Orphans Now

She was ready when we arrived at Town Center Village. "Ready to go, Mom?" She looked up and smiled. With gentle hugs and misty eyes others gathered. They said their good byes. She pulled one caregiver close and kissed her cheek. She said “Thank you” to another. My eyes welled. My Mother.  In only a few short weeks she had made her mark on the hearts of those around. 

She sat regally in her wheelchair as my son rolled her from the care facility to the car and gently eased her in. Her last car ride. Home. The Home that would become ours because she was there.   90 miles later we arrived at Country Havens. Her room was ready, a place of beauty. She smiled. We went every day and stayed into the night. We, her children,  wished her good morning, kissed her goodnight, and held her hands in between. Nineteen days more. Our home--it was our  mother's heart for as long as we could remember.

Now she's gone.  I miss her. We’re orphans now, my brothers and sister and I. She never told us how hard it would be. 

60 years ago she birthed me, her first daughter, third child. She and Daddy gave me my name.  I was theirs. They held me, stroked my head, gazed into my eyes, told me they loved me. In the end I did the same for them. Now it's over. They're gone. Can it be?

Ours was a long good bye, the good bye of children for their Mother. Alzheimer’s Disease robbed her of who she was, and stole from us the Mother we had known.  Some say, on hearing of her passing, “It was a blessing. She’s no longer suffering.” Right in so many ways, dreadfully wrong in others. Conceived through love and passion for our father, we were borne of her flesh, birthed through her tears and joy, and from her deep desire to be our Mother. She gave us life. She defined us from our first days to her last. She still does, for her imprint is on us forever. We became known as “Bob and Betty’s children.”   In the beginning she and Daddy defined us. Somewhere along the way, I’m not sure when, we came to define them, in the circular paradox of the universe. They gave us our identity, only to have us give them theirs. 

Mom loved being Mother. Her heart embraced not only her own children, but the “others” who came with us. She welcomed and loved our friends.  I was 14 when I introduced her to the boy who would one day be my husband, and make me a Mother.  She loved to tell the story. With a twinkle in her eye, she would say to him, “I met you when you were 14.”  She became his Mother, too, the Mother he never had. Finally, in her last years, she believed that he was her son not only through her choice, but by birth. She claimed him as her own, and indeed, he was.

As I watched her struggle “comfortably” during her final hours, I pondered my history, and that of my brothers and sister. Mom was a determined mother. She wanted the best for each of us. She had dreams. She wanted us to have happy homes, a decent education, good jobs, health, friends, live with integrity, serve others. She wanted us to go to church and obey the rules and look good, but even more, to be good.  Encompassing all was her longing for us to love God and get along with others, and to someday be together in an Earth made new. 

Like all mothers, she made mistakes. I believe these mistakes were motivated out of her desire we grow up to follow God and love others.  She told of a time when I was a toddler. I refused to kneel for prayer at our family worship. Though I have no memory of it, she said she spanked me. She was still apologizing 50 years later. She was  quick to ask forgiveness and ready to forgive, no matter the infraction. 

She and Daddy wanted peace and sometimes relinquished their own “rights” in hopes of saving a relationship. At the same time, they had a keen sense of justice and would not tolerate meanness. We weren’t allowed to call each other bad names or to even point imaginary guns at people  (I’m not sure how well that worked--ask my brothers!). “Shut up” was forbidden, though “hush up” was an acceptable alternative. 

Mom loved hair. When I was a little girl, she braided my hair and tied ribbons at the ends Sometimes at night she’d deftly twist strands of my damp hair around her finger. She’d hold two bobbie pins between her lips and at exactly the right moment she’d extract her finger, take the bobbie pins, and pin my hair tightly to my head, until my head was covered with little mounds of pinned hair.  She’d tie a bandana over the top, then do the same to her own hair. The next morning she’d take out the bobbie pins, and we’d both have curly hair. She liked curls. During these last years,  I’d take the curling iron and do the best I could to make her hair beautiful. She was always appreciative as she admired herself in the mirror. I will miss those times.

Mom loved to sew. She didn’t buy my clothes in my growing-up years.  Instead, she bought yards of fabric and carefully fashioned my school dresses (no pants yet!). She loved pretty fabric, and even in her last months, she found contentment in holding a piece of colorful cloth. 

She baked bread and cinnamon rolls and pies. She stretched the food budget by canning hundreds of quarts of fruit, cooking beans and rice, and making powdered milk. She enjoyed her kitchen, and took pride in setting a pretty table with her fine China. She insisted on good table manners. Even more, she was a gracious hostess and enjoyed good conversation. 

There’s another empty place at the table now. 

Mom married young. 18 years old. She sewed her own wedding dress, veil and all. She became a teenage mother a year later and quit college, never looking back. But she did look forward. She returned to college and graduated from nursing school at 40.  For the next 18 years she  delighted in being a neonatal nurse.

When grandchildren began to arrive, her world changed again.  11 grandsons, 3 granddaughters. Next year, her youngest grandchild will graduate from high school. It will be the first grandchild’s graduation she won’t celebrate. She loved all her grandchildren dearly. In 2007, not even 6 years ago, she and Daddy drove alone in their own car to Vancouver to welcome their first great-grandchild. 

Mom, I found you sitting on your bed the morning after Daddy died. With tears streaming down your face, you looked up at me and sobbed, “He’s gone. He died. He’s gone now.” Then you wiped your eyes and declared, “I’ve got to pull myself together.” That’s how you lived life. Pulling yourself together when you needed to, to get the job done.

 It’s strange to talk of Mom in the past tense. “Was” and “were”  feel unfamiliar and awkward. It’s going to take a long time to change my language. 

We’re orphans now. First Daddy, now you. You’re gone. There’s much I’d like to ask. Life crept up on us all, and here we are. How was it for you, Mom? You went through the losses of your parents. I saw you cry quiet tears, not the sloppy weeping of my own grief. I didn’t see the wrenching of your hearts like I feel in my own.  I know you felt the pain. I know you missed them, for I know you loved them deeply. What was it like for you? How did you go on? Was it a resignation that life comes and life goes? Was it the assurance this life is a harbinger of the next, you would see them again, your parents were no longer in this “veil of tears”? Did you stuff your feelings? Did you lay awake at night with an inconsolable ache in your heart? Did you and Daddy hold and comfort each other when I didn’t see?  Did you trust God more? Were my eyes blinded to your grief, because you were the parent, and I was your child? The natural order seems to be for parents to comfort their children, not the other way around.  Is that why I’m missing you, because you’re not here to tell me it’s going to be okay? What was it like for you to be an orphan? I’ve had no training.

Your children watched you grow old. Not a bad thing. You lived  through countless joys and sorrows for 84 years.  In your final days  all your children encompassed you. Hospice helped manage your pain. We had time together. We said “See you in the Morning.” Horrible, unexplicable, sudden tragedies occurred last week. The Boston Marathon bombings. The fertilizer  plant explosion in Texas. Car crashes. Famines. Wars. Avalanches. Storms. More. These made headline news, while your obituary will be tucked in a back page of a newspaper. Yours was anticipated and ordinary, as deaths go. But for us, you were no ordinary woman.  You were our Mother, and there is not another you. We will miss you as long as we live. 

So good night Mom, goodnight for now.  We’ll see you in the Morning.  xoxo