Still no snow...
...although yet another promise that it will begin sometime today. I hope so.
    Something that continually catches my mind like a loose thread, these days...a factoid I've heard and read so many times I can't cite a source: That a majority of deaths in any one year occur through the holiday season. I thought about this a few days ago. It's not uncommon to hear that the holiday season is tricky for lots of people. The tendency is to blame this on the tension created by the sense of obligation to, you know, gift people, "have fun", be merry, etc. I'm thinking now, though, that considering the death statistics for this time of year, it wouldn't surprise me if many people have trouble getting into the holiday spirit because they are struggling in the wake of recent deaths or remembering the anniversaries of deaths. So far I don't have any qualms about Mom's death occurring in December. It wasn't tragic, it was sort of expected, as much as the death of an Ancient, self-elected Immortal can be expected, anyway. Although I wish she hadn't missed Christmas, this year, I'm not mourning that, actually.
    I'm sure I won't have any trouble remembering the date of her death. It is the date of The Immaculate Conception, a curious, revered holiday within select sections the Catholic Church honoring the conception of Mary, the mother of Jesus. On Guam, not officially a Catholic island but unofficially so for all practical purposes, it was a holiday. Somehow, it seems appropriate that Mom died on a day she wouldn't have been going to school. She'd just about decided that she didn't think she "would be teaching next year". Some of you may recall that a couple of months ago she believed she would be starting school soon, as a student. Smart of her to head that way on a holiday. Gives her some time to orient herself to a new campus.
    I just realized, despite the usual predicted trajectory of cancer deaths, Mom didn't lose weight, didn't lose her appetite for anything except in the last three days of her life and, even then, assumed that "this cold" would pass, even though she had a challenging couple of days before she died. The Hospcie RN who visited us the Tuesday before she died tried to weigh her. That didn't work well, but the nurse and I both assumed, from the way she looked, that she hadn't lost much weight. From my handling of her before and after her death I know that she wasn't significantly lighter at her death and didn't look wasted or frail. No sunken cheeks, no jutting bones, no pre-death pallor. She didn't linger.
    I successfully contacted one of our closer cousins last night, the son of my favorite maternal aunt and discovered that, while almost all of Mom's cousins are dead, one, in particular, the one who Mom mentioned the most, with whom she went to college and with whom she was occasionally in touch through these last 15 years, is alive and truly kicking. She is the one who announced, at my mother's father's funeral, that it is a good thing people died because, otherwise, the family would never get together! She was two years older than Mom. She's a forceful woman with a voice even more resonant than mine. I hear she continues a schedule that she and her husband (who died a year and a half ago) established decades ago of traveling seasonally between a home in Hot Springs, SD, and Mechanicsville, IA, on her own. I'm looking forward to talking with her and plan to give her a call today. I'm sure she'll have lots to say. I'm hoping she'll also be able to clarify who remains around to contact and how to get in touch with those remaining. I think there is only one other of Mom's first cousins alive, a woman who was born late in life to Mom's favorite maternal uncle and is less than a decade older than me.
    I'm still having long periods of blankness, interspersed with mini-shots of excited anticipation about what might lie ahead and shocking blips when, well, for instance, yesterday while I was washing dishes at the sink (one person doesn't generate much dishwasher traffic) I suddenly burst into tears and heard myself saying, out loud, before I could internally censor myself, "How long do I have to wait until I can be with you again?" I'm assuming that such thoughts are "normal", considering the extraordinary closeness of our relationship through these last 15 years. On the one hand, I want the rest of my life to honor my mother's family's proud tradition of "keep on keeping on"; on the other hand, oh, my, this is new country for me. So far, in my life, I've been able to easily say good-bye to those who have died, even those with whom I am emotionally interlocked and those who have died tragically. This one, though, this death isn't going to be an easy one, I think.
    Some of you regular readers may remember that when my mother spent a month and a half during late spring and early summer, last year, away from home I took to sleeping in the living room. I never quite figured out why it felt more comfortable than sleeping in my bedroom but developed a curiosity about it. This last Saturday night, the first night I was alone, here, since Mom's death, when I headed into my bedroom for sleep, really tired, assuming I'd simply strip and flop into bed, I decided to drag my bedding out to the living room and sleep there. It felt comfortable and piqued my latent curiosity. It's not as though we live in a huge house. I'm about the same distance from my mother's bedroom here as I am in my bedroom. While talking to two of my sisters last night I mentioned the resurfacing of this odd preference to them. They both confirmed that when they are left alone in their homes, when husbands and children are temporarily gone, they sleep in the living room too. One said she thinks it has something to do with a desire to be centrally located when those who normally hold down the night in a particular home are gone. Although, technically, our living room is not centrally located (if I wanted to locate myself centrally, I'd be sleeping in the hall), it was the center of Mom's "up" life. I also spent much of her sleeping time in the living room or migrating back to the living room from other areas of the house that needed attention. This explanation sounds plausible to me, although I'm wondering why feeling centrally located becomes important when one is unexpectedly and uneasily alone. In all my other homes I've occupied while living alone, which was much of my life prior to joining Mom, I've always slept at "the back" of the dwelling, the rest of my home spread out before me like a linear moat. I can even remember relishing closing down the day by moving outside "the active zone". Nowadays I'm staying in the active zone when I sleep, bounded by periphery. Maybe I'm feeling like I need to surround myself with protection, rather than simply fronting myself with it.
    I'm leaving the Christmas trees up. I light them through the dark hours. They're beautiful and merry and I like to think that, if anything of Mom's spirit survives her death, that part is residing, for the balance of the season, in the striking pattern of the alternating colors of the fiber optic lights. The fiber optic strands on her favorite one, the white one, have weathered the scrapes of several settings up and takings down by emitting three to four times more light than originally. They blaze through the color spectrum like a melody lilting over a scale.
    Christmas music. I think I'll play Christmas music today and sing along at the top of my lungs. About a week and a half, I think, maybe a bit more, before Mom died I began tuning into the Christmas music channel on cable. We sang and moved along to the music and kidded each other about stumbling over the words to the latter verses. The songs are repeated in various artist renditions often enough so that, before the last three days of her life commenced, we were congratulating each other on relearning "all the verses" so quickly.
    This grieving business is, I believe, the heaviest load I've had to shoulder since Mom's and my association began. I noticed, last week when ascending some steps downtown during a bit of shopping, that it is sapping strength from my legs. This was confirmed yesterday when I decided to go out for what turned out to be a brief walk (it was much colder than I expected). It took so much effort to lift and push each leg into the next step that I experienced involuntary images of that guy on Oprah, some years ago, hauling a 747 behind him. This alarmed me. I don't want to lose the incredible physical strength I've developed over the last year or so, particularly during the last five months of wheelchair and human walker duty. Oddly, this small, straightforward desire seems to be providing me with some internal motivation. Probably a good idea to go with it.
    Looks like my journaling is going to be one of my primary ways of grieving. Thank you, dear family, friends, acquaintances and random visitors, for listening.
    Later.
- posted by Gail Rae @ 05:51   email  this post