(updates below added January 2013)
It started about a month ago.
Mom, who was 83 and in generally good health went to the hospital for some issues with her lower digestive system. Seems it was a bit more serious than they originally thought and she spent about three weeks in the hospital getting things straightened out. But she was doing better. The tubes had been removed and she was able to eat a little. She was transferred to a rehab facility. Not long after, things went from bad to worse.
I heard all of this on the phone from my father at 5:15 Monday October 15th (I live in Austin Texas and they in Northern Virginia). It seems that mom had a heart attack at rehab and was rushed to the hospital. After a couple of hours they told my father and her sister that she was doing better and was out of the woods and recovering. 20 Minutes later they were told that she had another heart attack and died.
One could say that at the age of 83 that my mother lived a full and rich life, which she undoubtedly did. But that is somehow unsatisfactory. Like the death of Neil Armstrong a couple of months previously. Being a fan and supporter of the space program I was saddened by the death of the first man on the moon. Someone my family and I had watched set foot on the moon on a summer night in 1969. I didn’t know Mr. Armstrong. Or rather only knew of him by his accomplishments. And from that I felt qualified to say, “He lived a full and extraordinary life.”
Neil Armstrong was a year younger than my mother and died not quite two months before she did. And while many people both at my mother’s memorial yesterday and on the obituary’s guest book posted online via the Washington Post previously said essentially the same thing. They could not be more wrong. And technically correct at the same time.
My mother was as healthy and vibrant and alive as anyone in their 80s can be. Failing the illness that. laid her low she likely would have lived many more years. Many more years enriching the lives of those around her.
Mom had the ability to make anyone she came in contact with feel like her entire attention was on them and only them. She truly loved people. She had many friends and they always felt as if she was their best friend.
She was an elementary school teacher, usually teaching gifted/talented classes and loving that she barely kept ahead of the bright minds she guided thru her year with them. She was often their favorite teacher. And upon running into her in public would often exclaim in delight running into her years after graduating from her class and school.
After retiring she threw herself into her other passion, birding. She helped found and strengthen local conservation groups centered around the parks department and preserving various species of birds. Receiving kudos, accolades and awards for her tireless work in making the parks a better place for people and wildlife.
But now my sister’s childhood bedroom, long since converted into my mother’s office, remains filled only with the remnants of a lifetime dedicated to her passions, her family and her birding. Pictures on the wall, birds and children, grandchildren. Shelves filled with reference material, cabinets full of the business of the organizations she belonged to. Notes and works in progress, things left incomplete now and forever.
In my life I have had the opportunity to meet a lot of parents. Often through women I have dated, sometimes through people I have been friends with. One thing I have noticed is that I was an extraordinarily fortunate boy and man to have such a woman for my mother.
Always interested, always willing to listen and advise. Always there no matter the time of day, the subject matter. But never intrusive or meddling. Perhaps even to a fault. She was loathe to interfere or to seem interfering in the lives of her two sons and daughter. An ability not all that common amongst the other mothers I have made the acquaintance over the years.
Regardless of her exceptional common sense and ability to see the correct path to follow in most situations, she was loathe to offer such advice unsolicited. A fact that elicited surprise from people who knew my mother only through her oldest son. Lifetimes spent with their disapproving mother who was living her life through her sons and daughters. Offering volumes of unsolicited, and unwanted, advice: “Why don’t you marry that nice man?”, “Your sister would never do that.”, “all the time and money I spent on you and this is how you treat me?” All of them incredulous that I never got shit from my mother. The strongest “rebuke” would always be, “well as long as you think that you are doing the right thing I will, of course, support you in your decision.”
And she really truly meant it.
All of this and more has passed through my mind in the weeks since her death. Her memorial service, a simple get-together of friends and family, exactly what she would have wanted, reinforced her character to me. So many friends who felt the same way. So many people who said the same things about the woman that they called friend and I knew as mom.
So why am I angry? Honestly I am not entirely sure. Maybe because I didn’t get to say goodbye. Maybe because she wasn’t finished living. I do know that I am not angry at anyone or any thing, including myself. I’m not angry because my lovely father is rattling around in a house filled with the memories of a lifetime with his family and with just my mother since my brother left home in the 80s. I guess I am just angry that I can’t pick up the phone and call her for any one of the hundreds of reasons I might have called in the past. From recipes to telling her I was getting married. From griping about how hard my sister is to get in touch with to hearing her grumble about dad filling the basement with sawdust for his latest project.
Maybe it’s not even anger, maybe I just miss her.
Goodbye mom, I miss you.
Comments
From: VT
Subject: your momHi Steve,
I just read your loving and tenderly-written piece about your mother. Although I did not know her, I know you and I see her handiwork. She did a great job raising you! Even though my father died three years ago this December, I still feel sad that I cannot pick up the phone when I want to talk to him, ask for his advice about something electrical or about my car, or even hear his latest corny joke. We talked nearly every day. So I understand a small piece of your loss, but only because I don’t know yet what it is like to lose my mother. And I understand your anger at the way things ended your time with your mother so abruptly. I feel that way too about my father, even though I had 50 wonderful years of his love and devotion. So I think of you and your loss. And I send my love.
From: LC
Subject: your momMy mom died in 2004 and I spent most of that time being angry, at her. For not putting up more of a fight against an injury that was non-lifethreatening.
And at the rehabilitation facility who didn’t do anything to help and would have let her lie there and die if we hadn’t insisted she be sent back to the hospital.
At my dad who didn’t seem as upset as I thought he should be.
Anger is normal and will take time to heal. Don’t let your life be ruled by it. Accept it and let it go naturally
Feedback from Facebook
(21 January, 2013) Mom was very involved in the Virginia Bluebird Society, the North American Bluebird Society and the National Audobon Society. Below is a scan of the obituary that appeared in the North American Bluebird Society Journal Winter 2012-13 issue. And here is a link to her obituary on the Virginia Audobon Society’s web site. Scroll down for the obit as the link on that page is broken.
Three months later it still hurts terribly and feels surreal that I am writing about my mother in the past tense.
