Flowers for Mama
It's been a year to the day since my mom died.
I'm trying to cope; people say things like 'I'm doing as well as expected, I guess' or 'I'm holding up' and all those little half-lies to make the asker feel better. I mean, if I said 'I'm feeling wretched and I keep having to fight tears and I have a really stupid depressing song stuck in my head and it's not helping', what good would that do? Mama'd be pissed off at me, I'd be pissed off at me, the askers would be uncomfortable and avoidant and.... no.
So let's get busy with the coping, shall we?
My mom was born in 1926 in the Deep South where I grew up-- NW Florida, to be specific; I'm a second-generation native. Her family came from Welsh and Scottish settlers to the area from Savannah GA on down; some of them, the Webbs, came over with George Oglethorpe when the first Savannah settlement was formed back in the late 1600's. She had a strong sense of history-- I remember her showing me the salt-boiling kettles from a century ago and telling me about how much smaller Panama City used to be and how there used to be a two-lane road where Highway 98 now runs, with heavy woods on either side.
She gave me a love of gardening and an awareness of the wild abundance that grew everywhere around us-- blackberries, date-palm fruit, loquats, huckleberries, wild grapes, herbs in the streambed that ran alongside the Bay Line railroad tracks, pecans growing in overgrown yards where houses had once been that a storm had taken down, tiny little wild strawberries in a swamp where me and my best friend Helene played. I brought home tons of these; I remember getting in trouble for stealing crabapples from Mister Scott's yard down the street, too, and her being audibly annoyed that the Brooks at the end of the block let their dates rot on the tree (she'd give me this Look, and I'd know that if I just happened to show up with a branch full of yellowy-orange dates later on we'd never discuss where they came from.)
I brought home wild phlox and waterlillies, too, and a strange sort of wild white spiderlily that grew right down at the water's edge. Our yard was full of flowers: azaleas of every color, white Cherokee roses, bridal-wreath, coralvine, narcissus, wysteria tangling in the pine-trees and making my dad curse every time he had to cut the damn stuff (it always came back), four-o-clocks on the side yard, honeysuckle, pot after pot of impatiens out front that broke off and then rooted in the grass below, tiny red Seven Sisters roses... all sorts of things. My dad gave her a huge yellow rosebush on one anniversary, snuck out at dawn and planted it himself; years later, I put yellow roses on his coffin at his funeral. I did that for Mama too.
She wasn't an easy woman to live with a lot of the time, but she did her best; she had a temper and I inherited it-- I was a brat of a kid, and I still can't stand the smell of Irish Spring soap due to a certain wash-the-mouth-out incident that I wince to recall. She got irritated (rightfully) at my horrible trash-heap of a bedroom and my mouthiness; I got pissed off at her insistence that since she was the mom I would abide by her rules Or Else (and she was GOOD at Or Else). My major punishment was to be grounded or exempted from the Sunday library-trip, and I generally deserved it when I got it (most of the time.)
My dad-- she married a Chicago guitar-player during WWII, met him on the bandstand like something in an old movie-- was, according to my grandmama, a Damn Yankee; but he loved my mom and it showed. I remember them fighting, over bills or stress or his job or other stuff, and when he'd get really pissed off he'd go stomping out the back door to take refuge with his ham radio equipment in his little metal shed with the tiny airconditioner and fridge; my mom'd usually start cleaning something-- washing dishes angrily, splashing and slamming things around. Or she'd leave early for her work with the Bay County Hospital Auxiliary, or go visit a friend. I used to worry about their fights; so many of my friends had single parents or step-parents, and I could not bear the idea of their divorcing. But you know, I don't think it ever got that serious; looking back, I remember that teenagers see the world in heavy print, and none of their fights ever lasted much more than a day.
They were married for 55 years; they loved each other and raised four kids, and when my dad died in 2000, they had five grandkids and two great-grandkids. My mom began a slow decline after that, sliding into what it took us way too long to realize was Alzheimer's. We did the best for her over the next few years, watching her gradually lose cohesion and coherence. I've always tried to remember that, according to some studies, it's the link between memory and present self that gets lost-- the person you knew is still there, not accessible but still around. Like... locked doors, I guess.
She was eighty-four when complications of her compromised immune system and pure old age finally sent her on. Wherever she is now, I hope she's happy and having new adventures with my dad. They always loved to travel; I inherited that too, and I hope they're going to wonderful new places and seeing wonderful new things.
I hope she's planting a garden, too.
Thank you, Mama; I miss you. I'll be okay eventually, I know that. Along with the temper and the love of growing things you gave me a firm foundation of family and history and love and (when I needed it, which was pretty often) discipline. Your kids and grandkids and great-grandkids remember you.
Remember us too, okay? And give Daddy a hug for me.