Missing Mom

Mom died suddenly.  She and Dad were on a riverboat cruise on the Mississippi.  He woke up one morning and she was dead.  She was 89, which in her family's history is an early death.

It's not easy to know what to say to someone who is grieving.  Most people said "I'm sorry for your loss" and left it at that, but whether it was perfunctory or heartfelt, it meant very little to me. I longed for people to ask me about her.  My throat ached with wanting to talk about her.  She was still so alive for me; talking about her helped keep her alive.

I wanted people to know her, to get a sense of who she was, because she was not appreciated nearly enough when she was alive.  Not by her husband or her children.  We all loved her, but none of gave her her due.  Not by friends or co-workers or bridge partners.  My cousins may have appreciated her more than her children did because they had something to compare her to.  But to us she was just Mom, put her on Earth for the sole purpose of making us feel loved.

She was the kindest, nicest person anyone has ever met.  I've tried to remember what it was like when she was in a bad mood, but looking through my entire childhood, I've only managed to dig up about three memories: Once when my brother and I were 2 and 5 and making a lot of noise while she was in bed sick, she called us into her bedroom and paddled us.  Once when we were moving yet again into another house in another city, I saw her with her lips compressed because she was mad at Dad for some argument I knew nothing about.  Once when I had stomach flu and just leaned over the side of my bed and threw up on the floor, she said with some exasperation as she cleaned it up, "Couldn't you get to the bathroom?"  That's it.  Those are the only times I can remember her being less than cheerful.  She quite simply had an authentically sunny personality and loving nature.  And because she was all I knew of motherhood, I assumed she wasn't anything special, so took her for granted for a long, long time.

I'm so grateful that she lived long enough for me to grow up enough to finally appreciate her, to help her with chores and cooking when I visited her and Pop, and to treat them both like royalty when they visited me.  To call and send cards and flowers.  To thank her for my life and for the many gifts she gave.  I'm glad she lived long enough to see me married to Sweet Hubby; I know my checkered history with men was hard on her, seeing my heart broken time after time.  I'm glad we had her for as long as we did.  But it wasn't long enough.  Not nearly.