Flashes of Image and Sound

You know the way memories play in isolated flashes of image and sound, honing in sharply on some details and graying out others. I have a lingering memory like that which recent events have recalled. It was 1969 and I was soon to turn 16, probably the last family vacation I went on before I headed off to college. We had gone to Door County in Wisconsin. We stayed in one of those little motels that dotted the roadways in those days. Basically it was a room in a string of rooms, all on one level. The door opened to a sidewalk and a strip of grass. I recall a screen door filtering the mottled light of the dark interior where my father sat watching television. My memory recalls only grass at my feet, sunshine, that dark space beyond that screen door and my father’s voice.

“Come here,” he called out.”History is being made!”  

And it was. Man was walking on the moon. As I recall we were not especially impressed, inured to the mysteries of anything that appeared on television and certain that anything important would be replayed. Vacation awaited and there he sat watching television!

He was 44 then, a young man by my yardstick today, more than 20 years younger than I am now. I somehow don’t recall him as young, the lens of my own youth obscuring any possibility of parental youth. When I think of the world he came from I realize that two things were part of how he experienced this event, that man walked on the moon and that he could watch it live on television.  My dad was a TV guy and watched it come of age in the course of his lifetime. A few years after this day he brought public television to Central Illinois. I’m quite sure the element of watching the moon landing live on television was part of his enthusiasm.

As we look back on that moment in history, I consider that fleeting moment in my own history. I wonder what was so important that we weren’t glued to the TV along with him. In one version of my memory I recall poking my head in for a second to see what had him so engaged before I traded that dark space and fuzzy black and white imagery for the sunny day that awaited in vivid technicolor. 

CNN has a video online titled “See the moon landing as they did 50 years ago.” I must confess it made my heart beat a little faster, as if I could step back in time to that day, my personal day. I pushed play and imagined myself back in time, this time in that dreary motel room watching history along with my father. 

Fire and Smoke

I think of my mother every Fourth of July. Four years ago, in the early morning hours she departed this earth. My husband had driven through the night to meet me and that evening we sat in an outdoor cafe enjoying a nice meal as fireworks rose in the sky nearby. Everything felt unreal in its normalcy.  How could the world still turn on its axis without my mother? The once unthinkable had happened and life went on, at least for some of us.

 I decided then that every Fourth of July would be my personal commemoration of my mother, a yahrzeit of sorts. I recently accompanied a 95-year-old friend to her synagogue for a yahrzeit, the commemoration of her mother’s death. Her mother had died almost seventy years ago, and I thought of my friend “religiously” observing her yahrzeit every year since. Well, I have a ritual too, it is to see the world through my mother’s eyes. At this time of year that means fireworks.

My mother loved fireworks and she was always happy to celebrate our country. She was grateful to be an American. She had a kind of patriotism that I lack but have come to appreciate these past few years. Perhaps the values of our country can only be fully appreciated if you realize how close you can come to losing them. 

My mother’s parents were immigrants and she often reflected on the fact that she as a female would not have been educated had they stayed in the Ukraine. She loved flags as a symbol of our country. She put flags in her planters and alway hung one on the Fourth of July. When she accompanied me in the car, she would point out flags along the way. She had a sepia photo of the Statue of Liberty on her wall. 

“Do you want to walk over to see the fireworks?” my husband asked. It was the third of July when we have a chance to see early fireworks at a nearby lake about a mile and a half away. It had been raining nonstop so I imagined the mosquitoes and the wet grass where we would normally sit and hesitated. The thought of my mother’s “yahrzeit” spurred me on. I should at least be as consistent as my 95-year-old friend. A three-mile walk made me feel doubly virtuous. 

We arrived just as the fireworks were beginning and secured a spot on the curb close enough to see the smoke from the fireworks. You can pick out July on my camera roll by looking for the fireworks. Invariably I take a few photos. I guess that’s part of the ritual too, but it is especially challenging to get a distinctive photo of fireworks. No matter how stunning they may look to the naked eye, the camera loses the majesty and invariably misses the moment. "No more photos," I admonished myself. But I found myself captivated by the smoke. I was intrigued with the layered effect it created, juxtaposed with the fireworks themselves. The past and present existed side by side until both faded away into nothingness as new pasts and presents emerged. Ephemeral, a nanosecond of existence in the unfolding of our world. I reached for my camera, this time focused as much on the smoke as the fire. 

It was only later as I studied those otherworldly images that the metaphorical meaning became apparent. I had been working on a painting related to my mother on absence and presence, contemplating how absence can make a person feel much more present. How since I can no longer take my mother’s physical presence for granted, I think more consciously about how I can keep her presence alive. Her fire once burned brightly and her trail of smoke layers my life, always present.

A Creative Legacy

I've written a great deal about my mother over the past several years, especially in this past year as I adjusted to her physical absence from my world.   As she lost memory in the last few years of her life she began to collage.  She used her newspaper for material and pasted it into lined spiral notebooks.  Every day she did this like a job, following her eye to where it took her, creating meaning for her days. Once I interviewed her about her process and she told me that these albums were part of her legacy.  

When she passed away, her collage cutouts filled her kitchen table and her kitchen chairs had albums piled high. I took a photo of her work space before I took her clippings and put them in an envelope. I couldn't quite bring myself to throw out this last vestige of my mother.

 We were delighted that she had found this pursuit, grateful that she had found an engrossing activity.  I had another feeling, pride. So many people dismiss someone as they lose memory, their presence diminished in the eyes of the world. My mom did some beautiful creative work and it reminded me that the same person was still in there. I had admired her in all the different stages of her life and that continued into this final stage, creative and purposeful to the end.

 












After her death, as we divvied up the accumulation of a lifetime, I took the 21 albums.   Now they occupy a box in my studio and we have considered framing some of her work to exhibit in conjunction with work I am doing on memory.  I also have begun to use them for inspiration as I work on a series called Through Her Eyes.  I am always motivated by the idea of a series with a theme and it occurred to me that I had some great source material.  I'm not sure if it is a series yet as I only have two done, but I have so often felt as if I were seeing the world through her eyes, that I may well continue in this vein.  

 I started by painting what I recalled from her imagery.  She had a definite color palette and often used flowers and fruit, butterflies often made an appearance as well.  You can see some of her work above.  As I used paint instead of collage, it created an image with echoes, but a different feeling.

Another interesting feature in her work was crowns of fruit. I had once brought down printouts of family pictures and on one of my visits we made family history collages together. I left her with the surplus of images and on my next visit found imagery of my sister and my grandmother crowned with fruit (see below).  I was regretting not including pictures of myself after that.

I decided a painting of my mother similarly crowned would also be fitting.  It is an interesting companion to a piece I did on the wisdom of mothers, drawn from the notes on wisdom that she kept on the many books she read. The theme of that was apples as well.

So below are two of the paintings I've been working on using her collages as inspiration. 

You can find more on how my mother's collages developed at Always an Artist. It is an interesting exploration about how creativity remains even when memory flees.
 

Birthday Greetings

Early this month I had a birthday.  When I opened my eyes and remembered what day it was, I reached for my iPad.  I've had a birthday ritual in recent years.  Five years ago my parents had called my answering machine and sang Happy Birthday to me.  Every birthday since, I have played the recording of their birthday greeting. 



Three months after that call my father died. Three and a half years later my mother joined him, saying "bye-bye" as she whimsically put it. Now I had only their voices from which to conjure their presence. Last birthday it still felt a little raw only four months after my mother's death. This year it felt right as I played their recording. They were sending me greetings from afar. I listened to their voices and was transported back in time. At the end my mother sang Da da, Da da and my father joined in with a chorus.

I had done a painting of it , a realistic one of them by our old phone, the one I used to speak on in high school, talking each night with my best friend. I used to sit on the hallway floor as I twisted the cord between my fingers talking about how we would live our lives someday. What would we do? Would we have kids? Questions that lent themselves to long conversations. After about an hour my father would yell, "Get off the phone!" concluding our conversation. When I picture my parents calling me it is always on our old dial phone, long gone, but deep in my wiring.

Sometimes a realistic painting has to come first. I need to paint it out of me before I can play.  Perhaps I also had to wait a bit to let go of their corporeal form, but I took another run at it in a looser form, taking the key elements that stayed with me. My mother's birthday cake made an appearance, well actually several as it rotated through the years. Every year she did the same one, laden with airy chocolate frosting. We usually had it at Thanksgiving as my sister was a November baby also so we invariably shared the cake. My niece, who took over responsibility for Thanksgiving from my mom, continues that ritual, the annual birthday cake from my mother's recipe.

Now as I played with imagery, I pictured flames atop candles flickering, glowing like sparks, shooting through time and space with a suggestion of my parents in a chasm, another dimension, mouths open in song. And there was that phone cord twisting through time connecting them with me like an umbilical cord. 

There is a coda to this.  I was down in Illinois a day after my birthday to close on the sale of my mother's home.  As this was likely to be my last visit for the foreseeable future, I did a stop by the cemetery where my parents now reside.  I put a stone on their grave and told my mom about the new owners of the house, the parents of her neighbors. It is a solution we feel sure she would have blessed as they are new immigrants to this country just as her parents once were.  I was feeling a bit foolish speaking to the air and a tombstone, not quite sure how to have this conversation in this way, before a marker of their presence.  Then I had an idea.  Out came the iPad and their birthday song filled the air.   I wasn't sure if I was being irreverent in this act, but my family often erred on the side of irreverence, and in some strange way it felt like the most reverent thing I could have done.  I closed my eyes and felt their presence surround me, molecules of air vibrating with their energy once again.

Right Things-Right Reasons

I've always had a bit of a mantra. Do the right things for the right reasons. It has been my experience that when I do that, I am rewarded in ways I cannot predict and mysteries unfold. Yes, I realize that sounds a little out there, but it has happened often enough that I have come to trust in it. And whether you believe that or not, shouldn't we be doing the right things for the right reasons anyway? Often it requires an expenditure of time and effort, a giving of self. It is not always easy. 


At no time have I been more aware of this than in my shared time with my mother in her final years. As her memory began to fail, I stepped up and came to visit more frequently and for more extended time. One of the right reasons for this was to cherish the time I had with my mother, suddenly painfully aware that it was limited and would end. The other right reason was to relieve my sister who lived near her and took on more of the burden. I didn't want my sister to feel overwhelmed and abandoned as she assumed responsibility. And I wanted her to know that I appreciated what she did. 


When my mother took a turn for the worse, I knew the right thing was to be there for her. To be present. We held her hand to the end, surrounding her with love. It was both hard and profound and I am incredibly grateful that I had that opportunity to be there for her. Later my sister and I tackled the house. I went through my parents' papers, experiencing them through their thoughts and the eyes of correspondents. My understanding of them deepened and as onerous as that process was, I was grateful for the understanding I gained.


Since my mother passed away, I have been experiencing her in a different way, creating artwork and writing about her. I finally was able to give what I was doing a name when I read about the artist Tobi Kahn. When his mother died, he, an observant Jew, said the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead. But he also said it in a different way. He decided that during his year as a mourner he would create works of art that related to his mother's life. When he described it as saying Kaddish visually, I understood exactly what he meant. This also was my way of saying Kaddish for my mother, integrating both her absence, but also her continued presence into my life.

We are at the close of a chapter, but I still feel like mysteries are unfolding. My sister and I have both been doing the right things for the right reasons. We are honoring our parents in many ways as we let them go. We have created a force field, out of which good things come.


I was speaking to my sister recently when I said, "Have I told you lately how grateful I am that I have a sister?" One of the good things that came out of this was a deepened relationship with my sister. While we are only three years apart in age we often lived in different worlds. I was away at college while she navigated high school. She was raising a family when I was single. At crisis points we pulled together, but for much of our adult lives we were a tangential presence in each other's life. 

Now with complementary, but different skills, and with a deep love for our mother, we stepped up together to support her and to deal with all those end of life challenges. Holding up my end of things was the right thing to do. Really getting to know and appreciate my sister on a whole other level was one of the gift that I received for that effort. And then there are the mysteries...


My sister and my niece were at the house for the final time. My niece was going through an old purse of my mother's and was convinced there was something in it. She felt around in the lining and extricated a star of David necklace that my mother had gotten in Israel. I remembered how my mother had focused in on that necklace in the shop. I had suggested she might want to look at others, but she was insistent that that was the one she wanted. Soon after we returned she lost it. I had thought of it often, wondering if it would reappear. I hated the idea of losing it. It seemed somehow fitting that it was resurrected at the 11th hour by my niece, a legacy passed on to my mother's granddaughter with a sense of discovery surrounding it, almost as if my mother had handed it to her.


The other good thing that has arisen is that a neighbor has bought the house. I'm in town one last time for the closing. The young neighbor couple and their child have the wife's parents living with them. The parents, who are new to this country, were interested in purchasing the house. That somehow felt so right to both my sister and me. "Mom would love the idea" we said to each other. We still seem to have a pretty direct channel to her. She would have liked the idea of family members supporting each other.  Her parents were immigrants too and she looked after her mother who lived with us when we were young.  I think she would have identified with the neighbors. Actually she would have liked for us to have lived next door to her.

There is a huge tree in the front yard that grew from a twig. The neighbor's mother said that she loves to watch it as it goes through the seasons and has named it Orlando, echoing the name of the street although I keep thinking of the Shakespearean character. My mother loved her house and I think would be very pleased with a new owner who names and cherishes the tree that graces the yard.

Beyond My Ken

I returned recently from what was probably my last visit to my childhood home, certainly the last while it holds a vestige of what it was. Now it is almost emptied, soon to be readied for sale. It has been six decades since I first lived there. I remember how excited I was when I turned ten and could say I had lived a decade, a word with all the richness of history. Then I could never have imagined six decades during which that home was always a kind of home base.The idea was "beyond my ken" my mother would have said, beyond my sight and understanding, far out on that horizon line on which I now perch. 

We were a family that loved words, their layers of meaning, the rustle of history in their folds. When I was young I used to take a word and ponder it until it disintegrated before my eyes into a vast wasteland, a desert void of meaning.

Desert source link

I was going to write of childhood homes and instead I seem to have followed a trail of words into a desert. I write in the early morning, partially awoken by my dreams of that childhood home, lost in the desert of memory. I follow a trail of words to an understanding still dawning, just out of reach, beyond my ken.

Photo by AimeeLow at morguefile.com

I rebuild that home in memory. I am doing the hard work of reconstruction, waking at 4 AM after mentally reconstructing rooms filled with phantom objects, reconstructing thoughts that once filled rooms and held up their walls from within. It wears me out. I wake with confusion to find myself here in my present.

I mine words looking for clues. Did you know that "ken" is called a fossil word? That means it is obsolete, no longer in common usage except that it is embedded in this phrase, "beyond my ken". My childhood home is a fossil home. It no longer exists as it once did save for being embedded in memory. Even this phrase, "beyond my ken", is a memory, my mother the only one I've ever heard speak it. Now she too is memory. Her solid bulk, warm and soft, all memory.

Yesterday I awoke thinking of my mother's everyday plates bound for Goodwill unless I rescue them. "Have they been sent to Goodwill yet?" I text my sister. "No" she replies. I need to make room to keep these memories, those of tactile form. To do that I must empty my cupboards of my husband's old plates that preceded our history. He graciously agrees to release some of his memories so I can cling to mine. I am struggling with this more than I expected.

It has been a year since my mother died. I have spent that time processing her loss and belatedly that of my father. I've written of going through my parents' papers, rediscovering them and seeing them through the eyes of their correspondents and through their own recorded thoughts. Processing the loss of a person should be much more difficult than the loss of mere things. And yet things contain their presence, place contains their history. It is a sequential loss, first person, then things, then place, the place that contained the person, the things, the memories, and both their history and mine. I remove each layer of loss only to find yet another, a Russian Matryoshka doll of loss, nesting within and within and within.

My father's loss was less challenging because my mother remained, still the vessel of memory ensconced in a familiar place. She was my placeholder so I didn't lose my place. Now she is gone and soon place will follow. It is a foundational shift, the tectonic plates that are parents shift and our world is reshaped, the familiar no longer recognizable. Pieces wash up in my cupboards and windows and dreams, trinkets that remain as memories, taking on new meaning in my world of today.

The Cicadas’s Song

When my mom used to euphemistically refer to death as saying "bye-bye" someday, my response was always "but not yet.” We had a little call and response thing going. I thought of it as a bit of a negotiation, only to learn that I was merely being humored in that conceit.

I am in the town that I grew up in, perhaps for the last time. There are no more parents to visit save in the graveyard, soon there will be no childhood home. I am here for the unveiling of my mother's tombstone. In the Jewish tradition an unveiling happens approximately one year after a person dies and uses the Jewish calendar to determine when that is. Although my mother died on the Fourth of July, on the Jewish calendar it is actually July 23rd this year. Why so different?

It turns out that the current year on the Jewish calendar is a leap year, the Hebrew term actually means "a pregnant year.” Periodically they add days to catch up and assure that holidays fall at the proper season. The year following my mother's death has indeed felt pregnant, laden with meaning, heavy and transformational, as I integrate her physical absence with a new understanding of her emotional presence. I didn't have to think of it when I had her here, occupying space on this earth, yet with her physical absence I am oddly much more aware of her presence. It is a comforting weight I carry within me, the weight of nineteen days, perhaps the weight of a lifetime.

I find that I am not only saying goodbye to my mother, but I am saying goodbye to the town I grew up in, to friends with whom I renewed friendships, to my childhood home and to a part of my history. In the intervening years since my father died, I have made regular trips to see my mother, reconnecting with the community as I created new memories with my mother. Now I am leaving both of my parents in a cemetery 500 miles away from where I live. They are surrounded by many of the people we knew growing up, a roster of familiar names. The lady who lived down the hill from our home now lies in the ground down the hill from their tombstone. There is an odd symmetry that has been maintained. They are in good company.

We arrived at the cemetery on a blistering hot day. At the back of the cemetery my parents' tombstone was wrapped in a blue tarp. We have a small immediate family, my parents' three children, two grandchildren, two great grandsons. My husband and several friends completed our gathering. Our family is spread around the country, planes and often lengthy drives deposited us at this plot of ground where our parents now reside. The two young children brought a certain leavening to the occasion as the youngest threw himself over the tombstone, almost as if he were climbing into my mother's lap. "She would have liked that," I thought. I remembered her holding him as a newborn at a Thanksgiving just two years earlier.

My niece spoke movingly of my mother's honesty and kindness, traits that captured her well. She was an authentic person, honest to the core and the embodiment of kindness. The rabbi had us pause in silent prayer as a chorus of cicadas filled the silence with song. My niece helped her young nephews remove the tarp, walking around the tombstone as she tugged the duct tape loose. Meanwhile I stood there in silent prayer, praying that the text and dates would be correct, sighing in relief as the carved stone emerged without error.

We placed small stones upon the tombstone, another Jewish tradition, representing our presence and love. Next to the stones, my niece placed a cicada shell she had found on the tarp. She remembered my mother, a nature lover, finding cicada shells with her and her sister on nature walks. Cicadas live underground as nymphs, often at depths of 8 feet. When they mature they emerge from underground, shedding their intact shell, often leaving it clinging to a tree. Interestingly they are a symbol of immortality. Yet more symmetries. Shell above, shell below, preserved in memory, deeply embedded in each of us.

A Holiday Tradition

My family seems to sync with holidays. My brother was born on St Patrick's Day, my sister's birthday often hits Thanksgiving and I claim Halloween and Election Day. When I was a child my mother used to make little witches for my birthday parties with Tootsie Roll heads and a crepe paper skirt under which was hidden a cup with a stash of candy corn. I never really identified with Halloween, but as an adult I often spent my birthday doorknocking for my Presidential candidate. I must admit those holiday associations do make it easier to recall family birthdays.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that my parents, who missed out on that birthday tradition, claimed their holidays in death. My father whose name was Phil chose the holiday of his namesake Punxsutawney Phil, Groundhog's Day, and my mother very appropriately chose the Fourth of July, appropriately because in life she loved flags and her country.

Last July we were doing the death vigil at this time of year. I never fully comprehended that being on one's death bed is more than a turn of phrase. I had come down to Illinois to visit my mother for what turned into an unexpected wait for her demise. It had an air of unreality to it, but as the Fourth of July approached, I knew that would be her departure date. 

When I used to go for drives with my mother and we passed American flags waving in the wind, she would point them out in delight. She put flags in her planters, on her wall where she hung the things that spoke to her and of course on my father's grave.

On her wall she also had a photo of the Statue of Liberty and often spoke of how happy she was that she was born in America where she could get an education. Her mother had been born in the Ukraine where she was not educated, something that had always saddened my mother. My mother had loved learning and going back to college as an adult had been a highlight of her life. She associated that gift with being an American. The Fourth of July is a happy holiday to associate with her, a celebration of things she held dear.

I used to think of my mom as being a bit Pollyanna. In addition to loving flags, her country, and education, she lit up around children and frequently summoned us to our kitchen window to see a bird or a sunset. She didn't have a jaded bone in her body. My father called her The Original Innocent, perhaps because she had a purity of spirit, a genuine joy in the world around her that us more jaded souls have a harder time summoning. 

I have a picture of her in my mind that is associated not with the flag, but with another Fourth of July tradition, fireworks. I had taken her on a trip to Barcelona. We stayed in a hotel on the Ramblas that overlooked a Miro mosaic, a circle set into the pavement. At night the fire swallowers would come out and position themselves on it, drawing a crowd until we would hear the DA-da DA-da of the police coming to disperse them. Our balcony gave us a front row seat. 

That evening we had already had our floor show of fire swallowers when we heard a noise and my mother returned to the balcony to see what it was. As she stood there in her nightgown, we realized it was the opening volley of a fireworks show from a nearby street. I picture her in her nighty, her face illuminated with the light from the fireworks and an expression of pure delight.

As I watch fireworks this Fourth of July, I think I will hold that image close, her looking at the world with joy, illuminated in its glow.

Our Imperfect Selves

Father's Day once again. I thought I was done with Father's Day when my Dad passed away four years ago. And yet, here I am with a crate of his papers, sorting through them, scanning them and learning new things about my father that make me regret that I didn't know him more fully. Does anyone ever know a parent fully? As a child I saw but a glimpse, fraught with parental authority and my struggles for independence and approval. I saw the clay feet of the man who walked on water in the eyes of the public. I knew the private person, not the man of accomplishment and eloquence. 

My father was a man of many talents who was often challenged by the everyday frustrations of dealing with children. Fortunately for us and for him, my mother was incredibly gifted with children. I wonder sometimes if he felt a bit like an outsider among us. His world was the world of work where he was esteemed and accomplished. In that world he had an innate understanding of how to assemble teams that stayed together for their entire careers. He could paint a vision and bring others into it by the force of his confidence. But he wasn't just talk, although he did that with eloquence that won my admiration. Where did this man who grew up in poverty, the child of immigrants, learn how to weave words together, bringing people together to create something lasting? He created educational programs, buildings and a public TV station, shaping both ideas and people's lives.

I didn't see that growing up. I was a child in my own world. I remember a child's memories; spinning around in a chair at his office, stomping on the metal flooring down the middle of the old engineering lab as I listened for the echoing sound in response. I remember the smell of his pipe tobacco back when professors smoked pipes. The smell of pipe tobacco still sends me hurtling back through time. 

He was impatient and driven. I imagine those qualities were somewhat tempered in a work world where he was forced to bring others along to accomplish his goals. In the world of family where he was king, we saw those qualities in their more unadulterated form, not always his finest moments. In hindsight I often recognize myself in him. I can imagine those recalcitrant children could be annoying. 

Just as I ask if we ever know a parent fully, I could as easily ask if we ever know a child fully. Did he know me or just the outward manifestations? Was he locked inside a parent's eyes just as I was in a child's? My father was a problem solver and sometimes brought that perspective to his children. That was actually when he was at his best. We taught each other. He once told me that he learned he had to deal with me differently. He couldn't spank me for misbehavior and assume that would resolve it. In fact, I would turn around and do exactly the same thing again to assert that he could not control me. We had warring temperaments, perhaps too much alike. I knew how to fight back, he created me after all. He told me that he had learned he had to reason with me. I silently chuckled. I remember my thought process as a child. "Don't let him think he can control you" I had told myself.

When I went off to college in the 1970s he took me aside and tried his reasoning techniques. He began,"I know you're going to experiment with things in college", his tone calm and rational. "But I would appreciate if you didn't try acid," he continued. "Did my father just say that?" I thought. I was a "good girl" in those days, but a cautious experimenter. He understood my curiosity about the world because he shared it. I was so taken with the respectful tone of his request that I agreed to it and later when the opportunity arose, I thought back to our conversation and took a pass. I must confess to being somewhat relieved that I had promised my father.

So now I go through his career papers to sort out what I will send to the library of the university where he spent his career. I consider what aspects of this man they will be interested in even as I reflect on our college send off conversation recorded only in memory. We are complicated creatures and my father more than most. At best we only get glimpses of each other filtered through one perspective. I am grateful for this chance to see him through other perspectives as well and to acknowledge the sheer complexity of our imperfect selves.

The Last Mother's Day Card

This is my first Mother’s Day without a mother. It snuck up on me. Well that’s not strictly true, I’ve been ignoring it. I wince at Mother’s Day ads, move quickly past the aisles of cards. It is no longer relevant to me.

I bought my last Mother’s Day card last year. It ended up in the collage book my mother was working on before her death. When I went through the house after she died, I found decades of old Mother's Day cards celebrating our relationship. I always looked for cards that spoke of our genuine friendship in addition to that lucky accident of birth. As my mother’s memory faded, her artistic sense remained. Then I began to choose cards that I knew would appeal to her visually, taking it as a compliment if it ended up collaged into one of her artistic creations.

This year I am a motherless child. How forlorn does that sound? And yet that exaggerates. My mother is always with me. Over the last few years, I would think about how I could store up the affirmation that I received from her regularly, suddenly realizing that she would not always be there, my best cheerleader no longer leading the cheers. Does a tree fall in the forest if no one hears it? Do I do something of worth if my mother isn’t there to do her mom thing? If our mothers do their job well, we do carry them within us. Their presence is so strong, after years of support, that we just know what they would say and we say it for them.

Oddly enough, for someone with no shortage of words, I don’t have a lot to write about this topic. I think it is because this was a relationship fully lived, love fully given, no loose ends or unfinished business. Sometimes we have the opportunity to do things right and when we do there is a sense of fulfillment, completion. It is both rare and precious. Most relationships have more complexity, more strife, more left unsaid lest we rock the boat.

And so on this Mother’s Day, I have only gratitude, both for all I was given and for the opportunity to give back. May you all be as fortunate.

 

 

Through Her Eyes

What has changed for you since last Seder and how will that affect you this year?  This was the question that was posed to us at a recent Seder. I remembered last year when we were asked to bring a figurative guest to a Seder and I brought my mother. Mothers were a frequent Seder companion; ghostlike, they populated the table, many no longer alive but figuratively present. Several choked on tears as they wished they could truly have them by their side. I remember being grateful that I still had my mother. Later I told her that she had accompanied me. "I did?" she asked, perhaps wondering if this was yet another thing she could no longer remember.

This year I spoke of her death, of how I was still learning to live in a world without her. I think of her often, but not in a painful way. I had no unfinished business, no angry words, no hurt feelings. My thoughts of her are loving ones and often occur at unexpected times.

I think of her when I count out 25 blueberries for my yogurt in the morning. I used to count out 20 until one day we compared notes and learned that we each had this counting ritual. I upped my count to match her less parsimonious number, reaching for more sweetness in life.

I look out the window between the glass plates I took from her kitchen. Through them to the budding tree that they frame. My mother was a nature lover. She would have appreciated that tree throughout its changes, from buds, to green leaves, to orange tinged with red to the delicate lines of branches touched with snow. I look out at Spring, a season during which she was still with me. I see it through her eyes.

I incorporate her into my life, into my vision, into my rituals. It is as if she had bequeathed me her eyes, the simple joys she embraced in living. It is a strange process, adopting another's eyes. Seeing the world in a slightly different way. Feeling their presence as you do so.

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Ding!

Ding. I jump slightly, looking for the source of the noise. A text. No doubt from my sister who is emptying out our late parents’ home and sending me photos. Late parents. I am still getting used to that vocabulary. I always want to say “late for what”. After I got married I used to struggle with the term “my husband”. Our life changes are marked with new vocabulary that feels unfamiliar.

My sister, bless her, has taken on the chore of getting rid of things. I spent two weeks sorting through papers and dealt with all the finances, but I must confess I am out of my element with things. I come from a family of pack rats who have a tendency to hoard. If one is good, two is better. “We might be able to use that some day,” we think. Much we keep because of sentimental attachment. We are softies at the core and we love our own history that makes us who we are. But this is my parents’ history and part of my difficulty is that things hold a person’s presence. It is hard to let go of my mother. When the house is emptied and gone there will be less of her on this earth. It is that next step and part of me resists it.

Fortunately my sister, while equally sentimental, has a tougher skin for this. She also has daughters who are helping and this week she has my niece as a supplemental strong back, hands and a bit of moral support. My sister sends me texts as she makes new discoveries and empties rooms. I am one of the few who can appreciate what she is accomplishing and I stand in awe.

Sometimes the discoveries bring my mother back to me. Now my sister has sent me a photo that I enlarge so I can study it. I whoop with astonishment when I decipher it. It is in my mother’s handwriting. On one side she has written Obama, Romney on the other with 2012 above. Under each column she has recorded the states that they won in the election. At the bottom – "President Obama Won- Yaaa! The Best is Yet to Come". I calculate back to consider what her condition was then. She was going on 86 and several years into Alzheimers, but she retained enough of herself to follow politics and have an opinion, a strong one. My mom liked Obama. I feel a frisson of admiration for her even in her then diminished state. I always admired her engagement. She used to watch both the Republican and Democratic debates because she wanted to be informed and arrive at a thoughtful decision.

Ding,

Another handwritten piece titled My Motto. "Take a Piece of the World and Make it Shine!" She then lists out her address and notes that it is her piece of the world. "And Oh! Does it Shine!"

Even as she was fading she found joy in her surroundings.

They feel like messages from the grave. Happy messages that bring a piece of her back to me.

In between there are pictures of rooms now hard to identify at first glance. Once filled to the gills, now emptied. It is an odd thing. I lived in that home from the age of three until I left for college. For years until my mother turned 80 we returned there each year for Thanksgiving. Then as she diminished I spent weeks there at a time. I can picture her in every room.

Ding! "Remember this bad boy?" She texts along with a photo that I have to study to identify. "Oooh! She sewed all our Halloween costumes on that." I picture her sitting at the kitchen table with the sewing machine before her, constructing a rabbit, Red Riding Hood and even a princess out of old blue brocade draperies doing double duty as Queen Esther at Purim.

One evening this week my sister and niece were going through my parents' wedding album and sent me a wedding photo of my parents with my aunt and her husband. I recently connected with the daughter of my cousin. She had contacted me because she was interested in family history and I am the family historian. My aunt in that photo was her grandmother. My cousin's daughter reminded me a bit of my niece. Both thoughtful, articulate young women in their 20s and the two people in our family who have expressed interest in family history. Of course I introduced them. My sister said I was a bit of a matchmaker. I have a soft spot for the idea of family despite the challenges of the reality. Having tracked down second and third cousins I like the idea of branches staying connected. I was glad to hear that they had been in contact. "Send her a copy of the photo," I suggested. My sister replied, "She's sending it right now."

All of this is part of the process. Letting go of things, holding parents in our heart and connecting the next generation. Ding.

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