I’ve been getting more organized lately - off Facebook so much, and armed with a plan. I did the dishes, cleaned the upstairs, put on my workout gear and actually walked on the treadmill! I figured if I wrote one story a day for my book about Mom and I ("Devotion"), I could be well on my way to finishing up in a couple months. My idea is to combine my blog entries from the last year of Mom’s life, along with my journal entries and blogs from a few month’s afterward with stories from my childhood that mirror the work I did with Mom. So I sat down and made a list of possible stories to tell. The first ones were easy - my birth story, how I just looked around and Mom was calm, my weird childhood spiritual experiences (hanging out with my dog that had been put to sleep, only I didn’t know it until later that morning to walking around INSIDE a rock), but as I neared Mom’s end I remembered the wonderful and logic-defying interactions that involved being able to CLEARLY hear Mom talking in my head, when everyone else was sad because she couldn’t talk in ‘real’ life. One of the last things I heard her say, as she looked up at me with big, pleading eyes, was, “I wish you could hear me tell you how much I love you.” I cry now even as I write, because in ‘real’ life I said, “But Mom - I CAN hear you telling me how much you love me.” She said again, “but I wish you could HEAR me tell you how much I love you!” and I said, “Mom - I’m telling you - I CAN hear you telling me how much you love me,” until she finally got what I was saying, and nodded, a tear running down her face.
I had that same experience when my friend Julie Poseley died. I was in the hospital the morning of her death, and she looked up at me with those same pleading eyes, talking to me in my head. I can’t remember what she was saying, but I answered her, and again, she nodded and started crying. It must be such a relief to know that even if you can’t talk in ‘real’ life, there are those that can still ‘hear’ us. Communication in those final hours seems to be desperate - they want so dearly to tell us those last things they want us to know - how much they love us, how grateful they are for having been with us, how much they’ll miss us, and on.
I’ve been thinking about Mom a lot lately, as we’ve just returned from Florida, where a lot of my adult winter months were spent with Mom and Dad and the sun. It came back to me at odd times, like at the Crab Shack, the tears flowing so abundantly that I put on my sunglasses so I wouldn’t have to explain to anybody. Walking through all the places we used to go together - Tommy Bahamas, Wind in the Willows, the Philharmonic, the ocean, Waterside. It’s good - it’s all good, as I breathe the essence of Mom through me and into me solidly. Yes, I keep her with me, for real. Love knows no separation, but still - I hear her voice on my answering machine, and I think she may still just be out of sight, even if she’s been dead for almost 2 years. It doesn’t seem possible, does it? Yet I know I must write this book first - the book of Devotion. Devotion of my mother toward me, and devotion of me toward my mother - a beautiful full circle. And yes, Mom, I DO know how much you love me. Do you know much I love you?