Mom

Twenty-four years ago today my mother died. Twenty-four years ago. Sometimes it feels like I never had a mother, that somehow I just came to be. I remember her as if she was a woman in a movie that I liked. I can hardly hear her voice. What did she sound like? How did she use her words? I do remember how she walked - like a lady, which meant slow, measured and elegant. She tried to teach me that, and I guess she succeeded because I'm always lagging behind everyone. I walk slow and measured like a lady. She also pointed out that ladies don't plop on sofas and they don't sit on the ground. I never mastered either skill.

I learned to be sad from my mother (and my father). They were not happy people. But my mom also knew how to laugh, to be light-hearted. She was easy to coerce too. She'd say: "I'm going on a diet." I would say: "Let's go get some ice cream." She'd say: "Okay," Just like that. I thought that was pretty funny when I was young. My mom stayed slender until menopause. Then she ballooned up a bit. That didn't last long. A lady always must look her best. And that included always wearing makeup. I think mom was disappointed in that I was the only daughter who liked and wore makeup (later on my sister Chris took up the charge).

I remember when I was quite young, mom would tell me to watch over the young'uns while she locked herself in her bedroom for an hour to put on her makeup while she geared up for the day with five (at the time) children waiting to be taken care of. She told me that under no circumstances (except for mortal injury) was I, or anyone else, to bother her for that hour. I didn't mind. Even at such a young age I understood that mom needed that time for herself.

There was a short phase when mom ordered jelly donuts with the milk delivery on Saturday mornings. (Yes, I lived in an age when milk was still delivered in glass bottles to your doorstep.) We'd watch cartoons after choosing one jelly donut. This was also the period when mom decided that we needed to learn yoga. So, on Saturday mornings, after donuts, milk and cartoons, we practiced basic yoga with our mother. The donut spell ended when my mom realized that she was gaining weight. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.

My mom died when she was 61 from metastasized breast cancer. After the original diagnosis, she refused to do chemotherapy and would only consider a lumpectomy, even though there were something like 21 cancerous lymph nodes. I never even considered the notion that my mother would die some day. Who thinks about things like that when you're young? Although I guess I wasn't that young since I was in my mid-30s when she died. If she had lived, I wonder what she would be like now. She would be 85 years old. (My dad, had he not died at 67, would be 88 years old this year.) Would she be mellow, feisty, healthy, sickly, happy at last? Would she and my dad be ex-pats, living on the western coast of Mexico -- her plan for their retirement? Would they be traveling around the world on escorted trips like so many other senior citizens? Would they be content, sipping margaritas on the beach, listening to the Pacific Ocean waves, living in a Spanish villa, reading, daydreaming, painting, sculpting -- doing all the things they couldn't, or didn't, do while raising seven children and managing their own businesses? I'll never know. My mom died 24 years ago today, berefting me of my eternal best friend as well.