Death
My mother died on Halloween.
She survived about 15 months after being diagnosed with ovarian and endometrial cancer. I don't say she struggled or battled or fought--she didn't like using violent imagery to describe it. She endured it with remarkable grace, and it seemed to leave her outwardly untouched for a very long time, even as it spread through her body. Up until the very end, she would run--and then walk--along the Sand Creek bike path, taking photographs that will be displayed in a gallery exhibit later this year.
She died because breathing became just too difficult. When my aunt, a nurse, told my mother that she thought my mother would probably die that night, my mother's response was to give her two thumbs up. She was ready to go. And when she stopped breathing, she smiled before she died.
Her last coherent words were to my dad: "I love you."
Her "last words" (not her actual last words, but the ones that she wanted to make sure she said) to me were, "I love you, I trust you, I believe in you," and, "You'll make a good mother. You just need to relax."
In the week between when we visited my parents to celebrate their 33 1/3 wedding anniversary (and my mother's life), and when we drove down for her funeral, the leaves of the tree in their backyard changed from green to gold...and fell. They coated the backyard like a gold carpet.
She died on Halloween.
Kansas is deep in a drought, but the day we traveled down for her funeral, the skies wept.
These all seem appropriate, somehow significant.
I'll think of her when I see trains, and I'll look for train graffiti that she would have liked. I'll think of her when I see tombstones, remembering when I was a little girl and she'd take me to cemeteries to do gravestone rubbings. I'll think of her when I see a tandem bike. I'll think of her whenever I hear somebody playing the autoharp, or singing Home on the Range, Red River Valley, Morning Has Broken, or I'll Fly Away. I'll think of her on Halloween. I'll think of her often, for all sorts of reasons.
I wrote the following about her when I was in high school. I have a lot more to say about her, to remember, to write down to tell her grandchild/children when they are old enough to understand, but right now it's all in fragments that float through my mind.
MOTHER
tall, spiring stalks bloom
red, yellow, white, pink, and off-white
with yellow streaks,
balanced in a clay pot,
her birthday gift, beside the
bright red, lime green, and purple toys
she bought in an Indian train station
from a man who carried them in a flat woven basket
on top of his head,
birds and wind-up carousels in front of
the tall brass-colored lamp with
a short, disproportional shade that tilted a little
until she figured out how to fix it,
casting diffused light onto the bold,
anti-racism poster with colored masks that
she got free
and then paid for it to be put
into a fine-grained wood frame,
stained, polished, and varnished, hanging
above the autoharp she learned to play
in Africa,
strumming metallic strings, and now making
mellow-toned background music
while she squints at her music book
in the dim light
beside the glorious shoots of flowers
that spring from a clay pot
in midwinter.
She survived about 15 months after being diagnosed with ovarian and endometrial cancer. I don't say she struggled or battled or fought--she didn't like using violent imagery to describe it. She endured it with remarkable grace, and it seemed to leave her outwardly untouched for a very long time, even as it spread through her body. Up until the very end, she would run--and then walk--along the Sand Creek bike path, taking photographs that will be displayed in a gallery exhibit later this year.
She died because breathing became just too difficult. When my aunt, a nurse, told my mother that she thought my mother would probably die that night, my mother's response was to give her two thumbs up. She was ready to go. And when she stopped breathing, she smiled before she died.
Her last coherent words were to my dad: "I love you."
Her "last words" (not her actual last words, but the ones that she wanted to make sure she said) to me were, "I love you, I trust you, I believe in you," and, "You'll make a good mother. You just need to relax."
In the week between when we visited my parents to celebrate their 33 1/3 wedding anniversary (and my mother's life), and when we drove down for her funeral, the leaves of the tree in their backyard changed from green to gold...and fell. They coated the backyard like a gold carpet.
She died on Halloween.
Kansas is deep in a drought, but the day we traveled down for her funeral, the skies wept.
These all seem appropriate, somehow significant.
I'll think of her when I see trains, and I'll look for train graffiti that she would have liked. I'll think of her when I see tombstones, remembering when I was a little girl and she'd take me to cemeteries to do gravestone rubbings. I'll think of her when I see a tandem bike. I'll think of her whenever I hear somebody playing the autoharp, or singing Home on the Range, Red River Valley, Morning Has Broken, or I'll Fly Away. I'll think of her on Halloween. I'll think of her often, for all sorts of reasons.
I wrote the following about her when I was in high school. I have a lot more to say about her, to remember, to write down to tell her grandchild/children when they are old enough to understand, but right now it's all in fragments that float through my mind.
MOTHER
tall, spiring stalks bloom
red, yellow, white, pink, and off-white
with yellow streaks,
balanced in a clay pot,
her birthday gift, beside the
bright red, lime green, and purple toys
she bought in an Indian train station
from a man who carried them in a flat woven basket
on top of his head,
birds and wind-up carousels in front of
the tall brass-colored lamp with
a short, disproportional shade that tilted a little
until she figured out how to fix it,
casting diffused light onto the bold,
anti-racism poster with colored masks that
she got free
and then paid for it to be put
into a fine-grained wood frame,
stained, polished, and varnished, hanging
above the autoharp she learned to play
in Africa,
strumming metallic strings, and now making
mellow-toned background music
while she squints at her music book
in the dim light
beside the glorious shoots of flowers
that spring from a clay pot
in midwinter.