Remembering Mom

A year ago today, I lost the friend who carried me through life.

My mother made childhood magical by adding paper and scissors and crayons and glitter...  She read books in different voices, and didn't mind if I wanted to check out ten books at the library.  She'd read them, too.  And she could draw anything.  Usually with a round tummy and a chuckle in its eye.

My mother grew troubled in my adolescence and went through a terrible depression.  In those days the solution was "cheer up".  But there were psychologists, and she went.  I remember the day she came home from one of her sessions and I could see that something was different.  The mother I remembered was on her way back.

In my college days, my mother was always proud that I had worked hard and gotten into a very good school, with fascinating opportunities to travel and meet all sorts of people.  She'd gone to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, but never got that final credit to graduate once she met my father and got engaged. 

When I was finally out on my own, my mother lived my life vicariously.  If I ever ran into one of her friends, they could tell me exactly what was going on in my life, because she shared!  She soared on my victories, and cried with me through the true tragedies and the simple disappointments.  She didn't always understand my choices, and we certainly had disagreements through the years, but ultimately I always knew she was with me.

Carrying me through life.

Then last summer she fell, and developed pneumonia in the hospital, and ended up in hospice where she died on 10-11-12.  I felt her gently put me down as she departed, carrying me no more.

I was kind of glad she was already gone when my father died, just seven weeks after her.  She'd had too much to deal with through her illness.  I missed her when cousin Connie lost her fight with cancer.  As my oldest cousin, she'd been closer to my mother than to me.  I could have used her hug when Bernie Sahlins died.  His arts influence through The Second City touched my parents long before I ever went there.  And I could have used her ear to cry into when I lost my job last week.  "Mama, they don't want me."  She would have cried right along with me, helplessly peering down the dark tunnel of the future.

I can't call her.  I can't pop in and have a peach iced tea with her, or is it raspberry?  I can't send an e-mail and get a snappy reply.

All I can do is remember that she carried me through life, because she loved me.

And that is enough.