For My Mother On Her Birthday
March 25, 2009 by Jennifer Walker-Journey
Filed under Parenting
I have my mother’s hands. They are a woman’s hands, creased and well used. Nearly 10 years to the day my mother passed away, I still remember holding hers, stroking her long fingers, telling her it was OK to die.
There are reminders of her everywhere, pushing out from mounds of pansies in my garden or in passages of a thick Pat Conroy novel. At times I can feel her with an intensity that startles me. Browsing hosta in a garden shop or scraping wallpaper from the bathroom walls, I am doing what she did. I am becoming her.
Nine months after her death, on what would have been her 58th birthday, I held her ashes in the palm of my hand, giving her up to the wind of the sea islands. The dust flew into the sky and down into the quiet waters of the marsh. There was no ceremony, no preacher hugging the family Bible, no sermon echoing in the open breeze. Just my family, what was left of us, bruised and worn raw.
We had scattered her ashes off the edge of my parents’ property on Dataw Island, South Carolina. They had purchased the land the year my mother got sick, with plans to retire early and spend their days tending to the native plants, fishing off the pier, maybe teaching at the local community college. Here, my mother would heal from the surgeries and treatments. Here, she would be healthy.
But the cancer came back. Or maybe it never left her body, lying dormant until we fooled ourselves into thinking that life would be normal again. Cancer does that. It hides in the back of the mind, breathes a chill against your shoulder so you never completely forget.
On a quiet spring morning just before daybreak, the same month ground was to have been broken for their home on Dataw, my mother passed away. The birds still called into the sunrise, the car engine still turned over, people on the street still walked and breathed and made small talk, all unaware that everything had changed. My mother was dead.
I was the only one of my family who remembered that Easter night a year before she died, when we sat at the dinner table and dreamed of their move. The house plans were almost final, there were appliance books and paint decks spread across the table. My mother said once they moved to Dataw, they would never move again. And when she died, she wanted to be cremated and her ashes scattered into the water at high tide, just below the twisted oak in their backyard that leaned over the marsh’s edge.
I have often been asked if I miss having a gravesite to visit, a plot of grass on which to drop to my knees and connect with what remains of her six feet below. At the very least, don’t I feel obligated to visit the property where her ashes were scattered, a place that now holds the house of a stranger, someone who never will know the secrets of that sprawling live oak out back?
I stand now, my feet bathed in the gently swaying waters of the Gulf Coast, hundreds of miles and many years from where my mother’s ashes flew. She is with me. She is the water, riding currents across this mighty earth. She is the air I breathe, the wind that tangles my hair. I have felt her during my child’s birth, in the still nights rocking my son to sleep, with my grandmother who since spiraled into the darkness of dementia. I speak to her in the quiet of my car and in the vast space between earth and stars.
There is no comfort in losing a mother, just the raw burn when memories rub against the mind. I choose to visit her here, in the static of my senses – for this is as close to heaven that I know.
(photo, Flickr, debaird)
Beautiful
Such a moving tribute to your mother. I could feel your pain but I can also feel the love you will always have within yourself from her. Thank you for sharing this.
Upon reading your tribute to your dear mother, I thought about the day in January ‘03 when I gently put my mother’s ashes into the current of the Morgan River here at Dataw Island. She was slmost 100, was weary with age, and sad with the loss of her husband and most friends. Recognizing the contrast in your loss…a mother so young and vibrant, someone anticipating a fulfilling new life here, and someone robbed of the chance to know her grandson…made me weep. Yet I was uplifted, realizing you have processed her death and distilled her essence in your mind, now clearly seeing her in your very being.
My mother committded suicide by jumping from a 3 storey apartment building
of a Senior Center she recently moved into with my day. My brother & his
wife had a big home, but built a $500,000 home that my parents paid for in
entirety, with the rights to legally live in the lst floor of this lovely
home for the rest of their remaining lives.
I esperienced a shockingly abrupt cut off of my marriage, 5 years later}
when my husband took $200,000 of my money. Thereafter, I’ve kept reclusive – living 6 years apart from my mom.
Previously, she was so ‘frickin’ pound of me ; they didn’t come better than
me” I know that’s not true – but in her eyes it was. I loved her
pride in me. She just loved me to death!!!!!
Aftr I was conned out of $200,000 (money from my 20 year busness), my
husband took off with it all……..leaving me only despondant, no disire,
belieft basis shaken to the core, etc.
After, “I failed”, mom focused her love and attention on her great neices
and nephews. I lost everything, but she only told me to be tough!
No empathetic loving hug nor hand to hold. My mother!!!! Who loved me
so much! She couldn’t face my reality. My brother convinced her not to
let me get her down by talking negative.
I living in Texas, and they all living in Pennsylvania. I had to quit working, as the $200,000 came from the sale of my 20 year business, which
I contracted not to compete against in the City of Dallas. I could’t work
anyhow – I fell into totol dispair. Mom couldn’t handle my disfortune.
She had a heart operation in November 2008. I flew up to PA to be with her.
She bragged on how wonderful thecare from my sister – in =law and my
brother is, and theat she had such great support system there with theri
whole fiamily. But the day I was to return to Dalls, she cried that
I didn’t want to stay and take care of her.
Frankly, I just wanted to get home – to crawl in my little home in Dallas,
so I could hide from how “shitty” my life had turned out. And like she
said, she had all the support she needed from all the rest of the family.
Barely functioning, experiencing the doomsday of myself and my mother, I
hid in my house.
Planninga trip home for Xmas 2009, I was intercepted with a call from my
brother, that mymother jumped out a 3 storey senior citisen building,
cracing her skull open and bled to death. MY MOTHER! MY MOTHER!
I talked to her 3 days earlier, laughing and happy about my upcoming visit
for Christmas – how we’d lunch and visit all the stores. It as l year since I saw my mother. Before my “conned” experience, I visited my folks
2 to 3 times a year!!!!!!!!!
3 days before I was to fly up to visit her, my brother called to tell me
she jumped. He & I don’t get along at all _long miserable story).
Mom was to be creamated. He gave me not time nor place of her funeral,
and then called cousins allover the country notifying them of her death
at 78 years old. Later Hd told all that I didn’t even come to the funeral.
My dad came to Texasto livewith me.
My pain is so intenese and sporatic. I miss her so much -My MaMa!
I need her. I have noc hildren and not married. I need to see her
loving eyes and touch her hand. It has been a year Dec. 9, 2009.
I can’t feel her around me. I cry & i cry – I want her to be alive.
I want to go visit her in PA. I want to call her and talk to her and
to hear her sweet loving voice.. I want to hear
her tell me how interesting & great I am. I will never hear this from
anyone no more.
I don’t want to live anymore. There is no more joy!
My mother was my best friend………she is not here anymore!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I want to
scream and yell and cuss g-d, Why Why Why?????
I have no husband, no children, only myself. I need her love!!!!!!
My brother and his wife, and their children, have nothing to do with me nor my dad. No celebretory cards, no holiday cards, no birthday cards; (they got
over $250,000 from mom, days before her death, to [payoff their house)
““““““left my dad with very little.
I take care of my dad very well, but he ‘presses’ my buttons’ endlessly.
Never reallized how toup care for a very elderly person could be.
I pray every day to be genteler and kinder to my old father. Very tough.
I’m at my wits end. I want to crawl in a hole and die off slowly.
But, I’d be found from the sound of my excruciating tears and pain.
I just turned 60. My dad is 85.
When he dies – I’ll wait for my 2 beautiful dogs to die, and then
I’ll arrange something for me. Because the pain will be tooooooo great.
Why does our Lord allow me such pain. I’m a good woman.
I’ve been “shit” on so often…………….I pray for His Blessing to
live this end period of my life in some contentful way.
It’s NOT HAPPENING.
How to cope with the excruciating pain of loosing a mother to death.
It will be one year on December 9Thh
I want her. I want her. At least I want to “feel” her
Where is God? I agonize several times a day.
I only stay alive to take care of my father (who is never happy with
anything I do), care for my 2 precious dogs – but after that………………………………………………………………………………
Thank-you for this beautiful post! I too have lost my Mother before I should have to cancer. This blog uplifted me and created a strength to carry out my Mother’s wishes. You captured the feelings that I have when there is no grave to visit! She is with me everyday! Thank you for the beautiful words that come from loving a special Mom!