Colors

The scrapbook of my life is divided into two sections. The first section is my childhood. I define my childhood as the time that my mother was alive. The second section is everything that happened after; from college, kids, marriage, basically the ‘meat and potatoes’ of a life well lived. Christians define the time period before Jesus as BC (before Christ) and after his death as AD (After Death). This is how my book would be determined as well. This is also why the date of December 3 feels like an abrupt stop on the stopwatch we call life. Even within the decorating for the holidays, I mentally find myself whispering “we just need to get through December 3”. The last time I talked to my mom before she died was November 29. It was a Thursday. I was doing math homework. She was laying in bed…the same bed she had been in for many years. I was assigned to care for her while my grandmother ran errands. Small talk. Useless conversation. Nothing special being said to each other. Just kinda sitting with her until my grandmother came home so I could bounce off to do things that college kids do. I couldn’t wait to run out the door. Not because I didn’t want to sit with my mom…not at all. I was just “busy”. Three days would pass until I went back to the house. Three days until my life changed forever. Three days until I got the call that she opened her eyes one sunny morning on December 3 and asked her where her dad was and upon his entering her room she closed her eyes and…well…died.

 I wish I could tell you about the windtunnel of emotions that happened after that moment. From sitting with her lifeless body; to never wanting to let her go from the room which three days prior was the last place I wanted to be. I imagine it was the last place she wanted to be as well. And when I close my eyes I can recollect every single minute of that day and the days to follow with unheard-of clarity. The feeling of my grandmother’s comforter scratchy against my skin as I lay on the bed sobbing. The details from the Hospice nurse files that were accidentally left on the kitchen table stating that she knew her time was not very long here. The way we had to locate my brother in San Diego and also carefully tell my 8 ½ month pregnant sister. The funeral home visits…the pure devastation and unraveling of a family. I had my mother for 24 years. Not long enough. I imagine if I had her for 94 years it still wouldn’t be enough time. One thing I learned is that time does not heal wounds. Nope…don’t believe anyone who tells you that! If I close my eyes and reflect on that time of my life and the fact that I have to navigate this earth without my mother, I am as utterly devastated as if it were 24 hours ago, not 24 years. I cried this morning…out of the blue. And I will probably cry for the rest of my life when I think  of her and what she missed out on. I told my Ashley that December 3 will be 24 years without my mom as we drove around doing Mother/Daughter things today. She said that means you were 24 when she died. She also stated how close that is to their own ages now and how bad that would be at this age to lose your mom. What I heard was quite different… what I heard was that on December 3 it will be exactly half my life without my mom at this point. It will be a marker that after this date in this year I will actually have had less time with my mother than I have actually lived. And then it will be that I have lived longer without a mother than with one. This stings hard. It pierces my heart to the core. My favorite show is This Is Us. I imagine if my mom were alive we would have watched this show together. It tackles death and family and love. They said it beautifully, whoever the writers of the show are. I imagine that they must have felt some pain of loss in their own lives to write so perfectly. They describe family as a painting…and all the colors of the painting run together and overlap. They stated, “Life is full of color. And we each get to come along and we add our own color to the painting, you know? And even though it’s not very big, the painting, you sort of have to figure that it goes on forever, you know, in each direction. The fact that just because someone dies, just because you can’t see them or talk to them anymore, it doesn’t mean they’re not still in the painting”.  As I am approaching another year as a ‘motherless daughter’, the worst title ever, I need to remind myself that she is still in the painting even if I can’t see her. Even if I can’t wrap my arms around her, I can still see her as being very present in my life. My kids talk about Grandma Carol. I gave her that name, although I am not sure what they would have called her if they could have had the opportunity to name her on their own. When I talk about Grandma Carol I can feel my children tense up and tiptoe around me, because they know how very sad her loss was to me. I imagine someday they will understand what that loss feels like. I imagine someday their lives will be separated into ‘Before’ and ‘After’. I imagine someday they will count the years and the tears will roll down their faces decades later. Maya Amgelou wrote a poem called ‘When Great Trees Fall’ . It’s a powerful poem. Here is an excerpt:

When great trees fall,

rocks on distant hills shudder,

lions hunker down

in tall grasses,

and even elephants

lumber after safety.

When great trees fall

in forests,

small things recoil into silence,

their senses

eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,

the air around us becomes

light, rare, sterile.

We breathe, briefly.

Our eyes, briefly,

see with

a hurtful clarity.

Our memory, suddenly sharpened,

examines,

gnaws on kind words

unsaid,

promised walks

never taken.

December 3, 1993 a great tree fell. MY great tree fell. And I am left with this beautiful painting; with swatches and colors intertwined; celebrating a life of a person who left us far too soon. And every day of my life I am reminded that I have lived more years without her than I had with her. And in that memory I know that her colors are reflected in all of us…shining bright.