nostalgic christmas

Alone in the house with Calvin and Nellie while Michael spends a couple of hours at the studio. Silent Night is playing on the radio. For the first time in years I feel an emptiness, its source the absence of my mom and dad. I long ago lost my religion, but I sometimes still enjoy a few holiday traditions I did with them as a kid.

While feeding Calvin grapes I remember Christmases of my childhood, recall Dad goofing off in his new orange track suit, and making funny faces while carving the bird. Even the feeling of disappointment when certain gifts given to me weren't exactly how or what I'd hoped feels nostalgic. I wish Mom and Dad were still around. Wish they'd had a chance to know Calvin. Perhaps Dad would bounce him on his knees until he giggled uncontrollably. Maybe Mom would trap Calvin in her larger-than-life hugs, a flour-dusted apron tied around her ample waist. We'd sit around the table making jokes, passing dinner rolls and gravy. I've little doubt that Dad and Michael would've been famous friends, working in the kitchen, cleaning up the mess together. Michael's family eggnog would have been a big hit with Mom and Dad, though especially Dad who had a wicked love of sweets.

But they're both gone, Dad for some twenty-two years and Mom for a handful. Instead, I've got memories of them seared into my head—the smell of hot apple cider and of breakfast sausages and French toast wafting through the old brick ranch house. Holiday music coming from the radio atop the fridge. The huge tree all lit up and tinseled. The warmth of Mom's smile and embrace. The relentless razzing Dad gave each of us. How nice to see him when he wasn't working, though Mom, who was a homemaker for eight, never really seemed to quit.

Yes, these carols so familiar spark in me a visceral poignancy, and I'm overcome with a loneliness I know isn't uncommon during the holidays. But Michael will soon be home. Then friends will be arriving after sundown. Eggnog with bourbon and rum will be drunk. Savory meats will be carved and eaten. Wine will flow. Cake will be served with ice cream. Mom and Dad won't be at the table, but my own family will be, and the house will be full of love and laughter. And Calvin, whose days are virtual carbon copies of each other, won't know he's missing anything.

Mom and Dad, Harriette and Don

alone with my thoughts

Sometimes, when I am alone with my thoughts, I find myself wondering which would be worse—if Calvin were to die, or if I had to spend the rest of my life caring for him. I never reach any conclusions.

Yesterday was one of those days. I was stuck inside again with my seizing child who never got back to baseline after the first three seizures, and seemed on the verge of having a fourth all day long. For hours, I watched him fidget endlessly, as if he had ants in his pants and itchy fingers. I followed him around the house as he rambled aimlessly, banging tables and doors, drooling on windows and sills, biting book cases and chairs. I changed countless diapers, soiled bibs, kerchiefs and clothes. These behaviors are not altogether uncommon, but that he didn't engage with me, seemed unaware of my presence most of the time, was less usual. He was camped out, whether consciously or not, in his own post-ictal, drugged-up world. Aside from keeping him safe, I may as well have been alone. Just watching him, I could feel my shoulders cinch up into knots waiting for the next seizure to hit. My brow puckered from tension, tedium, frustration, fatigue and sorrow, my spirit ached from too many hours of little to occupy my thoughts but the myriad of missed opportunities, and the senseless waste of lives meant to thrive and grow.

In-between diaper changes and feedings, I saw a photograph of a dear friend's small child. In it, the boy is standing on a beach, his supple arms and legs exposed, his pudgy little feet and fingers dipped in sand. Calvin should have been like that boy, I thought to myself with a lump in my throat. Healthy. Steady. Able. Aware. Full of potential.

Last night I sat alone eating dinner while watching an account of Rohingya Muslims fleeing Myanmar. In it, Rohingya women wiped tears from their faces while recounting the raping, butchering, burning and burying alive of their husbands, mothers, children, sisters and brothers before their eyes, all part of their nation's ethnic cleansing. Cleansing. Who coined such an antiseptic term for such gruesome crimes against humanity, for genocide? I cried with the mothers, lamenting my own loss which pales in comparison to what most in the greater world face. I thought about how, if only for my own suffering child, I might board a plane to go aid refugees. If only for that simple fact—though I love to hold my precious, feel his breathing and heartbeat, kiss his supple cheeks, stroke his head—I could get the hell out of this life which at times, like yesterday, feels like such a waste.

 EPA/STRINGER

mom

Mom would have turned eighty-seven today. I've missed her every day these past thirteen months since she died. I've missed her since Calvin was about two or three when she began forgetting that I have a son. But I'm grateful she met my boy and thankful that I have memories of them together. I used to cry into the phone expressing to her the grief I felt over the loss of having a severely disabled, chronically ill child. Her response to me was always the same. In her soft, loving voice, she'd say, "No one but you can know how hard it is." It made me think how difficult raising us six kids must have been, and I wonder who she told. I wonder who comforted her besides, perhaps, my father. My sense, my fear, is that she did it alone. That's how strong she was.

I think of her now as one of those twinkling starts out there, her silvery hair shining amid an infinite sky. Happy birthday, Mom. I'll love and miss you until the day I die.

remembering mom

Dear mother. Home maker. Flack taker. Cookie baker. Great hugger. Home-ec flunker. Kindhearted. World traveler. Spanish speaker. Good natured. Perseverer. Sweet grandmother. Empathetic creature.
Patient, funny, loving mother.

I do so miss our time together.

Harriette May Shake, November 6, 1929 - October 3, 2015

rain, chalk and supernova

This rain is not enough to quench these parched lips, wash away the sorrow, ease the furrow in my brow. The thought of her gone—truly gone—haunts me with melancholic arcs, not so much for myself as for those who had to watch her struggle, then take her final breath.

Her place on the couch is hollow now, and I imagine her bed made smooth but without linens, slippers still tucked neatly beneath where her thin legs draped, their skin, like the rest of her, wrinkled like crepe.

A shell of a woman, she had held the sound of motherly seas in her voice, the way lapping waves mesmerize, hypnotize, and we clasped her diminishing form in ours like a burnished and beloved stone, put her in our pockets and carried her along.

Some ashes and a lock of white hair is all that will be left of the physical her, ashes that will look, sound, feel and taste no different than Dad’s. Like his, we’ll cast them back to earth and ocean to become something new.

I’ll still see her every day when I look into my son Calvin’s face. Hers is somewhere there; I catch fleeting glimpses. And when I do, I remember her great sacrifice, her many years swollen with child and laden with dirty cloth diapers for six, shopping and cooking and ironing and cleaning for eight, taking little to nothing for herself, no cup of coffee or glass of wine with a friend, no solitary stroll in the woods to escape.

This rain reminds me of when she’d cry in the shower; she told me it’s what she did to hide her despair. But it seemed she’d forgotten all that, the Alzheimer’s dissolving her memory and her bones into chalk, which if scrawled on a rainy sidewalk washes into one big galaxy of color, like some celestial body, or perhaps a glorious supernova outshining everything else.

Composite view of the Crab nebula, an iconic supernova remnant. www.jpl.nasa.gov

consolations

I wish I could be there to give you a very big hug.
—James

It is easy to imagine the many layers of melancholy. I hope you find comfort in the tiniest things.
—Marianne

I sometimes feel that the way we parent is a mix of a lot of things, including both what we thought our parents got right, and what left room for improvement. If that is true, I know that your Mom saw the very best of herself in you, and the great Mom that you are to her grandson.
—Charlie

I'm so sorry for your loss. Thanks for allowing the rest of us to share in your journey—you shared in your mom's, we share in yours, and the cosmos of swirling spirits and glittery bangs touches us all.
May your happy memories of your mom buoy you in the days and weeks ahead.
—Kristi

my mother died 2 years ago and a light went out of her children's worlds that day
that next may on my brother's birthday and mother's day my niece gave birth to a baby girl named marian after my mother
and it is quite clear to all of us that my mother's spirit resides in this child without doubt
and life goes on . . . 
—Mimi

Just remember that, even long after the pain of the separation is gone, the beautiful and happy memories will still be there and remain with you forever.
—Stefano

The only perspective I can offer, having lost my mom three years ago this December, is that many Moms Never Leave.  The touches and hugs, the smiles, the laugh, the smells, the soothing sound of a voice talking, humming, whispering ... I experience those things all the time. I miss her physical presence but that really was only a fraction of her being.

And I do believe there is a very nifty group of stars out there in the cosmos ‘living’ it up. And we are lucky enough to get to wish on them and feel all that energy and brightness and promise they add to the night sky. I hope this can provide an antidote for your grief—it is just never easy to lose your mom.
—Catherine

Am very sorry for the loss of your mom—and thankful to have been able to read your warm and thoughtful posts about her over the years.
—Steven

A bit of grace comes to us all when we can see the perfection of another imperfect being.  Loss and love are so connected in this world.  I’ll cherish the thought of your mom as an angel up.
—Madeleine

Stories of the Black Ware Seed Jar

I have been through fire.
My form is fixed,
smoke-dark,
patterns of wing,
beak, thunder, and eye,
the storm of birds
chasing each other,
energies of life.
My small mouth
is starred,
cool and dry,
remembering
seeds
of potential.
Burnished
with stone,
I recall patience
through winter,
through wind,
through the rains
that fill the arroyos.
I absorb, hold
what stirs, rattles
like prayers,
like snakes,
awaiting release until
they pour my gifts
into the field again,
what you imagine—
where I began,
seed after seed,
fire becoming
field,
blossom and grain
and all of the voices
therein.

—Carter McKenzie

Photo by Stacey Sampson