Some Things I Will Say

On this day, I was awakened by the absence of sound.  The ubiquitous sssshhhhh that lives in my ears  was undisturbed by any other noise. The sunlight was too exhausted to shine through the stained glass window.  Now and then a bird came to the feeder, but it didn't bother singing.

I was waiting for my sister to call so I could go to her house and plan our mothers' funerals.  There would be two of them - one at her church in North Carolina where she lived the last fifteen of her life, and one back in our hometown in Illinois.

One might think that this was wrapping up the story, but as so often happens, one would be wrong.  I am going to tell the whole dang story, and it's not going to make me look much like a saint.  But I have some freedom now that comes with the death of parents.  Well, a freedom and a responsibility to be flat out honest in the telling.  It's not that I have big juicy secrets to tell about my parents, it's more that I don't feel the onus to look particularly saintly for them anymore.

However, when I saw the beautiful, young Cardinal couple hopping about yesterday, playing, dancing, courting in the grass, and they reminded me of my reunited parents, the thought went through my head that if I ever go to the same type of Heaven I imagine them in, I'm going to get the look from both of them.

People keep asking me how I'm doing.  Mom died Saturday and it's Monday now.  She hasn't even been officially dead two whole days, though it seems like a much longer time.  I began mourning her the first time she asked me what my name was, nearly a year ago.  Forgive me, I'm really bad with time, and this has been a scrambled up year, but I think it was about a year ago.

Because my sister lives closer - about 45 minutes, the way she drives - from Mom's house, but mostly because my sister is just a nicer person than I, Nan, my sister, was the primary caretaker from the family.  As signs of Mom's dementia began to pop up more and more, Mom wanted Nancy to be with her more and more.

Mom lived in her own house by herself then.  She and Papa were married 55 years when he died after a long, disgusting illness that took away his physical ability one tiny bit at a time, while leaving his brain as sharp as ever.  They lived in the same little town in Illinois for 42 of those years.  A couple of years after he died, Mom sold the house and most of the stuff in it and moved to North Carolina, where she knew no one.  Well, she knew that Nan and Chip would be moving to that area soon.

But think of that.  Mom was no spring chicken and had been married since she was a girl, and she just struck out and created a new life.  She bought a house, made new friends, had men in her life, won awards for quilting.  She had another big life as an independent single woman.