I find I am truly finding ….
I am finding things, thoughts, feelings and memories long lost under the rubble of everyday life. I am kneeling in front of my bedroom dresser drawers where I have stock piled my mother’s jewelry and mementos like her sisters long evening gloves, yellowed newspaper articles, scarves and pocketbooks still filled with change. I gather some jewelry to bring to Becky so she can look at it again and remember times gone by and the people who filled her life with love. I am now the one in possession of her mother’s pins, her sister’s pearls, antique jewelry she collected from working with her sister-in-law.
As I carefully pack the treasures from Becky’s life, I am no longer jealous of people in big houses who take fancy vacations and have live in help to make life a breeze. I know everything will be alright. I am not afraid, not of life, not of death, not of failure or success. I have been blessed with a mother whose energy and determination often drove me crazy while I was growing up. A mother who suffocated me and held on too tight, and now is getting ready to set me free. Good thing she held on I think to myself as I count the many strands of pearls she accumulated over the years. I guess “I could have been a contender” as Roberta said but had I been forced from the nest I might also have been a drug addicted runaway constantly searching for something I could not name. Either I would have flown the coup and found fame and fortune somewhere as a comedienne, a novelist, an actress, or I would have taken a nose dive into addiction, or perhaps both like Lindsey Lohan or some other tragic figure whose life is diminished by substance abuse due to an inability to cope. I certainly have an “addictive” personality so it would not have been too far a stretch for me to fall off that ledge. But now I find myself close to 50 and I am surprising myself with my own strength. As I care for Becky I prepare us both for the inevitable. I am slowly sewing an imaginary quilt with which we will wrap our selves and our memories as the coldness creeps into her aching body threatening to freeze the pulsating heart that brought so much love, laughter and comfort to so many.
We have had to solve many “medical mysteries” over the last several months as my mother’s 90 year old body and mind have been put through challenges many younger people would not have been able to endure. She continues to amaze me. Her jewelry collection was tucked inside a dozen different hiding places before she was able to transfer it all to me for safekeeping after we moved her out of our building and she went from being a landlord to a tenant. My mother always looked for a way to enjoy life, whether it was attending sisterhood functions, playing Bingo, volunteering for the City of Hope, or traveling with friends. She was determined to squeeze as much joy as possible out of life. And now I find I am the one trying to squeeze as much joy as possible into the last chapter of her life.
My mother never gave up on her quest for joy. She never gave up on her kids. In the last week she has spent a few times almost coming to tears while telling me how she would sit at the kitchen table waiting and worried about me knowing I was out drinking. As she heard the car door slam and my high heels clicking on the cement, she would run to the bedroom so I would not know she had been up and waiting and worrying. She starts to cry just at the thought of losing me so young and now I am a mother and I think of how it would have ripped the heart from her chest. But I was too young and I had not yet dealt with all the demons we face in childhood. So had I not always come home to Becky who knows where I might have ended up? I made it this far because of her strength. Now I have found it will be the strength she infused in me that will take us both the rest of the way.
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