My mother died on July 23rd, 1991 and yes, that was a long time ago. However, I never forget her birthday and it now shares a very painful divorce anniversary of mine. My life holds many synchronized dates. I thought of many things today with regards to Helen who had a number of aliases in life. I found her to be a complicated woman whose attachment to men excluded the rest of us most of the time though they found her intriguing, brilliant, beautiful and charming.
I look much like my mother these days around the eyes and her characteristic cheekbones. She had green eyes though and dark hair. For most beautiful people, a winning combination. My mother was a troubled human though and she treated her three daughters with an aloofness that drove each of us to find our own troubled waters in life. Maybe since I am the youngest I can see it all so clearly or maybe just because I tend to be the witness.
I have a scene in my brain that has come up lately again as if it happened yesterday. It is etched inside my memory and I can recall the lighting in the kitchen, the warm evening and the tension as I stood, an eight year old wiser than my years, near my father and my mother as they began to argue. Like so many times, this night is dramatic in my thoughts though I am certain it was played out over and over again before the end of my parent's marriage. I replay it and remember the anger, the building argument, my fear and the humiliation that always seemed to follow. That was 47 years ago and I can remember everything about that night as if I were there right now.
The night my mother died, many decades beyond the kitchen scene that night, I was shocked to see that she had really left. Her elegant hands rested on the bed cover over her as if she were simply napping and as I gazed at her stilled face, the light that was there faded slowly and she became grey. I sometimes play with the idea that my mother was waiting for me to arrive so she could dart away and yet, I cannot fathom that depth. In life, I was a anomaly to my mother as she thought me too sensitive.
The funeral that followed my mother's death was something that her daughters were never called upon to consider. We had known our mother to have a will and a wish to be cremated. However, her husband claimed that she had changed her mind and created a Fellini-like atmosphere in the church where Alfred Hitchcock filmed his movie "The Birds" complete with a solitary bag piper that set all our nerves on edge at the finale of a strange Catholic service. We laugh about it now but it was not funny at all then.
I remember Marge Ling who was the only person who approached me after the service to express her condolences. Marge has a scholarship fund named after her locally and it is no wonder as her loving consideration that day surpassed all those strangers in the church. Everyone acted like Helen had no children and that is kinda how she lived so there ya go. Apparently no will, no estate and no written word of farewell to us. My mother died as she had lived.
Yet I remember my mother on the eve of her birthday because she was the gateway to my appreciation of nature, gardening, sunsets, literature, knowledge and camping. These many gifts she gave to me though really, it was about her. Even so, wherever you are Helen, I wish you a birthday with the kind of freedom and joy that you never seemed to find in this life time. Thank you for opening the garden gate for me.
