Making a Start...

Where to begin?

If you follow this space you’ll find it obvious that I have neglected it. The reason is simple. Lately words have failed me. I have been heard to say, half jokingly, that “nothing is constant in life except change”. Over the past year or so, there's been fundamental change in our lives.

Last December my Mom got very sick. She died two months later. She wasn't quite 67.

Blinding, unanticipated shifts and adjustments have taken place. It's dizzying, really. People outside of the nuclear family note how we are all doing the right things to move forward. I agree, but sometimes I still feel like we are all just jumping around like frogs in a frying pan, trying to be hurt as little as possible, and to land in a better place.

The reminders come in waves and ripples. They often prompt other memories, subconscious or otherwise. They can evoke smiles and tears; priceless anecdotes and honest, deep grief. 

Last month I found myself in the preposterous position of having to cross off my Mom's name.

There are pages on file at my son's school for all the family information: addresses, phone numbers, doctors and all that. The handout had come home in the backpack, as it does every September, to be updated. I scanned this page that had been tossed on my desk without really reading it or thinking about it... until my gaze tripped across her name. Aprille Everett: 2^nd Emergency Contact.

So I had to update it. I clicked into “less emotional mode”, picked up a pen and crossed off her name. It wasn't until I had done it and replaced my pen that the reality of what I had done hit me. The ninja grief snuck up behind me, as it occasionally does. It was a tangible metaphor for what had happened when she died; the universe had taken a pen and crossed her off, and out, of our lives. This was just one of many blinding, unanticipated shifts and adjustments. I find they serve as launching pads into free association and related recollections.

Thinking about Mom and my son in a school situation led to memories of her picking him up at kindergarten and taking him back to her place every Wednesday for 10 months so I could work extra hours. It was a wonderful time for them. Mom and Dex formed a powerful relationship that year. She spoiled him once a week and just spent time with him. He was so little then. This serves as a launching pad to my own memories of myself, as a little guy, and Mom after school....

I was terrified of bullies in the first grade. Talented bullies can (and do) smell it on you. There was the wintry day in 1970 when I ran home, teary-eyed, snow dripping down my face from having just received what was called a “face-washing” at the hands of some thuggish, mouth-breathing classmate. Mom hurried me inside, worried, and then angered by my tears. She cleaned me up, dried me off, gave me some love and instant cocoa and then demanded the name of the kid who had roughed me up. Then she settled me in to watch Zoom on TV. I could hear her on the phone in the next room talking to the kid's mother. She tore them a new one. Later the boy apologized to me. Thanks, Mom.

Words have failed me in writing about Mom because the topic is so vast and the feelings so deep. I will try to do it, from time to time, now that I have begun.