There are many images of that night and the days that followed which are mine alone, the witness's story untold, and they are the pith and salvation of my spirit in life, that essence that makes up my heart and mind. It is a story but really, it is about the death of someone who was pivotal in my life yet someone I still know so little about.
My mother died on the evening of July 23, 1991. Her husband called, in a panic, to say she had stopped breathing. Actually, he meant that she was dead. I remember asking if he had called the paramedics but later understood that a "no code" was their non communicated arrangement. So, I fled in my car, late on a foggy northern California night across county roads toward my mother's ocean view home.
There was a strange silence in the house but it was as if specific lighting had been set upon her once beautiful face. I believe that she was still there and the light on her face was her waiting for me before she made her grand exit. Truthfully, she had died sometime before, though she died alone in the house because her husband, always a very self-centered man, had gone to teach a class. His wife was dying but it was always, all about him. That part of the story can only be stranger than we understood then given my mother's attachment to the many men in her life who were larger than life and clearly, the focus of her love and devotion.
Her hands. I remember her graceful, long fingered hands, resting on the bed covers as the sentries to her last breaths. She had suffered so much in life yet in death, she coasted to the finish line. I raced to her bedside, saw her hands, moved up to her face where that light from within shown and took in the fact that my mother was dead. I touched her left hand and bid her a shock filled adieu in my mind. I went to sit on the couch and come back to myself. I looked up, moments later, and the light on that face had gone. She was gone.
The few hours that followed were strange as I watched the funeral home come and load my mother's body, and drive off in the fog.as I watched from the deck that was so often her view of the ocean. The funeral and my mother's body buried in the Catholic cemetery, the lone bag piper and the many people who came to her service and never acknowledged her three children are a testament to how my mother lived her life. Except Marge Ling and I am indebted to Mrs. Ling for her kindness on that day. The fact that my mother's husband selected the church which is central to the Alfred Hitchcock movie "The Birds" is a dark joke between my sisters and I.
Still, I remember 7/23/91 as one of the anniversaries that I always know in my mind and my flesh as a time of deep feeling, sadness, understanding, compassion and wisdom for all that came before that day. I sometimes visit my mother's grave in Bodega Bay though not often because it is not how she wished to be dispatched and we all know it. She was did not wish to have her body buried though I imagine that she may have "viewed" the funeral, the piper and all that drama with interest for all that bluster in life about making her death simple.
May peace be with you Mom, today and always, regardless of your path in life, you are remembered and mourned.
