Don't Even Know What to Name This

I’ve dealt with a lot of death in my adult life. I lost a couple of friends in Vietnam during the late Sixties, I was widowed at the age of 18 when my son, Joel, was only two weeks old. I lost a friend in a car accident when we were only 20 and I lost another friend who died of cancer at the age of 23 when her baby was only months old. Grandparents, of course, died at different times and a dear friend in England died in the late Eighties of chronic asthma. I took care of my father the last year of his life, and was there with him when he died in 1993. I lost my musical mentor — a death I’ve still not fully accepted — in 2000. A very close friend died of AIDS in 2001, followed not long after by his partner. Another friend died a few months later. An online friend died this year in a riding accident, and though we were never friends, the deaths of John Lennon and George Harrison affected me very strongly. Now that the worst shock of my mother’s death on Saturday night has given way to a kind of vulnerable numbness, I find that I’m very philosophical about death. Actually, I don’t believe in death. Energy has been, is, and will always be. It cannot be destroyed, but merely transmutes into some other form. When our bodies die, the energy that I believe is our essence, or soul, continues, but no longer in its previous form. Science has proven that energy cannot be unmade.

I felt my mother’s presence all Saturday night. Odd things happened with our lights and cable, but only in certain areas of the house. The cable went out in her room, but nowhere else and the Christmas lights went out for no apparent reason. Everything’s working now.

Today (Sunday) has been a day of phone calls to, and from, my mother’s friends across the country, a meeting at the funeral home, and grappling with the new reality that has been thrust upon us. Our good friend, Allen Scott, came by this afternoon with freshly baked focaccia and a bottle of an excellent pinot noir. We sat and talked together for about an hour, and he left. It was wonderful because he’s a professor of music history at OSU and I was able to get my mind off of things for a while and onto local faculty gossip.

I took a nap and was sleeping really soundly until the phone rang about an hour or so ago. It was a call I wouldn’t have missed for the world: it was my youngest son. We haven’t spoken in a long time; it simply made my heart soar.

There are a million things going on in my head, and a million details that have to be attended to. We have guests coming throughout the month (a godsend, really), and a friend is staying with us until he can find an apartment. Then there’s Christmas expenses and funeral and burial expenses — my mother had no insurance of any kind, and no money except her Social Security, which she donated toward the rent. Fortunately, December’s rent has been paid, but I’m stressing out over January. We are a family of six and there’s far too much to attend to right now. Too, there is the strain of keeping life in our home as calm as possible for the kids’ sake.

But most importantly, I’m dealing with the death of my mother, a woman with whom I sometimes shared a troubled but deeply connected relationship. We had some great times when we were younger, traveling together across the country to visit various family friends. Despite some of the trouble we experienced in the past, I came to love her and understand her in a very special way while taking care of her, especially since the illness that nearly killed her a couple of years ago. I was finally able to see that her physical abuse and emotional neglect of me during my childhood was due to her own painful upbringing. It must have been horribly traumatic for her at the age of 14 to have witnessed her own mother’s suicide by ingesting strychnine. And then to overhear her adult siblings argue about who was going to take her in because none of them, and not even her own father, wanted her. Add to that the sexual abuse she endured when her grandfather agreed to take her, and I began to understand why she had such a difficult time being a mother herself. When her older sister committed suicide in the early Fifties it was almost more than my mother could bear. I forgave her long ago and we had learned to enjoy one another’s company over coffee every morning. Sure, a semi-invalid elderly parent living in the home is difficult, but we always worked through those things, and caring for her lovingly and tenderly became the norm for both Lynette and I. My mother loved the kids and the youth and vibrancy they’ve brought into our home. I’m so happy now that the last year of her life was filled with the sound of laughter and an atmosphere of love.

I’m confident in my beliefs about death and I take comfort in believing my mother is enjoying her reunion with my dad, her mother, and her friends that have passed over in the last few years. It’s just all the business and arrangements that are daunting.