The Last Time I Saw Her

As hard as I may try, it’s hard to forget what I was doing a year ago today.  I said good-bye to my mom, along-side my Dad, my sister, my boyfriend, my brother-in-law, my friends, cousins.  We said good-bye to her, we went to mass where the Pastor said a wonderful homily/eulogy and said some wonderful and funny things that made us all smile at a time that was so full of tears.  We stood around her casket as the Pastor blessed her and wished her a blessed entrance into heaven; standing there, in the middle of the church, with my hand on her casket is a memory (both visual and emotional) that I really do hope fades with time because it was heart-wrenching then, and remains to be pretty painful today.  We placed flowers on her casket, and we watched them place it into the ‘drawer’ as she used to call it, at the mausoleum. Even now I struggle to not imagine her in that box, it’s just not a picture I want to have of my mother.   I surely don’t wish to relive that day, but there is one thing that made me thankful for that day that stays with me now.

There will never be enough words in my vocabulary to adequately describe what was done for me by the people I am lucky enough to call friends.  My friend Brian, who used to sit in my living room with my mother smoking cigarettes and talking smack about football (and my brother), offered to carry her casket – I never asked, when I told him when the wake and funeral were being held he said “I’ll carry your mom” and that was it.  Another friend got on a plane and flew from Seattle that day to be here.  Others drove hours – 3 and 5 or 6, in the early morning, to be by my side.  One of them said “we circle the wagons” when its one of our own, and they certainly did.  When I walked out of the church, and saw them all standing there, I was in total disbelief.  I have no idea what I did right in my life to deserve these people, but it must have been something pretty spectacular.  We may not see each other often, we may not speak often, but these people are my people, they are my ‘tribe’ – if you use that word at all – and I don’t know what I would have done that day without them. After it was all said and done, and we sat around a big table in a restaurant laughing and drinking, someone said that they felt bad having so much fun.  And I remember saying no, don’t feel bad.  She would have been here laughing and drinking with us if it was someone else in that box, so drink your wine and laugh.  It’s how she would have wanted it.

The days between that day and this one have blurred in many ways.  Some stand out – my friend’s wedding in England, for example.  But many are just the same, hazy, tear-smudged days.  It’s hard to believe that I put my mother to rest a year ago today.  If she hadn’t died, this day would have no significance at all because a year ago I would have been doing what I’m doing now…working, writing, eating at my desk, enduring the cold air that wafts in anytime someone opens a backdoor.  But that’s not how it is.  This day will always stand out as different.  Not many will remember it, I know that.  As time goes on, this day will become a distant memory for a lot of people, and that’s okay.  I don’t think it’s supposed to be important to everyone.  But it will always be important to me.  And although it wasn’t really ‘her’ that I saw that day, it was the last time that I looked at her, it was the last time that I saw that crazy wild old lady hair, it was the last time I saw her nails painted that horrible pale pink color she always wore.  I will always remember today as the last day that I saw my mom, and for that, I will always be just a tiny bit sad on this day.