Time for the Eyeroll

I was driving home from work a couple days ago, and the van in front of me had this license plate.

Used to be I'd have made fun of this in some fashion, but not any more. I don't need any more lessons in the various and sundry ways people have to find or create comfort for their soul when they grieve, and I find myself unable to criticize whatever method works for them.

Still...

I saw this and I just knew beyond a shadow of any doubt that if Mama had been in the car with me, she'd have been rollin' her eyes with a side of raised eyebrow at the sight.

So I did it and smiled.

It is not a true thing that there have been no little landmines since my last post here. The true thing is that life around here is a little different than it used to be, and I find myself only infrequently with time, energy, and inspiration enough to write anything.

The near daily landmine I have is when I receive a call placed from my father's house. Of course, we only started calling it that once Mama died -- it had always been "Granny's house" before -- so this is the picture that still comes up when a call comes from there:

Some days I get teary when I see it; other times I smile remembering the day I shot that picture. The afghan was a gift to my granddaughter when she was born, from a dearest friend. Mama really hammed it up for this picture, which is something she did pretty frequently. She'd insist she didn't want her picture taken, and then she'd pull something like this out of her artillery, and, well, it's a sweet memory.

Yesterday I attended a monthly luncheon for the club to which Mama and I belonged. We had a splendid speaker, and a really lovely lunch, and as I was heading out of the place one of Mama's best friends (with whom I've had numerous conversations since Mama's death) stopped me and said she had something she needed to tell me.

Let me backtrack here for a second: the day before Mama went to the hospital, we knew our "system" would be activated that night to call 9-1-1. Her difficulties happened in the middle of the night but she, not wishing to bother anybody, would wait until the next day to inform us she'd had trouble.  Her cardiologist told her that Friday to call the emergency service when it happened again, because the best chance of getting to the bottom of it would be in the ER as it was happening. None of us had any particular reason to believe that this was anything terribly serious. We just knew Mama had something going on that was causing her discomfort, messing with her sleep, and leaving her flat tired every day.

So - we had a system in place for phone tree, and who'd stay where and who would go, and I suspect we all went to bed that Friday night knowing the phone would ring. It did, and by dawn on Saturday Mama was in ICU.

Once she was there, she asked me to call two of her closest friends to tell them where she was. I didn't think a thing of it -- they were in the best position to inform all the other friends quickly.

I hadn't thought about any of that since then, until Lois pulled me aside yesterday. She said that she'd been trying to figure out when the right time was to tell me what she was fixing to tell me, and that something nudged her that that moment was the right time.

And here's what she told me.

On Friday, the day before she was hospitalized, while we were all fine-tuning our preparations for the call we knew would come, Mama called these friends -- Lois and Hallie. She told them what was going on. And she told them something else.

She told them goodbye.

She told them she knew she would never come home again.

When Lois told me this, I could hardly breathe. I have struggled for more than 24 hours now to figure out what to make of this revelation.

I'm still not entirely sure, but at least one thing it cements in my mind is this: every word my mother spoke, every note she wrote when she could no longer speak, every squeeze of the hand, every raised eyebrow and thumbs up was intentional.

And even more perplexing, I'm trying to figure out why yesterday suddenly seemed like the right time for me to know. 

Written to us on 10/6/11, actually. 

Snapshots

Little landmines have not only served as occasions for deep sadness for me. Sometimes -- more and more often, in fact -- they bring a funny memory with them, or a reason to celebrate that Mama's life so informs my own that there are days when her presence is just all around me. They serve not so much as shocks to the systems as nudges from deep in my heart where the goodest stuff dwells, from which I am prompted to remember.

Two recent cases in point. 

On December 17, 2011 I said to my brother, as if in automatic mode, "Today is Grandmama's birthday."  You should understand here that the Keeper of All Family Dates On Her Tongue was our Mama. If you ran across her on one of these days, you'd get your reminder. Anyway, as soon as the words were out of my mouth, my brother responded over his shoulder, "I wondered who would be in charge of reminding us of these things every year."  

It was a good little landmine. It spoke of continuity, and family jokes that will live on  long after all of those of us who know the whole story are gone.

And then this: today was my first time back to the 20th Century Club meeting after my rather spectacular loss of form in November there. We met, as we do nearly every month, at the Blue Willow (which we refer to as "Our Clubhouse"). I'm happy to report that while there was a good crowd today, and I arrived a little late, that the little table at the back of the room where Mama and I always sat with the Moody Women had a couple spaces open.  Mrs. Moody and her daughter and daughter-in-law were there together, and there was another old friend, and that left one empty place after I sat down -- not in my usual chair, though. I never even thought about it -- the table conversation was great, and at one point Mrs. Moody's daughter moved the vase of roses so we could see each other across the table.

I took a picture of the roses on my iPhone to upload to The Path, a social media site I enjoy because it serves as a photojournal for me.  I "checked in" on The Path with this, and it was only later that I fully realized that of all the beautiful settings in that place I could have photographed today, I chose to snap the least remarkable view in the place -- which was right in front of Mama's usual chair. I didn't tear up when I saw this and realized it. I smiled.

Her empty chair held a little bit of understated beauty today -- just like it did when she sat there. 

So I remembered, and I smiled. 

The Unmarked Grave

In the late 1960's my parents bought the two plots at Greenwood Cemetery next to Mama's mother and father, and they also went on and ordered a monument for themselves, which has stood on those plots ever since, awaiting the time when a death date inscription would need to be added. Like many other couples, it's one monument with both their names, of course.

The company who handles this removed the monument shortly after Mama's burial for inscription, but we learned this week that there had been an error made that could not be fixed -- they inscribed the date of death on Daddy's side. The monument company is going to make this right: they acted honorably, and aside from the fact that we would rather it not have happened, we can't and won't complain about how they handled the situation.

We all heard this news and were pretty philosophical about it, but still.... it became the latest little landmine for me.

I have not returned to the cemetery since Mama was buried there. Some families are Visitors to Cemeteries, but that hasn't been part of our tradition so I just had in my mind that when the monument was back in place it would feel like things had been put to paid and I'd feel right being there for a visit.

So now we have this delay, which may well be 3 months or more, and I just got emotionally blindsided hearing this. I couldn't really sort out why until I talked it out with a good friend. She is so wise, and here's what she said in response to my saying that I wasn't sure why I was so upset, given that it is "just a hunk of stone."

"No, it's not just a hunk of stone. It's the hunk of stone your Mom and Dad purchased over 45 years ago and planned for you to come visit after they were gone. It's a huge deal."


Here's the thing about friends, and pouring out your heart, and listening when they respond with grace and wisdom:  As soon as she put into words what I was having trouble articulating and thereby honored my sadness, it was largely dispelled.

This is why it is so important, I think, to share the hard things, and it helps if you have wise friends.

My sister and I have marked our calendars for April. It will be pretty there in the spring.

"Do not protect yourself from grief by a fence, but rather by your friends."-- Czech Proverb