Monday, May 12, 2008
As we tossed my mother's ashes into the wind, my heart was heavy with hopelessness, and with missing her. Even as I felt the old familiar despair that she had been my mother.
Aug 1, 2003 | Most of me was glad when my mother died. She was a handful, but not in a cute, festive way. More in a life-threatening way, that had caused me a long time ago to give up all hope of ever feeling good about having had her as a mother. She was a mix of wrathful Old Testament opinion, terrified politeness, befuddled English arrogance -- Hermione Gingold meets the dark Hindu goddess Kali. And God, she was annoying. I mean this objectively. You can ask my brothers, or her sister. I used to developed Parkinson's-like tics in her presence. Yet, most of who I have become is the result of having had her as a foil, and having her inside me: as DNA, as memory, all the weird lessons she taught, the beautiful lessons too -- and they are the same.
I spent my whole life helping my mother carry around her psychic trunks like a bitter bellhop. So a great load was lifted when she died, and my life was much easier. For a long time, I did not miss her at all, and did not forgive her a thing. Perhaps this sounds a little angry; I don't care. I was the angriest daughter on earth, and also, one of the most devoted. My brothers and I gave away most of her stuff -- clothes, books, broken junk. There was one troubling trunk, though, that was left behind, and this was the plastic crematory box that held her ashes. We couldn't figure out how to pry it open, and her name was misspelled on the label. I put it in the closet, and then, after time softened my heart, I discovered that I had forgiven her for a number of things, although none of the big-ticket items -- like having ever existed, for instance. And then having lived so long. Still, the mosaic chips of forgiveness were a start, and I carried the box of ashes from the closet to a place in my living room, wrapped in pretty paper. Here is what happened next.
Around that time, my pastor, Veronica, gave a sermon about how sad and frustrated and hopeless some of us were feeling about our leaders, and about the war in Iraq. But she said that now was not the time to figure everything out, like who was to blame, or whom we would vote for. It was not the time to get a new plan together and begin trying to push it on through. It was time to be still, to get centered, to trust what we've always trusted in: friendship, kindness, helping the poor, feeding the hungry. So, having felt scattered for much of the past two years, I took her words to heart, and began to get quiet whenever possible, to take longer walks on the mountain, to sit in beggy prayer and fretful meditation. My mind kept thinking its harsh thinky thoughts, but I'd distract myself from them gently, and say, "Those are not the truth, those are not trustworthy; those are for entertainment purposes only." Eventually I began to have quieter thoughts about my mother, to see her through what the theologian Howard Thurman called "quiet eyes." Not quiet eyes, in my case. But quiet for me and then quieter still, and that felt like a small miracle.
Gerald May wrote, "Grace threatens all my normalities." I tell you. It had taken two years for me to bring her out of the dark, dusty closet. Now I felt that it was time to scatter her ashes with the family, to honor her. The problem was, I didn't honor her. I meant to, but all I really felt was sorry for how hard her life had been, and glad she had finally passed. This is what the elders of our church call dying -- "She passed," as in she aced her exams, or turned down the offer to renew her lease. "Oh, yeah, she passed," they reassure you, and I believe, theologically, they are right on both counts.
That was where I was when Veronica urged us to be still. And when I did, I found out once again how flexible and wily the human spirit is. It will sneak out from behind the bushes like a cartoon cat and ambush you if you're not careful, trick you into giving up a teaspoon of resentment, get you to take one step back from the frozen ground. Mine was lying in wait for me the day I found a photo of my mother when she was 60, and while my heart didn't actually leap, it hopped, awkwardly, like its shoelaces were tied together.
She usually wore way too much makeup, as a way of maintaining both disguise and surface tension, and it had always humiliated me. But in this one picture, instead of feeling humiliated, I could finally see what she was shooting for: to appear beautiful, and worthy, a vigorous woman on this earth. She is posing in front of a vase of flowers, clasping one wrist with her hand, as if she is trying to take her own pulse. She had been divorced for eight years or so by then. One of her eyebrows is arched, archly, as if one of us had once again said something dubious or socially unacceptable. One-third of her is in darkness, two-thirds of her is in light, which pretty much says it.
You can see what a brave little engine she was, even though she'd lost everything over the years -- her husband, her career, her health -- but she still had her friends and family, and she stayed fiercely loyal to liberal causes, and to underdogs. And I thought, well, I honor that, so we'll start there.
Get Salon in your mailbox!