I tried to call her on Saturday, as I usually did. I left messages over the weekend but, like my aunts in Nashville, I didn't worry. Norma's nickname was "Go Parker." My aunts, cousins, and I assumed we had gotten her schedule mixed up again. I thought I would speak to her during the week when her schedule slowed down. Later, I listened to my messages on her answering machine. They were perky and unconcerned. I jabbed at the erase button. Why didn't I know she would never get these stupid, cheerful messages? I always thought I would have a sense when my mother was gone. I was wrong about that, too.
It comforts me to know that there was no indication Norma tried to brace herself as she fell forward, face first, into the bedroom carpet. The police said she broke her nose when she hit the floor. That comforts me, too. Why? Because she was dead before she hit the floor. We instinctively brace ourselves when we fall, She didn't. She was probably dead before she realized what was happening to her. That's another source of comfort. I spoke to the Waverly police from my home in Michigan after I had a chance to process the first call notifying me that my mother was found dead. I was distraught that she may have been killed an intruder. No, they reassured me, they needed to break down the door to get in and her security system was working. There was no indication that anyone besides my mother had been in the house.
Then came the question that I had to ask, the one that rattled around my brain like a pinball: did she suffer much? Had she writhed in pain on the floor of her bedroom, helpless and alone, while her life seeped away? I had to know. The worry squeezed my heart and wrung it raw. Please, no. Please. No. Terrible pictures ricocheted through my head, from one tortured image to another. The officer on the phone explained how he found her hands positioned, how she had not tried to stop herself from falling. He was reasonable, too, not some Pollyanna trying to placate a sniveling family member. He said we can never be completely certain but he felt he could reassure me that she had experienced no pain.
My own pain was another thing entirely.
I did not handle this grieving process well, certainly not as well as I expected I would when, if, the time came. It's universally understood that our mother's death will be a milestone in our lives. I expected that, but I did not expect the deep grief that wrapped itself like a cloak around my shoulders. I wore that grief for years. I did the usual things people do, talked to friends and family, went back into therapy, read books about grieving, took anti-depressants. Some things helped more than others, but that cloak of grief remained and overshadowed every aspect of my life.
About a year ago, I finally started reading the letters my father wrote to my mother during his stint in the Navy during the Korean War. Slowly, I felt myself relax. For me, the experience of grieving is similar to bracing myself for something terrible coming my way: my shoulders stiffen, my breathing is shallow, my body tenses. It's a fight and I'm preparing myself. Reading the letters changed that. I heard my father's voice again. I met my parents when they were courting, I was a fly on the wall of their romance. I found myself reading about their teenage interests and I started researching musical acts, movies, books, old Detroit... My cloak, and the pall, lifted. I felt myself coming home to the person I was before that phone call in June.
I put the letters up on a blog called Letters From the USS Valley Forge along with things I learned from my research. I appreciated the feedback I got about the letters and how much they touched others. I felt like I was an ambassador for my father's writing. And Norma, too, because even though her letters weren't saved, her spirit came through in Jim's replies to her.
Norma kept a journal. I didn't know about it before she died, but I found it when I went through her belongings. I read the first page a year ago. Yes, it took me five years to read the first page. I read the first entry and then I set the journal aside. The cloak of pain started to stir on my shoulders and I wanted it off. I had started to feel optimistic again, I was tired of grieving.
Not long ago I read somewhere that everyone is an authority on something. I thought, "Oh, yeah, right. What am I an authority on?" Grief, of course, I answered myself. To become an authority, there must be practice and I have certainly had enough of that. When my mother died and I was grieving so poorly, I found myself thinking, "When will this stop? When will I get to live? I have been grieving and thinking about death since I was 11 years old." That was the year my sister died and our lives changed forever. I was tired of grieving, tired of death, tired of religion. I was tired of asking myself the Big Questions In Life and tired of not having the answers.
Somewhere along the way, after determining that I am a self-appointed authority on grieving family members, it occurred to me that no one, and I do mean no one, wants to talk about death. Not really. Okay, maybe some creepy people who make a fetish of it, but grieving and death make us uncomfortable. We don't know what to say, we sometimes avoid people because we're unsure of how to behave. I know that's true for me, as the griever and as the person who wants to be a comfort.
I decided it's time. It's time for me to read my mother's journal. From the first page, it's clear these entries are letters to my father after his death and they were her way of trying to cope with the grief she was experiencing. When my mother was alive, I believed the cloak of grief for my father had settled on her shoulders, too, and simply stayed there. Some of the entries may be painful to read, her pain could be raw. But, unlike a year ago, I hope there will be entries in which she expresses happiness. A year ago, I would not have believed she ever found joy, but that was before I started experiencing my own again. It's time.
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| Norma and her daughter, June 1960 |
I think this is very well written. It is so important I think to write about what we are going thru. I just wrote a long poem "The Long Goodbye" about my mom's struggle as she nears the end of 22 years with Alzheimers. It, too, is a death - in a different way. Prayers.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much. I read your poem for your mother and was touched by it and your tribute to her. She sounds like she was such an interesting woman! I would have liked to have met her. Losing our mothers is always hard, no matter the circumstances. I'm sending prayers to you, too.
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