On losing my Mom

My mom died on Saturday, March 26th. She was 83 years old. It was not a surprise; she had been struggling with her health for some time. I was at her house in January for her birthday, that was the last time I really saw her. She brightened up a few weeks ago, enough to complain about my brother and the food at the rehab place and to ask about Harley the dog. It was nice to hear her feeling more like herself. I put down the phone thinking she might rally. It was the last time I would interact with her in that way.

My mom was a skilled craftsperson. She could crank out a sweater in no time and she produced a library of spectacular quilts. I have four, two she made me for significant birthdays, and two she sent me home with because I admired them. I have a drawer full of sweaters she knitted as well, and a shelf of hats and scarves. She made a sweater for my dog out of the yarn leftover from a hat and scarf set she’d made for me. It’s a cardigan with silver buttons.  She could bake an excellent dessert and if you were lucky enough to be invited to dine at her table, there was often pie and cake, and yes, you should have a piece of both.

My mom and my stepfather were married for decades, 35 years? 40? They liked to go on those fancy group tours where you get a guide with a history degree and stay in a swank lodge and get champagne breakfast after hot air ballooning over the savannah at dawn. The house was full of souvenirs, a beaded Masai collar, a painting on parchment probably from the bazaar in Cairo, butter molds from Salzburg. Photo albums show my mom and my stepfather in front of palaces and in manicured gardens and on horseback at a Montana dude ranch.

I think my mom was quite heartbroken when she lost her husband, my stepfather, to cancer five years ago, she was never quite the same. But she took the bus up to Portland for a family gathering and she brought homemade dessert, and she baked challah in our vacation rental in the Bay Area. Our last family Passover was at her house in Eugene and the table was heavy with her cooking.

My mom and I did not speak the same language in so many ways. Her emotional life was opaque to me and I suppose mine was to her. When I told her my marriage was suffering, she responded she was sure we would work it out. I was angry she didn’t seem to be listening to me, but later, she gave me a gift that helped pay some of the legal fees for my divorce.

I stayed in my mom’s room on my last visit there, she was in hospice. My brother was there too; for a while, both brothers were there. We went to see her twice a day. One day the weather was good and we rolled her bed out onto the patio so she could be outside under the blue sky. It was weird to be in her house, in her room, with the feeling she would not be coming home. Every day I would go stand in her walk-in closet as though there was the answer to a question in there, I only needed to find it hanging between the embroidered denim and hand-painted linen shirts.

Some time back a traveling friend visited Eugene while I was there. My mom and stepfather invited him to dinner; it was lovely. My friend, who is also quite crafty, asked my mom to see her quilts and she took him on a tour of the house. He reminded me yesterday of this visit and told me my mom pointed out every piece of art I’d made. “She was proud of you and your work,” he said.

There’s a large painting over mom’s bed, one of a series I did while I was hanging out in Portugal after I graduated from art school. I was staying in one of those beautiful white stuccoed villages. The painting is white with a scrap of bullfighting poster pulled from a courtyard exterior wall, and there’s the silhouette of a bicycle rider on one side. There were a lot of things I would have liked from my mom but seeing that painting in a place of honor settled me down some. I found the companion piece for it today while I was setting up my mom’s sewing machine on the workbench at my house. I will likely bring the painting home with me and hang it with its mate.

I slept hard after hearing my mom had died and I woke up disoriented; for a few minutes, I thought I was still at her house. I studied the bedside lamp for a while and remembered that no, I was home, I’d come home the night before. It was quiet and I was under a quilt she had made.