And moments we shared cannot be lost over time
THERE WAS NOTHING PRACTICAL OR SENSIBLE ABOUT MY MOTHER.
She wore red lipstick, acrylic nails and her signature Giorgio perfume everywhere. To the grocery store, the farmer’s market or to take out the garbage. She was audacious, brazen — extravagant — in the way she lived. And in the two years since her death, I’ve come to realize just how much she loved us that way, too — and how there’s no one in my life anymore who loves me quite the same.
My father is the money man, the champion, the figure-outer, the wisdom keeper, the example maker, the mender of all household items — and hearts — and the let-me-be-er. My husband is similar. So is my brother. They’re all great dads. Responsible, logical, loving.
But there’s something about the way my mother loved us that they’ll never replicate, and I’ve just begun to realize the depth of that loss.
My mother never wanted to miss a moment of wonder or joy or grace because of convention. She didn’t want us to, either. She’d drive all night, stay up all night, pray all night if that’s what she thought it took. For whatever situation that might be.
Once, she mailed a three-layer cake with bright green icing via the U.S. Postal Service simply because my 2-year-old told her he wanted one. It arrived a jumbled mess of melted icing and cake crumbles to the utter delight of my son. He dug his chubby hands into the goo, licked his tiny fingers and giggled. He was enchanted.
Now that my mom’s gone, I see that I’m more like her than I realized. She said to me once after my son Jacob was born: “You never knew how much I loved you until you had a baby of your own, did you?” It’s true. But it’s also more than that.
Only now do I realize how much I see life the same way she did:
To hell with worry about the cost. We’re taking the vacation because it might be the last. We’re buying the expensive prom dress because that’s the one you love, and you look fabulous in it.
We’re eating the brownies for breakfast because they’re delicious, and they’ll be stale tomorrow. Damn the consequences of grouchy, groggy-headed mornings because we stayed up too late to watch the movie, catch the lightning bugs or have another glass of wine.
My mom would spend the last three dollars in her wallet on a lottery ticket because life is a chance. Better to break the bank than to break your own heart — or someone else’s.
I never understood why in the last few years of her life she told us she wished she’d had more children. I always thought my brother and I were more than a handful. But now I know. Because here I am at 44 wishing the same.
Maybe it’s because of our mutual, unspoken ache over the passage of time. My mom was Catholic, a woman of deep faith, but I always felt like she had a longing for something inexpressible, maybe even unknowable. To quote Bono, I’m not sure she ever found what she was looking for. And I’m still running.
What I miss most about the way she loved us were her goodbyes. They were long, drawn-out affairs, cheerful and funny — and at all hours of the day and night. We’d stand at the door for 20 minutes and talk.
Then wave for few more once my parents got in the car. She never left before saying “I love you” at least a dozen times. We might have talked 40 minutes on the phone, but the goodbye took another 10. If I had a 5 a.m. flight, she’d insist I call before we took off.. We’d talk right up until the flight attendant chided me to turn off. my phone because she’d already closed the cabin door. My mom still crammed in a few more I-love-yous before she hung up.
Her fall was unexpected.
My husband woke me up just after daylight to say my dad was on the phone. My mother had stumbled in the den and broken her hip. She was OK, but we needed to get to the hospital. Oddly, before I left, I fell into my husband’s arms and sobbed. Despite the doctors’ assurances that she was fine, I knew she wouldn’t come home.
After days in the hospital, she developed a clot in her lung. The doctor called her condition grave. One nurse told us she’d had enough fentanyl to down a racehorse, an analogy not lost on this Kentuckian. Her blood pressure was in the 20s. She was intubated.
And yet.
She gripped my hand on one side of the bed and my father’s and brother’s hands on the other side. She mouthed over the tubes stuck in her throat again and again: “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
She made it through the night and was airlifted to Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville. I was the one who stayed with her. She was doing so well the doctors took her off. the ventilator. We talked. We held hands.
But then a few hours later she had pain in her leg. The artery where they’d hooked the machine to break up the clot had blown. I heard her scream, then cry. Then nothing.
The doctors hooked her to a machine to circulate her blood. They’d take her to surgery but not until my father and brother arrived.
She didn’t mouth the words this time, but she still gripped our hands, mine on one side and my dad’s and brother’s on the other. She didn’t want us to miss a moment with her.
I was lying on the floor in the waiting room with my eyes closed. I hadn’t slept in three days. I felt a whoosh come over my body, and behind my eyes I saw a swirl of stars in an infinite universe of stars. I knew in that moment she was gone.
The year before my mom died, I called to tell her that anything good I’ve ever done or been in this life was because of her. I’m not sure what compelled me. She was uncharacteristically quiet and thanked me. I wish I’d realized then just how much my worldview stemmed from hers. I would have told her that, too.
I’ve always wanted to stay in the moment — just like she did. I never want to leave the fi.reworks show early to beat the traffic, to take the cheap seats at the show or go to bed on time. And to the consternation of my husband, I sometimes wake my son up long past his bedtime to gaze at the golden moon. I let him eat brownies for breakfast. And I say yes to “just five more books, Mommy. Please!”
Jacob is only 4 years old, but I already see so much of her in him, and not just their matching soft green eyes. I hear her when he shouts to me from another room: “Hurry, Mommy! Come look at this!”
He never wants me to miss a moment. Just like her.
