How Life Goes

 

My house is filled with flowers and a lot of it is daphne, so it smells wonderful. Since I only have six readers most of the time, I'll just tell you. My Mom died on Wednesday. She had been in hospice for about a week...that was a bigger shock moment, when I knew the time had come. She was 97, so the feelings are of course also mixed with relief, that her pain and confusion are over and she gets to rest.

I am experiencing some of the many forms of grief, along with guilt that I'm not more sad and stopped in my tracks. I wasn't able to see her in person since just before the pandemic hit...I was there just as we were realizing we were in for something new. I remember kissing her and thinking later that I shouldn't have. I spent a few days with her and have a few regrets of course, but have cautioned myself about kicking myself for things that aren't fixable. It wasn't possible to go at the end to hold her hand but I said goodbye in a phone call and she smiled. I told her I would think about her with every bird and flower I saw and that is as it has always been. We loved beauty.

We had a close relationship within limits and shared a lot of love and so many years. I know I am lucky to have had a good, supportive Mom and she gets a lot of the credit for me being who I am. She had an even temperament and lived through a lot of hard things. I depended on her well into adulthood and she was there for me. It took me awhile to figure out that she was not that interested in my long stories but she never stopped me until it came time to remind me that I always met my deadlines or always figured out the right thing to do, or some similar Mom homily. She was good at parenting, overall. At some point we all decided that we would no longer hold her accountable for the past, in retrospect, something we should probably have done sooner.

Sharing the news is not fun and of course I appreciate the flowers and condolences but I don't want the attention. I just want to grieve alone as it develops for me. Doing it at the same time as the Jell-O Art Show is the best and the worst. At practice I forget about her and laugh and sing, which she would be fine with I expect. The rest of the time I think about her constantly. I carry her photo from room to room. I made her the most elegant bouquet and while I was arranging it I remembered that she had never liked the way I arranged flowers, which is a mostly casual haphazard method that pleases me visually. She would sometimes rearrange my arrangements when I brought in flowers from her gardens. I think she even studied flower arranging at some point in her constant self-education. Most of how she lived was much more formal than I am willing to be, but it wasn't that big of a deal to us. Sometimes I would take her hand-me-down clothes and on rare occasions I would wear things she had bought for me, but mostly our styles were not similar, though we looked somewhat alike. I got her wonderful hair with its cowlicks and widow's peak hairline, and of course her brown eyes and some of her other features, in a mix with my Dad's big nose and teeth. Everything that made me initially was part her and part him and all that growing up in the fifties with three sisters, and eventually a brother, added up to. 

Most of what sticks in my memory are the times we did clash over our assumptions and cultural positions and my siblings have been kind as I repeated what are probably often-told tales that I just think I have not told before. Not saying I am developing dementia but it has been pretty common in my mom's family, so it could happen for me. I'm sure I will be in denial and will hide it for as long as I can get away with that. I hope it does not happen that way for me. It's sad, but it also allows you to say goodbye in stages and accept loss over years, which is not the worst. She always knew me, except a few times on our weekly phone calls which eventually I stopped when they were more confusing than comforting to her. She also couldn't hear well so that further isolated us. But the zooms every two weeks with my siblings and her were wonderful since we could just see and sometimes hear her and keep up with her just a bit. It was invaluable in keeping us together so we could make it through this transition and retain some feeling of family, which will be hard without our central figure.

I remember when my Grandma Hytrek died and it seemed like the reunions would not continue, but they did, and the younger generations continued to add to our numbers and bring forward the memories. Editing her book was one of the best things I ever did and I'm so glad we got that done. At the end of it, she had mostly lost her writing ability, so it got hard, but we finished it up. I remember telling her that she had to write the part thanking me, as I didn't feel right doing it. She couldn't really put sentences together in a satisfying way by then, so I ended up having to write it anyway, but only I can tell I suppose. I didn't need the credit much, just an acknowledgement, which I have gotten over and over as we share the book. 

It's fine for the Jell-O show to be juxtaposed with this. There was no question of quitting it, though it has been hard to keep up with some of my other commitments. I don't want to have to talk about it at the show, but I am sure I will. I don't want to tear up. It wouldn't be the first time I cried at a Jell-O Art Show though. 

Here's a photo of her when Aunt Lud turned 100. Mom was 90, the sixth child of ten, and Jack was 80. He's the youngest, and now the only one left.