Mom and the Angels

My Mother died last year, on June 23. It was one month before her 78th birthday.

I miss her.

On her birthday this year, I was at a wedding and reception, hundreds of miles from my home. I believed that I wouldn't think about her with so many distractions. I was wrong.

The last time I saw Mom outside of the hospital was on Easter Sunday of 2004. I gave her a good hug and a kiss. I always did.

Every time I visited over the last decade or so, I reminded myself that it could be the last time I'd see her. Years of diabetes, weight issues and bad joints had slowed her, and I typically never saw her outside of the chair pictured, unless we were at the supper table (though occasionally at bedtime I'd outlast her and watch her hobble off to join my early-riser dad).

At the time of her illness and subsequent death, I was dealing with emotional issues of my own which kept me somewhat detached, unable to avail myself of the cathartic grieving in which my father and siblings freely engaged. Having experienced the death of a close friend and her preemie baby only months before ( a story in itself), I was still in a sort of existential fog. This allowed me to utilize my "let's get this over with and get on with life" skills to muddle through and try to be a rock for my dad. I wanted to set an example for my family, because I knew that if they went to pieces, I'd be lost.

I didn't cry upon news of my mother's death, and I didn't cry at her funeral, though in my darkest days before and after her passing, something as simple as hearing the Elizabethan song "Barbara Allen" on the way to work could have tears streaming down my face to my utter astonishment and embarrassment.

A short time after her death, when I was restoring files to my computer after a hard disk failure, I came across this image in my collection of digital pictures. I had given it the file-name "Mom and the Angel." It was in a folder marked "Christmas 2001".

Running across the picture provided me with a brief respite from my own (now seemingly trivial) troubles. There, in the company of an angel, illuminated by a heavenly candle, was the woman who gave birth to me and came to represent my first and only brush with unconditional love.

This image says so much about my mother.

She loved Christmas. She loved the Home Shopping Network. And she loved kitschy things like this angel, without a hint of irony. Born dirt-poor in West Virginia, she never lost the ability to find the intended beauty in any material object, no matter how tacky.

It's not discernible in the photo, but the angel pictured is mechanical: there are moving wings, and her head and arms gesture slowly, raising her C-cell battery-operated candle in a pleasant, smooth, up-and-down motion.

Although I never shared Mom's love of these and other knick-knacks, I helped feed her habit by sending her trinkets from around the globe, the last of which was a set of nesting dolls I picked up as a stocking stuffer in Denmark in 2003. That was to be her last Christmas. I'm glad that I bought them.

I know tradition suggests that when we get to our Great Reward, all of our earthly pain and infirmities evaporate like morning dew. But when I picture my Mom, wherever she is, she's still in that chair: smiling, in the company of angels, half listening to their sweet utterances, even as she maneuvers discreetly to see around their unearthly raiments - so as not to miss the Heavenly Shopping Network on the TV in the next room.

Miss you, Mom. I'm sorry I wasn't there when you had to leave. But I'll see you soon.