Today a year ago my mom died. She was 76.
Since then I frame memories in the context of "before" and "after" July 4, 2009. I can't help it.
On Aug. 1, 2009, in my Rapiers Are Go! blog, I wrote:
Just after noon on that Saturday, she left us. A strong, hot wind was blowing outside, "carrying her soul to Heaven"... No more doctors, no more hospitals, no more medicine, no more injections, no more treatment, no more options. No more pain. Free.
Were I to plot my grief over the past 365 days in Excel, I'd see a much longer tail than a standard bell curve. But I no longer cry when I loop over the San Francisco Presidio toward home, driving along Lincoln Boulevard, especially on the backside with poor cellular coverage, where, on a call after leaving work, I invariably told my mom, "Hang on, I'm going to lose you in a few minutes."
But hearing the Shangri-Las' haunting teen tearjerker I Can Never Go Home Any More on the radio yesterday was very hard. "Angels picked her for their friend..." (My college roommate once said I absorbed too much of my emotional state from pop music.)
Three days ago, after running on the beach, I sat on a rock and watched the ebbing waves and misty western sky out past the Golden Gate.
"Mama, can you see this? Can you hear me?"
I ask her things like that, especially when spectacular sunsets break before me. The ones I saw over Burleson, Texas, as she was slipping away from us, broke my heart.
Still they reassured me: there is more to life at the end of it.
One of the last things Mama said to me came the morning of June 28 when she awoke in her hospice room to find me nearby.
"Oh, Greg, why are you here? You can't spend your life like this."
I know that was her way of telling me to let go, to move on.
OK, Mama. But you are with me every single day. I love you.
July 4 is special beyond measure for another family reason.
Fourteen years ago, after watching the fireworks over San Francisco from Coit Tower, I got down on my knee and asked Andrea Noreen Ullman to be my wife.
She smiled but didn't reply. So I asked again, just to be sure.
"Will you marry me?""Yes."
Time they say, is a great healer. In my experiance time takes away the sharp edges of the pain of grief. Time makes it easier to look back and smile at my memories, instead of feeling that sharp knife edge twist. Time makes it easier to say 'Mum would have loved that' without feeling my eyes filling with tears. The first year was definately the hardest, full of 'this time last years', somehow this time two years ago isn't so painful. My Mum passed over in November 2006, and I really can't believe its that long, it still feels like a heartbeat ago. But thats how it should be, my Mum is in my heart forever, but now at least I can look back and smile. xx Pam
Posted by: Pam | July 05, 2010 at 12:11 AM
Pam, thank you for those lovely comments. I hope you're right about two years, three years, four years. I'll see. :)
Posted by: Greg Ogarrio | July 05, 2010 at 09:49 AM