Issue #19 Elegies

Mumsy died on April 18, 2017.

Everyone that knew about her death kept asking if I was okay. The best I could put was that I was numb. I had spent my adult life angry at her and now that she was dead, it deflated my anger balloon. 

Woosh.

My anger, once so justifiable to me, seems petty and stupid. At my last visit with her in December, I asked some very pointed questions and received no answers. This was her wont — she has deftly dodged answers to questions put forth by my brother and me for decades. Important questions. She had long put them to rest and she saw no need to tell us why she did what she did or what she knew. To save us? Keep us from further pain? To not follow in her path? I don't know. No one knows. Regardless of her reasons, her withholding of those answers, for better and for worse, shaped our lives. When I left her nursing home that day, I finally put it all to rest. It is what it was. I just had to accept and move on.

So I did.

#

The week went slowly as we made arrangements. My brother, sister-in-law, and I drove to Port Huron, where she was to be shown, to set up the visitation and the remaining planning. Around the time Mumsy found out she had cancer in 2005, she set up funeral pre-planning so it was all taken care of and Jeff and I would not have that much work to do so when we arrived at the funeral home, we just had to pick out the urns for our share of her ashes and what flower spray for her (rented) casket. She was to be cremated. No burial. Small service with the visitation. Memorials to be made to NPR.

We had a late lunch with the hydras (three of my mother's sisters who were all singletons) and came home. There wasn't much else for us to do but place the obit in Grand Rapids Press (the funeral home would put the obit in Port Huron Times-Herald for us) and wait until Monday for the visitation and service.

I cried on and off, only one big keening had occurred and I kept waiting for the rest to appear. When I got to the funeral home on the day of the visitation, friends and relatives grabbed me and pushed me to their breasts with the expectation I would weep uncontrollably only to find they were the ones who sobbed. Against their breasts, I felt suffocated and claustrophobic. 

Just numb.

The visitation was fairly well turned out. Family came from miles around. Friends from out of state. My Canadian cousins drove in for the day from Toronto. Two of her sisters and their children did not attend tho I had contacted my cousins with the service details. They are dead to me. This is your sister and aunt who has died. The person who took care of you for more of your life. Who loaned you money, bailed you out of jams, consoled you in times of need. You could not swallow your pride long enough to pay her respect? Fuck you. We are done. Suffice to say, my brother would not be far off in agreeing with me.

After the non-denominational reverend gave her service, I went up to say a few words. I had an eloquent speech on my head, one I had worked on for the past few days, that came out stilted and punctuated with hiccuping tears. People came up to me to tell me what a great job I did. I don't remember what I said.

This is what I wanted to say:

Mother was a complicated person. She would tut-tut at her neighbors having, she presumed, forbidden carnal relationships in her senior communities but would gleefully discuss gossip about famous people. After she found out she was cancer free, I took her to a local dive bar for shots and her standard Kahlua and creams. My buttoned up mother looked at home at the bar. We clinked shot glasses and bragged to the bartender why we were there. They gave us a round of free shots. She glowed at the attention. 

She was tenacious. She never gave up educating herself and took classes on and off throughout her life. Originally she wanted to be an accountant but instead became a nurse. She saw herself working again and planned on getting a part-time job after she was cleared from surgery. She fought for the rights of seniors and championed those who could not speak. She just would never give up.

She was loyal. She kept in touch with friends from decades past. She defended and supported them. She knew the interworkings of their families and would ask after them.

She was unapologetic. She did what she want when she wanted to do it. She genuinely gave no fucks. She had no problems asking for what she wanted and how she wanted it. She had no problems telling you when she thought you were wrong. She did have a problem admitting contrition. Not once in the 45 years I have been on this planet has she ever apologized for anything, but that was part of her charm.

Her favorite color was purple; she loved the taste of beer. She would watch movies and tv series where the content pre-dated WW2. She also loved M.A.S.H. and Everybody Loves Raymond. She was a Trump supporter and listened to NPR and watched PBS. (In the end, she voted for Jill Stein because Hilliary was a crook and Trump pissed her off.) 

She had a dry sense of humour. When we pre-planned her funeral, I joked I was going to turn her urn and my father's urn into bookends. Maybe a pair of earrings? She laughed. She'd crack jokes with everyone she met. Growing up. I thought this was embarrassing but as I grow older, I find myself doing the exact same thing. 

She enjoyed all of her nicknames: Mary LaLa, Mopietta, Big Bird, and Mumsy to name a few.

She would fleece you in poker and win at most Bingo games. She practiced playing Scrabble and once beat me by over 200 points and had a standing game with a therapist at her nursing home. She kept her mind sharp by crossword puzzles and had a monthly subscription to a crossword magazine. She despised people who didn't mentally look after themselves. She didn't want to be some sad sack whose remaining days was in a nursing home drooling on themselves and letting their brain go to waste.

She was always optimistic. I knew she had dark times, she once attempted suicide and was diagnosed deeply depressed, but you wouldn't know it. She was always cheerful. Always. 

She was challenging. She would argue with you as the day was long about topics she believed passionately in. As a nurse, she would question and challenge the method and procedures of her health care. She would question your beliefs to find out how and why.

While she didn't travel much, she loved going to San Francisco. It was her favorite city and it suited her mood.

She grew up sleeping three to a bed and didn't have her own bed until she went to nursing school. She gave my brother and I separate rooms with large beds so we wouldn't grow up like she did. She told us she was jealous of us for we were able to have childhoods she didn't have.

She was brought up Catholic but in her later years, didn't prescribe to any one religion. She believed in God and in prayers. She read Joyce Mayer and books on mindfulness. She wanted no religious music at her funeral but she was okay with people having a mass said in her honor. She wanted to be a nun but her parents couldn't afford the dowry. She researched becoming a lay nun with a convent in New England in her early 50s but her health was too precarious.

She was a divorced single mother, raising two kids, long before it was cool. When her mother died in 1972, when mumsy was 30, mumsy continued raising her brother and sisters. Every single one of them, over the years, thought of mumsy as their mother and not a sister. She was always maternal.

She taught me it was okay to be a woman and smart and strong. She taught me that I did not need a man in my life to make myself whole. She gave up men every year for lent.

Her legacy is in my brother and me and I see her in us more as we get older. We are both stubborn, willful, and unapologetic tho to be fair, I have found myself mellowing in old age. My brother has her acumen for money and I have her acumen for maternal instincts. While mother tried with what she had, our upbringing was not always easy, and we surround ourselves with people who give us the comfort that was often withheld from us. We are both tenacious, a strength I especially pride myself in. My brother has her eyes and nose and I apparently look just like her. We are both tall and long limbed. We both have her lips and face shape.

We are our mother's children.

#

When mother attempted suicide in 2001, my brother got her name tattooed in a show of support of her life and I soon followed. People frequently ask about her name on my right arm and I tell them it is my mother's and my brother and I love her. They think we are good children. Mother loved our ink.

#

There isn't really an option to put a "death-day" in your contacts. I know I'll never end up deleting her information from my contact list. That is just too hard.

#

She was so cold to the touch. I could not shake I had only spoken to her a few days before she died, Easter Sunday. She wanted me to bring her a plate for dinner — mom, I am not driving seven hours for you to have ham and potatoes. She got fake indignant. She planned on seeing my brother later that day. She was hopeful of her upcoming surgery, the very one she would die from in the recovery room. I was to call her a few days after her surgery. We told each other we loved each other and hung up. That would be the last time I would speak to her.

I kissed her cold lips and forehead several times to say goodbye. We laid roses on her chest. They gave me the roasry, the one I bought back to her from the Vatican, to keep

#

My brother and I began sorting her stuff by separating into piles: To donate, to give away, to trash, and to keep. I bought a purple tub to house her stuff, it seemed fitting. I left mumsy's things in Grand Rapids and I will pick them up this summer. There may be more stuff to sort. I have hidden what I do have under other items. Seeing her purse and wallet is getting too much to bear.  # Her / our urns are purple. I am now a collector of urns: Hers, my dad's, and Wednesday The Pug's. The rest of her ashes are to be scattered somewhere, we do not yet know yet where. # This is my mother in under 2000 words. I wanted to strangle her most of the time but I did not unlove her and as the last week has progressed, I realized I never faulted her for what she was rather I faulted her for what she did but I do have to concede she did what she could do with what she had. Mother/daughter relationships are fraught and human history tells us that will never change. I do wish I swallowed my pride earlier and spent more time with her but I've accepted I did what I thought I needed to do at the time I did it. # It is a bit prophetic my last issue was written the day she died and it was about my mother, but I wrote about her lack of her taking care of her physical health and I'm still adamant that I don't want to be like her and she would have told me to the same.

Mother would have said for my brother and me to be kinder to each other; to stop fighting over what is essentially stupid shit. She would tell me to be grateful for what I have and to accept myself for what and who I am. She would tell me to be proud of what I have accomplished — she was fiercely proud of my brother and me. She would tell me I was in her thoughts and prayers.  # My brother's godmother pulled me aside at the funeral and told me when I, the prodigal daughter, came back last October, mother had said her life was complete and that is, at best, the greatest mother could have ever given me.