Sechuan called me tonight; she always makes me feel wonderful.  She praised my Saturday night activities of reading and listening to the radio, which I was feeling a little sheepish over.  Really, they are about the best things in the world, though.  Pretty soon, I was talking about mom, and grief, and Sechuan was listening in her serious, encouraging way.  It’s impossible not to say something smart when a friend listens like that.

Sechuan and I met working at Barbara’s Bookstore, way, way back when you looked up distributor inventories on micro-fiche.  Her nickname comes from Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, whose poetry I think she was reading at the time.  But I am never happy calling things what they are, so Sechuan she became.  We share a love of words, a knight errant’s attraction to entrepreneurial inspirations, and a belief that people in the city can value nature.  And, fortunately, we both like to talk about me.  Right now, I really need to keep talking about me.

Writing about what has happened has its own power, but it also shapes my thoughts into a form which serves the written word.  Sechuan’s gift to me tonight, her companionable, unhurried listening, allowed me to reconnect to what is driving the expression – my need to be, and know, where I am now that my parents are dead.  Writing is one way of locating myself, but it isn’t the territory itself.

The danger of the blog is that it becomes a goal in itself.  I told Sechuan I was going to take tonight and let the force fields recharge before diving back in, after a week of too much work to write.  But I don’t want force fields.  I want you to know that my life is different now than it ever could have been.  And that is not a subject.  That is a verb.

The news that Aunt Boopie had died Saturday was not a surprise.  Just 2 days earlier, my mother’s little sister had appeared in my dreams, for the first time in my life.  I knew what it meant.  She greeted me matter of factly in the dream, just checking in, showing a cheery, up beat side I don’t remember seeing before.

My cousins wanted to make sure that I knew Boopie had asked for her sister Barb on her way out.  Beyond their natural concern that I know Boopie had let go of any issues between them before the end, I have my own reason to be glad to know Boopie was asking for Mom, even if it was just hoping Barb would come to help her to the bathroom.

What echoes for me, now that the brothers and sisters Downtain are gone, is whether there is anyone left to miss my Mom.  Am I the only one?

My choice of the word echo is deliberate.  Missing another human being is an experience where absence takes the form of presence, much like concussions from a fireworks mimic the sound, but don’t give you more sparkles.  The physical power of missing someone surprised me the first time I named it as an adult.  How could I feel at once profoundly empty and deeply connected?  Could it be as simple as, “I miss you?”

Missing Mom sometimes feels like a burden; yet I have to carry it.  There is no one else to whom it makes a personal difference if I understood who Barbara was.  Like the buggy whip maker, the skills I honed for facing our relationship are obsolete, yet so much of my very being was devoted to cultivating them, I can’t shed the identity.

Thinking of my mom’s feelings of missing her little sister, of the barriers that time and personality put between them, made me cry.  I felt responsible for Mom’s presence at her sister’s grave.  The sun was high, and hot; green fake fur skirted the pulley rails supporting Boopie’s coppery rose coffin.   Behind the priest, a short distance uphill, a plastic white lamb sprouted all weather silk flowers from its back, bringing joy to someone else’s deceased.  I held my cousin Sandy’s hand, and watched the shadow of a dragonfly skim across the plywood platform as the groundskeeper lowered the coffin.  Missing Mom was all I really had to contribute to this day.  Standing there with Sandy, and Boopie’s girls, I had the feeling it was enough.

Dear Friend,

When we talked about mom, you said, “I don’t know how you did it!”  It seems to you that I still hoped for my mother’s love; and that you left such hope in childhood and moved on.  You imagine yourself putting your mother in a home; she hasn’t really earned much more from you.  Her love was a thin veneer at its best.

Spending time with Mom was predictably excruciating.  Many times I averted my eyes, as a way to endure her run-on sentences.   Judge-jury-executioner, she leveled her stony hot gaze upon life’s betrayers, which ranged from poorly made tea to lost, last hopes for rescue from her failing health.  My self defense tactic was so blatant that a few weeks before she died, she unsheathed a new accusation, “You  know you NEVER look me in the eye when we talk!”

How I did it, friend, was graceless, irrational, unkindly.  How I did it isn’t important to me now, and it surely isn’t important to her.  Rest assured, it was much uglier than you imagine.

But why I did it, why?  That lives with me everyday.  Years ago, I understood that by far the cruelest thing my mother ever did to me was reject my inept expressions of love for her, a cruelty I am equally capable of.   We all know such rejection is the only way to really wound another person.  It was MY love for her that I wanted to rescue.    I chose what I did selfishly, for me.  I resurrected my yearning for forgiveness between us, even though I never uttered those words to her.  I undertook what I had to do because I deserve to express the love I feel in my life, irrespective of the other persons’ ability to reciprocate it.  That her stay here was so short disappointed me.  I was prepared for much longer, much worse; a siege on my life that might last years.

Over this one topic, my mother had no control.  I loved her; that was the demon I had to face.  I didn’t do anything for anyone, except me.  And it cost me nothing that I have not been compensated since, more than I could ever have dreamed.

One hardship of living without my parents is the pangs of regret which mark many moments of the day with uncomfortable barbs. finding a ball of wool from the shrug i began to knit for mom; donating the guitar i waited too long to send dad – if you live in this landscape with me, you know that anything and everything can be imbued with a glow of presence that is palpable.

this is not a feeling of nostalgia. in fact, it is the exact opposite. like a new human using her eyes for the first time, i see people, possessions, even thoughts which have been lifelong companions, from a perspective i never imagined. the full consequence of seemingly minor things is, at last, unavoidably clear.

what has happened is a birth of sorts. not in a good way that involves party hats, but not all bad either. another me has emerged, who wants to remember the way things were, and transform them into something entirely new at exactly the same time. i am motivated to keep working, keep scraping away at what i see, by fear; fear that this vision soon will fade, fear that i may squander the only ransom my parents’ lives could possibly purchase.

because, what is now obvious to me, is what my parents wanted me to know, all my life, with all their love: despite my hard headed arguments to the contrary, every molecule of my very life is beautiful and every moment, worth living.