn with the German foreign ministry, which led to an assignment in Sofia, Bulgaria.  But it was her sense of adventure that made my 21-year-old mother pack up her possessions into a blue Volkswagen Käfer and head through the Balkan Mountains to see where life would take her.  I still remember all the stories about this adventurous drive; her fears and hopes, her feeling of freedom at doing something on her own, and also her trepidation about leaving her family with whom she was so close.  Later, when I myself was in my early 20s, my grandmother pulled out the letters and we read them together.  For the first time I got a real sense of who my mother had been, and how she felt when she was my age.  In one of the letters, my mom described meeting a handsome young professor:  “Last night I went to a ball at the American embassy and fell in love.”  At that moment my grandmother could see that my mother’s dreams of living abroad permanently would come true.  And while my grandmother shed tears each time she read the letter, she knew my mom had found happiness.

Growing up, there were certainly times when I resisted my mom’s strict discipline.  It was not the same strictness that friends had maybe experienced, but rather one that came out of a different era and a place that no longer existed.  Of course as I’ve grown older I’ve seen the value in her discipline.  While it could be a constraint at times, it added to the richness of her life.  My mom filled her life with things that mattered.  She frequently said she couldn’t understand when people talked of boredom – the world is too full of things to do and things that matter.  And my mother certainly did things.  Whether it was something big, like advocating for arts funding or gay rights, or something small like writing a card, working in the garden, or eating a quiet meal and reflecting on her week, everything she did mattered in some way.  This came through in her mothering, and her grandparenting.  She made everything seem important, and she was an active participant in everything she did and every place she went.  Whether it was playing together, going to the Museum of Science and Industry, or walking around our neighborhood, she made Nicholas feel like everything they did was important. 

My mother felt most at home in nature.  She would frequently tell us on our weekly Sunday hikes in Brown County that she felt closer to God in the woods than in church.  She grew up in one of the most beautiful spots in the world, yet she was able to find beauty wherever she was.  Each time she arrived in Munster, she would greet me with a description of the landscape, sky, weather.  No matter if it was a glorious October day or a dreary January one, she would find something that had inspired her about the landscape on the drive from Bloomington.  Like my Oma, she believed every day was a gift – something to find beauty and value in.  She liked to talk about taking me for bike rides as a little girl and narrating everything she saw: the sound of the birds, the way the clouds looked, how the wind felt.  She continued this with Nicholas, walking to Schoop’s with him even if it was cold and drizzling, telling him about the world as they walked.  She genuinely could not understand why people would act surprised:  “Ja, I have a coat!  Nicholas has a coat!  We’ll have a great time!”  I remember one night when my mom was visiting, Brian and I went out for dinner.  We returned a couple hours after dark to find my mom and Nick sitting on the front porch, Nick asleep in my mom’s arms.  It turns out they had gotten locked out of the house, and my mom didn’t want to call me and cut our date short.  She happily described walking around the house, letting Nick play in the yard a little while, and then settling on the chair with him wrapped up in her coat while she told him stories until he fell asleep.  When I asked Nicholas if he remembered this, he told me about it in vivid detail.  She had truly turned it into an adventure for Nick, and remembered it as a special moment with him.

I believe the happiest chapter of her life is when she became a grandmother.  She often lamented that being a girl I had a special relationship with my father, and being a boy her brother had a special relationship with her mother.  But when Nicholas was born, she felt an immediate, deep connection with him; she finally had her special relationship.  Her sun rose and set with Nicholas, and he loved his Omi Helga in return.  He loved hearing her sing and tell stories, and every visit began with my mom dancing around the room with Nick, making him laugh.  She could sit for hours with him at the train table, listening to him tell stories, building layouts together.  Nicholas is perhaps the only child in North America who has public art for his train table – miniature statues bought at museum shops by my mom, perfectly scaled for the train table.  And how Nick looked forward to trips to Bloomington, which meant long walks, and interesting activities, and hours spent by the creek throwing rocks.  You might be surprised to know that my mom was a talented rock-skipper.  All the while she taught him about nature – about the plant and animal life in and around the creek, the flowers, the trees.  Nick took it all in with rapt attention, telling me later about the murky water or climbing onto the rocks with Omi to look at the crawdads skittering around.  Together they would watch the deer come out at dusk and then come inside, where Omi Helga, shaky hands notwithstanding, would build lego creations to Nick’s specifications until past bedtime.

My mother was strong and energetic, disciplined and adventurous, full of life and passion.  It seems unfathomable that someone living life so fully could be taken from it so suddenly.  But it is also these defining qualities that give me solace.  I find peace in knowing that my mother truly lived each and every day.  Like her mother, she believed every day was a gift, and it was her responsibility to make the most of it.  I feel her loss terribly, especially from the lives of her beloved grandchildren.  But in thinking about my mother, I realize that my entire life she has been passing down these values to me, and I know what she would have passed down to Nicholas and Alexandra.  At times I will make different choices than my mom would have, but always her underlying love and guidance will be there, informing our decisions and guiding us as Brian and I raise our children and go through life.

My mom once wrote quoted Albert Schweitzer: “The only thing of importance, when we depart, will be the traces of love [and compassion] we have left behind.”  Your presence here shows how much love and compassion my mother had.  Thank you for coming today to celebrate my mother’s life.

"Gone"

One of the most difficult things for me this year has been the question of how my mom could simply be Gone.  What does "Gone" mean?  Did my mom simply cease to exist, or is her spirit somewhere, and if so -- where?  I wish I had a defined spiritual belief about what happens after death, but I do not.  Since childhood, despite CCD and weekly Mass, I have questioned religious beliefs about the afterlife and realized that we can't know and don't know what happens when we die.  I suppose this is the most common question after a loved one dies, and that is why spiritual beliefs were developed to begin with.  It's just that those "answers" don't satisfy my skeptical, science-oriented mind, but I long to have answers.

My mom was larger than life.  It sounds cliché and like something one would say out of grief, but it was true even when she was alive.  She had a great intensity and boundless energy.  She knew so much about so many things - art; nature; culture; gardening and cooking and housekeeping; history of all kinds - world history, American history, German history, family history; she was compassionate and active in local politics; she was creative and giving; she was critical, with high expectations for herself and everyone around her.  She was so much.  So much, in fact, that she carried an energy into a room that was palpable.

She was cremated, and her urn is not very big.  Those ashes contain my mom's body, but what about her spirit?  Her energy?  Her knowledge?  Her compassion?  Her intense love?  Where are those things?

If you are hoping to find answers in this post, you will not.  I hope that by asking the questions over and over, some answers will slowly form.  I have some clues.  There are some things I know, some things I believe, and some things I hope.  Those truths and beliefs have helped me figure out a little bit about what "Gone" means.

Here is what I know.  My mom gave of herself to a wide circle of people.  Her memorial service was a testament to this; the church was overflowing, and there were people sobbing who were completely unknown to me.  As Mother Linda+ said in her Burial Office, my mom was not shy about telling people what she felt they needed to hear, be it advice or information or critique.  (And when she gave advice, it was less of a suggestion and more of a directive.)  So I know that the part of my mom that was knowledge has been passed along.  She parceled it out to those she encountered, and so her knowledge now resides with people living far and wide.  Happily, a lot of that knowledge was written down in essays about art, a family history that includes sections of German history, and personal letters.  And somehow, despite years of trying to close my ears to her, I gained a lot of her knowledge as well.

I know that some of the qualities that made my mom are still present because of people remembering them.  Her accent is ingrained in many of my friends' minds, and most likely in her friends' as well.  Her generosity touched certain people especially strongly, and their lives were forever impacted by it.  She spread her spirit around, and pieces of her exist in all those she touched.

Here is what I believe.  My mother was deeply spiritual, and her spiritualism centered itself on nature.  Her religious beliefs involved questioning and searching, but she felt a deep, spiritual connection with nature.  She felt at peace in the woods; she collected stones from hikes and held onto them like talismans; she felt a genuine sense of wonder about every detail of the natural world.  To her, bad weather just meant more clothing; it did not mean staying inside or not going to the beach or not going on a hike.  In fact, she marveled at bad weather.  She said things like, "I savored glorious moments in freezing temperatures and bright sunshine."  She loved telling me details of the "terrific thunderstorm" or "horrendous rain" (two of her favorite terms) as much as she loved describing the "breathtaking sky" or "gorgeous light".  For me, my mom is a part of the world around us.  I believe that the way the wind blows through the trees is an echo of my mom's spirit.  Poet Franz Wright wrote, "Soon I'll be part of all that I now merely see."  I believe that my mom longed to be a part of the world around her - not simply to see it or be treading upon it (I have felt this same way at various times in my life) - and now she is a part of the world.  I believe her spirit has joined with the spirit of the universe.  

What I hope.  Oh, I hope so many things.  Hoping is different than wishing; you can wish for the impossible, but hope exists only within the boundaries of possibility.  I can wish that Omi Helga could see Nick and Alex grow up and be a part of their lives, but my hopes have to be formed within the reality of her being gone.  Still, I find myself hoping for a lot.  I hope that Nicholas doesn't forget my mom.  More than specific memories, I hope he remembers the feeling of her, and the things she taught him about how to live life.  I hope that I can give my kids some of what she would have given them.  I hope that I continue to see signs of my mom's influence and presence.  I hope I can absorb some of her spirit and let her light shine through me.  I hope I can take some of her best qualities and make them my own.  I hope that I have a lightning bolt of clarity about the afterlife.

So, Gone.  "Gone" means physically not present.  "Gone" means an energy that is now part of the universe because its body is turned to ash.  "Gone" is being remembered but not being with us.  "Gone" is ... is ... so hard to comprehend.  "Gone" is not being here and at the same time being here, because she is still with us even though physically she is not.  "Gone."  Maybe someday I'll have a better answer.

One thing that began happening before my mom had even died, but was in the hospital in a coma, was that I began seeing not just who she was in the present, but also who she had been throughout my life and even before.  I was flooded by memories from all different parts of my life as well as stories she had told me about all the  parts of her life.

It was like I immediately began absorbing the person she was.  She was no longer just my mom; the whole of her came clearly into focus.  All the things I knew but didn't process because of our relationship or life 

Apfelkuchen (aka Apple Crumb Cake)

I just put my mom's "famous" Apfelkuchen (apple cake) in the oven, and as I was preparing it I reflected a lot about my mom, especially her baking.  I wanted to share my thoughts with you - I hope you don't mind!

I feel so lucky that my mom spent time typing out all her signature recipes.  She was well-known for her baking and cooking, and baking the Apfelkuchen flooded me with memories of eating her special goodies at holidays, birthdays, when we had visitors, at other people's houses, when someone was sick (she always baked extras for us), and basically anytime at the drop of a hat.  The Apfelkuchen was actually her grandmother's recipe, and so I have the added joy of knowing that I'm passing something on to my children that my mother, her mother, and her mother's mother all did.

But of course there's also a sad side.  Obviously my greatest sadness is knowing my mother will never bake for me again.  But there's more.  I wish I could call her tomorrow and ask how she did the streusel topping and how she sliced & arranged the apples.  I wish she could stand beside me in the kitchen again and teach me how to do it - and this time I'd actually listen.  And then there's the fact that all my friends went crazy for my mom's apple cake, her cheese bread, her Alexander torte, while I took them for granted and was sometimes slightly annoyed that she always baked the same things.  As a kid I was embarrassed about bringing Alexander torte on my birthday when my friends all brought cookies or cupcakes.  (At least I later learned to embrace and feel proud of the cultural differences later on.  Just not in 4th grade.)  Mostly I wish I were baking the cake for my mom, to eat it with her.

And of course the apple cake is a metaphor for everything about loss - the blessings I feel about what my mom gave me as well as the regrets I have.  We all have complicated relationships with our moms.  We all wish our moms could be a little different, a little more perfect.  It's easy to focus on the imperfections.  But this is a reminder that sometimes there's no "tomorrow".  The thing you plan on saying eventually ("thank you" or "I get it now" or "you were right" or "you are a great mom/dad/brother/sister") - it's best to say it now, because otherwise the time won't come.  My mom drove me crazy a lot, and that's just how it was, and there were times I cherished her and times I didn't.  I wish I had savored our time together a little more.  If you still have your mom, I'm acting as that little bee buzzing around you reminding you to savor your time with your parents, even when they drive you crazy.  It's fine to think about the ways they drive you crazy, but afterwards make yourself list the things about them that you cherish.  I almost guarantee it will be a long list.

And then come on over for some Apfelkuchen.  :)

Parenting Like A Grandparent

There are lots of types of grandparents; some are incredibly involved in their grandchildren's lives while others have distant relationships.  Our kids were lucky enough to have four grandparents who were actively involved in their lives and provided abundant unconditional love.  Each grandparent had his or her own strengths, and together they created a wonderful, balanced web of extended family.  And then one of them died.  When the kids' Omi Helga, my mom, died, she left an enormous void.  Each of the grandparents contributed something unique to the kids' lives, and in Omi's case it was a combination of German heritage and culture, an astounding amount of energy for excursions and adventures, and an intense love.

When my mom died, I realized immediately that her loss was going to leave a major hole in our lives.  My DH and I vowed immediately to find ways of filling that void; the tricky question was, How?

In a few days it will have been 5 months since my mom's death, and I ponder that question almost daily.  I've had to accept that no one will able to take her place and give my kids everything she gave them.  I've realized that the key to continuing my mother's legacy is to keep her spirit alive.  We're constantly finding ways of doing this, like sharing stories about her, mentioning her in our everyday lives, and carrying on her traditions.

It didn't feel like this was enough, though.  Of course these things keep her memory with us, but I still couldn't get over the fact that her presence was gone from our lives.  And then it came to me:  I need to parent like a grandparent.

What does that mean?  In the case of my mom, it means sitting down with the kids and giving them undivided attention: forgetting the housework for the time being, or the computer, or the to-do lists forming in my head. Simply taking the time to listen in the way a grandparent does, who has only limited time with the kids and makes the most of every minute.  It means every once in awhile forgetting I'm the Mom - the one who sets boundaries and teaches manners and sometimes has a short fuse - and acting like Omi - the one who had nothing but time, who hung on every word N said, who would walk to N's favorite burger/ice cream joint at the drop of a hat, rain or shine, who would spend an hour at the train table or throwing rocks into the creek or explaining gardening.

N & A are blessed to still have 3 grandparents who are loving and involved.  Nevertheless, we miss Omi like crazy.  I will admit that most days I feel like I'm in survival mode, and the idea of stepping into my mom's shoes seems like an unattainable ideal.  But I'm getting better and better at it, and I hope that in some way I'll be able to channel my mom and give my kids some of what my mom did.

Originally written 6/26/11

Introduction

I have come to realize that I need to find a grief support group.  Grief is such a complex thing, and one can only burden one's friends for so long.  The only problem is, I have two children and haven't even found the time to call about a support group, let alone attend one.  I decided to start this blog to have a forum for expressing my feelings and perhaps connect with others in the same situation.  Here goes nothing!

To share a little bit about myself, I am 36, am married, and have two children, ages 4 1/2 and 18 months.  My mother died 7 1/2 months ago after an unforeseen complication of a surgery she'd been recovering from for 3 weeks.  I was there with her when she died, but not when she went into the coma.  Every day since then has been a roller coaster of grief, anger, acceptance, questioning, and more.  It has been a struggle emotionally and sometimes even physically.  Affecting my feelings are the emotions of my son, who remembers his Omi Helga well and loved her dearly.

Why is this blog called Losing Omi?  My mom moved to the States from Germany when she married my dad, and "Grandma" in German is "Oma".  However, my mom did not want to be called "Oma" because in her mind, Oma was her mother.  After much deliberation we decided on "Omi Helga".  This calendar year has been defined by our coping with the loss of her, hence, Losing Omi.