The entry I keep putting off
I think I've mentioned that I went to my twenty year high school reunion, in San Antonio (actually technically in Helotes) a couple of weeks ago. There's definitely an entry in there, but I've been too exhausted to write anything, for pleasure or otherwise, that doesn't have a grade attached to it.
There's a piece I don't want to put off any longer: on the way to the reunion, I stopped by Mom's grave.
Since my last visit to Texas, Mikki told me that the headstone had arrived, marking her spot. When I was there in March, there was a temporary little post. I knew that going to see that spot, inspect the headstone, mutter about how it's wrong that the second date was the date she was found (versus the date we're pretty sure she actually died), do that whole talk to the spot where what's left of her body is buried and all of that, was pretty much mandatory. I would have to be a pretty heartless bastard to skip out on seeing it.
Actually, the truth is that I wanted to see it. I don't know why I felt the compulsion, but I did. I went with Mikki and one of my nephews back in March, and it seemed just as surreal then, actually unreal is more accurate, as it did at the funeral. Somehow, instinctively I knew that it would different this time around. Maybe it was the fact that so much time had elapsed since the funeral. Maybe it was the addition of the little marker, making it that much more official that she's Gone. Maybe it was the fact that I would be alone with her for the first time since she died. I don't know. It's probably a little bit of all of the above.
In any case, it was about ten minutes away from where the reunion was being held, so I just kinda knew I had to see it.
My reaction totally took me by surprise. For the most part, since she died last November, I feel like I've been kind of communing with her, on and off, connecting with this really cool part of her that was totally inaccessible when she was alive. One might call it her God-self, or her higher self, or her soul. Whatever. Maybe it's just my idealized version of who she could have been. I won't know until I join her in death. Anyway, it was rational. It was grateful for my attention, and intention, in ways that the living Mom never could have been. I've come to understand a lot about myself, and what our relationship meant to me (and to her) over the course of the last several months.
I felt Mom's presence at her grave alright, and in spite of myself I found myself talking to her. I had thought about this a long time, about how I feel like the physical body is just a temporary holder of the soul, about how death is really just more or less moving on to another plane of existence, and how the soul is done with the body and it's just this empty dead thing when a soul no longer animates it. So from that perspective it's silly to talk to it, or actually the six feet of dirt and grass and bugs on top of the box in which the dead body slowly decomposes. That's not the person any more than an article of clothing from his or her closet would be the person. If you want to talk to a dead person, you don't need a physical place; they're beyond the physical now. Right?
Right?
Well... that might all be true, but I have to say that I confronted... something. After swearing that I was this complex combination of more rational and more New Agey than that, and in any case more evolved or at least more at peace with her death than to (still) be affected by a piece of rock with her name carved into it... I had this involved, emotional conversation with her. I cried, quite a bit, to the point where I checked myself out in the rear-view mirror in my rental car, to make sure it wasn't all tear-stained, and was fully prepared to seek out a bathroom to do an emergency face-wash. I hadn't thought ahead to bring tissue. It was like that evolved, advanced, pure love version of Mom with whom I've been connecting all year? was gone. I was confronted with the not-evolved part of her, the ego, the broken-brain part with whom I'd shared this strained relationship for thirty seven years. I felt myself getting defensive in spite of myself. I felt her being pissy with me, about how I'd up and moved so far away probably just to make it easy to ignore her, about how she was pissed to be shoved in this corner plot, about how all those other people got really nice ornate markers and we took the cheapest thing we could find... and the crazy part of it is, I could really see her saying these things. For a moment, I kind of wished that she could be alive again for five minutes, just to hear the real her say these things, and have a chance to laugh, or argue, or roll my eyes, or something more than talk to a patch of grass.
Once I started answering her, once I actually got past that moment of this is really stupid, the words just fell out of me, this flood that I couldn't stop. I started, I think, by telling her that my life was more complex than that, that it never revolved around her and it wasn't supposed to, that my reasons for staying away and for moving to RI were about a lot more than her. And then I started apologizing... well, for all the stuff that didn't work out for her. All the stuff that went wrong in her life, all the things that were probably painful for her to live with. I didn't say it as if I were responsible; I was really clear about that. It was more like I wanted to say that I was saddened that things had to be so difficult for her. It just went on and on; I lost track of time.
And then I started talking about some of the good things in my life. At first, it was angry defiance; yeah, I'm in a long term relationship with a man, but it's a healthy one. Yeah, I'm back at school and I'm not studying to become a lawyer or a doctor or a computer programmer or any of those other things she wanted for me that would have 1) given her some prestige being my mom and 2) enabled me to support her. But I'm going to make a big difference with this degree, if not in the world then at least in my corner of it. And I'm already making a difference, I'm sure of it, by sharing my life with thousands of strangers every year, and while I'm sorry if that made her uncomfortable it's still the thing I'm here to do right now, and I'm doing it. Slowly, I dropped the anger and defensiveness (it takes a lot of energy to maintain anger) and just talked to her. I told her that she was the person who enabled me to return to school now, and that I really did hope that made her happy. I told her thanks for the laptop, which was something I was considering to be another gift from her; it was exactly what I wanted. I told her that even if I felt like her methods left a lot to be desired, she must have done a good job mothering me because I really do like the person I've turned out to be so far. I like my life. I like my sense of right and wrong, and my sense of fairness, and my sensitivity to the emotional state of others, and somehow, at least in part, that came out of being her son.
I think I returned to being angry for a moment just to tell her that I was pissed off about the way she died, and we still have no clue about how she died. The blood sample, as far as I know, is still sitting in some refrigerator somewhere, waiting to be analyzed, or else Mikki just hasn't shared the news about the analysis. I kind of scolded her for a bit about how she really left me and Mikki (mostly Mikki, since that's who it fell upon to do all of the arrangements) in a very crappy position, and it was impossible to know what she might have wanted.
But none of that matters, I said to her headstone, because it's over. It's done. And you are not this wad of bones and rotting flesh under me and you know it.
Still, I had to admit that I didn't make things easy for her while she was alive. I apologized for hemming and hawing for so many years after I left US Airways, taking so long to get back to school. I told her that I'm sure I'll be learning lots of skills in the next couple of years that might have made dealing with her and her broken brain easier, and I'm sorry I didn't learn those while she was alive and I might have used them with her. I'm sorry that she won't get to see me graduate, or get married, or practice, that all of that is yet to happen and she is no longer around to witness it when it does.
Finally, I told her that I know I will be back, but I can't let my life revolve around her, that such an expectation was never a fair or realistic one, and she needs to get over it. And all the while I knew what I was actually saying, which was something a little different, but I still needed to pretend, to trick those unconscious pieces of my brain into getting it. It's kind of frightening how those little tricks, those rituals, are so effective, even when you can peek behind the curtain and see how the trick works, even when you're basically performing the trick on yourself. Still, I carried it to the end: I shall return. I don't need to convince you or anyone else that I will. I'm not saying it as an opening for you to attack; I'm stating my intention, and I know it to be true, and that's all I've got. That will have to do.
With a final profession of love, I finally got up, dusted off the butt on my pants (which, thankfully, didn't get grass stains), took these pictures, and left for my reunion.
There's a piece I don't want to put off any longer: on the way to the reunion, I stopped by Mom's grave.
Since my last visit to Texas, Mikki told me that the headstone had arrived, marking her spot. When I was there in March, there was a temporary little post. I knew that going to see that spot, inspect the headstone, mutter about how it's wrong that the second date was the date she was found (versus the date we're pretty sure she actually died), do that whole talk to the spot where what's left of her body is buried and all of that, was pretty much mandatory. I would have to be a pretty heartless bastard to skip out on seeing it.
Actually, the truth is that I wanted to see it. I don't know why I felt the compulsion, but I did. I went with Mikki and one of my nephews back in March, and it seemed just as surreal then, actually unreal is more accurate, as it did at the funeral. Somehow, instinctively I knew that it would different this time around. Maybe it was the fact that so much time had elapsed since the funeral. Maybe it was the addition of the little marker, making it that much more official that she's Gone. Maybe it was the fact that I would be alone with her for the first time since she died. I don't know. It's probably a little bit of all of the above.
In any case, it was about ten minutes away from where the reunion was being held, so I just kinda knew I had to see it.
My reaction totally took me by surprise. For the most part, since she died last November, I feel like I've been kind of communing with her, on and off, connecting with this really cool part of her that was totally inaccessible when she was alive. One might call it her God-self, or her higher self, or her soul. Whatever. Maybe it's just my idealized version of who she could have been. I won't know until I join her in death. Anyway, it was rational. It was grateful for my attention, and intention, in ways that the living Mom never could have been. I've come to understand a lot about myself, and what our relationship meant to me (and to her) over the course of the last several months.
I felt Mom's presence at her grave alright, and in spite of myself I found myself talking to her. I had thought about this a long time, about how I feel like the physical body is just a temporary holder of the soul, about how death is really just more or less moving on to another plane of existence, and how the soul is done with the body and it's just this empty dead thing when a soul no longer animates it. So from that perspective it's silly to talk to it, or actually the six feet of dirt and grass and bugs on top of the box in which the dead body slowly decomposes. That's not the person any more than an article of clothing from his or her closet would be the person. If you want to talk to a dead person, you don't need a physical place; they're beyond the physical now. Right?
Right?
Well... that might all be true, but I have to say that I confronted... something. After swearing that I was this complex combination of more rational and more New Agey than that, and in any case more evolved or at least more at peace with her death than to (still) be affected by a piece of rock with her name carved into it... I had this involved, emotional conversation with her. I cried, quite a bit, to the point where I checked myself out in the rear-view mirror in my rental car, to make sure it wasn't all tear-stained, and was fully prepared to seek out a bathroom to do an emergency face-wash. I hadn't thought ahead to bring tissue. It was like that evolved, advanced, pure love version of Mom with whom I've been connecting all year? was gone. I was confronted with the not-evolved part of her, the ego, the broken-brain part with whom I'd shared this strained relationship for thirty seven years. I felt myself getting defensive in spite of myself. I felt her being pissy with me, about how I'd up and moved so far away probably just to make it easy to ignore her, about how she was pissed to be shoved in this corner plot, about how all those other people got really nice ornate markers and we took the cheapest thing we could find... and the crazy part of it is, I could really see her saying these things. For a moment, I kind of wished that she could be alive again for five minutes, just to hear the real her say these things, and have a chance to laugh, or argue, or roll my eyes, or something more than talk to a patch of grass.
Once I started answering her, once I actually got past that moment of this is really stupid, the words just fell out of me, this flood that I couldn't stop. I started, I think, by telling her that my life was more complex than that, that it never revolved around her and it wasn't supposed to, that my reasons for staying away and for moving to RI were about a lot more than her. And then I started apologizing... well, for all the stuff that didn't work out for her. All the stuff that went wrong in her life, all the things that were probably painful for her to live with. I didn't say it as if I were responsible; I was really clear about that. It was more like I wanted to say that I was saddened that things had to be so difficult for her. It just went on and on; I lost track of time.
And then I started talking about some of the good things in my life. At first, it was angry defiance; yeah, I'm in a long term relationship with a man, but it's a healthy one. Yeah, I'm back at school and I'm not studying to become a lawyer or a doctor or a computer programmer or any of those other things she wanted for me that would have 1) given her some prestige being my mom and 2) enabled me to support her. But I'm going to make a big difference with this degree, if not in the world then at least in my corner of it. And I'm already making a difference, I'm sure of it, by sharing my life with thousands of strangers every year, and while I'm sorry if that made her uncomfortable it's still the thing I'm here to do right now, and I'm doing it. Slowly, I dropped the anger and defensiveness (it takes a lot of energy to maintain anger) and just talked to her. I told her that she was the person who enabled me to return to school now, and that I really did hope that made her happy. I told her thanks for the laptop, which was something I was considering to be another gift from her; it was exactly what I wanted. I told her that even if I felt like her methods left a lot to be desired, she must have done a good job mothering me because I really do like the person I've turned out to be so far. I like my life. I like my sense of right and wrong, and my sense of fairness, and my sensitivity to the emotional state of others, and somehow, at least in part, that came out of being her son.
I think I returned to being angry for a moment just to tell her that I was pissed off about the way she died, and we still have no clue about how she died. The blood sample, as far as I know, is still sitting in some refrigerator somewhere, waiting to be analyzed, or else Mikki just hasn't shared the news about the analysis. I kind of scolded her for a bit about how she really left me and Mikki (mostly Mikki, since that's who it fell upon to do all of the arrangements) in a very crappy position, and it was impossible to know what she might have wanted.
But none of that matters, I said to her headstone, because it's over. It's done. And you are not this wad of bones and rotting flesh under me and you know it.
Still, I had to admit that I didn't make things easy for her while she was alive. I apologized for hemming and hawing for so many years after I left US Airways, taking so long to get back to school. I told her that I'm sure I'll be learning lots of skills in the next couple of years that might have made dealing with her and her broken brain easier, and I'm sorry I didn't learn those while she was alive and I might have used them with her. I'm sorry that she won't get to see me graduate, or get married, or practice, that all of that is yet to happen and she is no longer around to witness it when it does.
Finally, I told her that I know I will be back, but I can't let my life revolve around her, that such an expectation was never a fair or realistic one, and she needs to get over it. And all the while I knew what I was actually saying, which was something a little different, but I still needed to pretend, to trick those unconscious pieces of my brain into getting it. It's kind of frightening how those little tricks, those rituals, are so effective, even when you can peek behind the curtain and see how the trick works, even when you're basically performing the trick on yourself. Still, I carried it to the end: I shall return. I don't need to convince you or anyone else that I will. I'm not saying it as an opening for you to attack; I'm stating my intention, and I know it to be true, and that's all I've got. That will have to do.
With a final profession of love, I finally got up, dusted off the butt on my pants (which, thankfully, didn't get grass stains), took these pictures, and left for my reunion.