I am not myself lately. October 30, 2012, will mark the 6
month anniversary of my mother’s death. It will also be just over two months
since the death of my Uncle John, who was my hero ever since I was a little
girl. His widow, my Aunt Bertha is recovering from surgery on the brain tumor
that was found several weeks before my mother got sick. She is doing well, even
though she has suffered tremendous loss, and is almost 90 years old. October 10
is the 24th anniversary of my older brother’s death.
Almost exactly a year before my mom died, I lost one of
the best friends I’ve ever had since I was 19 years old. A few months prior to that, one of my two
cats got sick and subsequently had to be put down. Within a few weeks, the
other cat died, I think, of sheer loneliness. Even though they were not from
the same litter, I got both of them when they were just kittens, and they were
best friends. They were my best friends too. Before I got married, they used to
sleep at my head and feet. I was always careful moving around when I woke up
because I didn’t want to accidentally kick one of them.
In the midst of all of that, I also lost a couple of good
friends I had made along the way. I am also now estranged from my brother, the
only other surviving member of my family of origin. In the past few months I
have come to realize that I really lost him a long time ago. I love him so much
it hurts, and I know that he is simply not the same person I knew as my first
best friend. We were babies together. But now I realize that he let me go a
long time ago. I guess holding on was too painful for him for too long. We both
grew up amidst a great deal of trauma and violence. I fear the darkness has
overtaken him, and he chooses to stay there. I can’t be there with him.
So here I am. I would be foolish to think that I am alone
because I know that I am not. First and foremost, I am loved by the most
wonderful son to ever walk the face of the earth, and the most brilliant
grandson known to man. I live with my husband and our beautiful black lab,
Maggie, whose unconditional love and forgiveness sustain me daily. I am not
alone, but I am an orphan now. It really isn’t like the end of a chapter in a
book, it is the end of that whole book.
I’ve lost people before now, but somehow, grieving my
mother’s death is an incorporation of all the other grief I’ve ever
experienced. Pardon the pun, but it is the mother of all grief, in all ways
imaginable. She held all the memories. She saved every card or letter written
to her. I have been going through some of them and remembering. Remembering
people, places, events, pets, friends, school, church. Everything.
I am a very different person than my mother was. I have a
professional degree and license that have freed me from many of the demons of
self-doubt with which our entire family has struggled. She didn’t drive and was
often very reclusive, yet could be the life of the party in the right moment. She
had a certain a gleam of joy in her beautiful brown eyes that I will never see
again. She often drove me crazy, but she was also such a delight to be with
because she was unabashed in her insistence on celebrating life. Even through
all of her hardships, she had a great big smile that seemed to mock the hard
times, especially in photographs with her family. It was as though she was
saying to life, ‘I’m going to be happy anyway!’
In
many ways, I have surpassed what dreams she had for me, and I know that she was
proud of me, as only a mother can be. As she watched me overcome obstacles that
were just too great for her, I hope that she felt some release from the bondage
of all of her fears. Now that my son is an adult, I know the sense of relief
she had when all of her children were on their own, working, getting educations
that she could only dream of, and making our way in the world.
As I mourn her, and her first-born, on this cloudy
October day in LA, I am grateful for the distance between my origins and my
life now. And I am grateful for the foundation, the hearth, that my mother
created, that I so often took for granted. As difficult as this day is for me,
I am grateful for everything, and I am left to wrestle with the emotional
juxtaposition of loss and love and memory.
You see, for me, grief is just another form of
gratitude; for we do not miss those people or things that do bring some
goodness and joy into our lives. My mournful tears are another way of saying
thank you. Thank you to my brother, who was the best teacher I ever had.
Without the foundational learning I got from him, I don’t make it to UCLA.
Thank you to my Uncle John, my war hero, who served as a male role model in a fatherless
home. Thank you to my dear friend, Leo, who loved me always and
unconditionally, from a time when I really didn’t have it together. Thank you
to my cats, for their warm bodies and sweet companionship. Thank you to all the
many friends I have outlived to this point. Thank you for loving me.
And most especially, thank you, Mama, for everything – my
life (which she saved by carrying me out of a burning building), my education,
and your constant interest and faith in me. Thank you for all the turkeys you
cooked, for teaching me how to cook, for all the sacrifices you made so that I
could have – a new dress, a doll, a book. Thank you for last Christmas, when
you shared the good memories of your wedding day, December 23, 1950; and how
the three surviving members of our family had a very merry little Christmas in
the home that you bought with your divorce settlement money. Who would have
known that it would be our last one together? And mostly, Mamacita mia, my
chapita, thank you for the hearth -- not just a home, but a hearth – that you
created for us, to share and to pass on to my son and his family.
As I prepare for the upcoming holidays – Halloween,
Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years’ Day – holidays that were always celebrated
at our house, albeit pretty modestly; I am filled with both dread and joy. This is
my first holiday season without my mother, and sometimes I think that I will be
swallowed whole by the grief-monster that lives inside my soul these days. But I now realize
how challenging and scary her life was at times, and I see her as my role model.
I hear her telling me, “It’s okay, Mi’ja. It’s okay,” and I know that if she
could face her challenges with her limited resources, financially and
emotionally; then I can go on from here. There will be a cornucopia of tears
and laughter in the coming months as I celebrate with the people and dogs that
I love. For the harvest of grief begins and ends with gratitude.
M. Irene Daniel
October 10, 2012
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