It’s been a year since my mother died.
How am I doing? Well, I’m dealing. I’m dealing blind against an unseen opponent in a game I don’t understand, but everyone smiles a lot and life goes on.
Look, I don’t want you to imagine me prostrated by grief. That’s not how this works. We all know our parents will, ideally, die before us. And mom and I… Chalk and cheese, you know? No, not like that. Or in some things exactly like that.
The thing is, a daughter like me is a terrible thing to happen to a mother who spent most of her life carefully filing down the sharp angles so she could fit in the round slot for the proper pegs.
No, she wasn’t repressed. Mom gave people repression. She was not meek and mild. People were meek and mild around her.
But all the same, she knew how to play the game, how to impress people the way she should, how to get across what she wanted to get across. She commanded groups, made parties wonderful, and could fill a room, just by herself, if she was in that sort of mood.
And then there’s me… I’m…. me. I probably could impress people, if I remembered and didn’t have three or four novels competing for my attention inside my head, at any given time. I was reasonably good looking and even enjoyed clothes and makeup… sometimes. And sometimes I forgot and went to the store in my painting jeans and with my hair pulled back. I’m actually (I didn’t know it) and introvert and some of our biggest fights were about her wanting to drag me to parties, because of course she wanted to, and I wanted to stay in my room with a book.
And then there were the things I was enthusiastic about. They baffled her. She knew what they were, she just couldn’t for the life of her figure out why I liked them. She tried. For my 19th birthday she went to the one bookstore in town that carried books in English and ordered the complete works of Villiam Shogspierre in English. And when they told her she might prefer them in Portuguese she said “I don’t prefer them at all. My daughter does, and she prefers them in English, thank you.” (Yes, she knew how it was pronounced. It was part of distancing herself from it.) I have better ones which aren’t tiny print printed in Yugoslavia (No, I don’t know why that was what they had) but I keep that one.
Sometimes she got upset about the things that fascinated me, as though by paying attention to them I was denying her and shutting her out. She once threw every book she could grab in my room out the window and into the farmer’s field out the back wall. It was a fit of fury at these books I carried everywhere. It’s been fifty years since she did that, and I still don’t understand it.
She used to get very upset when she caught me reading. (That’s what brought the fit on.) So I trained myself to fling the book under the nearest piece of furniture and sit very still as if I’d just been staring at the walls when I heard someone approach. Baffled my husband for a year until he figured out what was going on.
My brother and I used to talk in book quotes. Despite an almost ten year age difference, we had a tendency to be reading the same book, at the same time. In fact, until his eyes went bad, we’d often get there for a visit and he’d have the same book on his bedside table that I’d left on mine at home. (Only in Portuguese.) And we both had eidetic or near eidetic memory (in my case marred by being so ADD that…. well, you can’t remember what you never paid attention to.) So, when one of us would quote something we found significant in the latest book, the other would answer with a quote from the same book. It was like mad libs for autists, I guess, but we enjoyed ourselves greatly.
… At one point, after half an hour of this, Mom just yelled at the ceiling “I wanted normal children!” Followed by “I met my old classmate at the fair last week, and her daughter is a hairdresser, and her son has a garage, and they’re successful and happy and NORMAL. I wanted normal children.”
… Someone played a horrible prank on the poor woman, and gave her two changelings, even if my brother masks better than I do, or perhaps was never crazy enough to do truly outre things like marry a foreigner, move across the ocean, write books for a living.
I’d like to say she supported that the whole way…. but…. well, dad says she did. Dad says she was proud of me.
Maybe she was. She had a picture of me receiving the Prometheus on her living room table. I suspect it was because I was in an evening dress, wearing pearls and for once in my life had my hair done. “Look, my daughter. She’s not a bum ALL THE TIME, okay?” (I know, it baffled the presenters, too. BUT I’d promised my fans if I won I’d dress up.) On the other hand, when someone over there asked what I did for a living, mom would break herself crossing the room to scream “She’s a housewife” before I could say anything. (I might or might not have mumbled “the world’s worst housewife, maybe.”) And I won’t deny it hurt a little when I saw my colleagues mothers’ making a big deal of their books. I never gave mom copies after the first three — okay, in English, she wasn’t going to read them, but I thought she might put them in the front room bookcase? — because she hid them in the closet under the stairs, with the old shoes. And I — baffled! — have no idea WHY. Which to be fair, she probably had no idea why I was doing it either.
She was, however, a woman on the run. She was always doing something, cleaning something, designing something, whether a dress, a room, a table, a party. Her normal mode was at full throttle.
I find it somewhere between funny and ironic she fell running down the stairs, carrying a vacuum cleaner the cleaning lady had forgotten in the unused guest room. It could have waited another week. But it bothered her. So… she was running down the stairs, and lost count of the steps. She couldn’t see where she was because of the vacuum. They told us she’d broken her hip, and she did that too, but not that she’d hit her head because apparently concussions are irrelevant, but she’d hit her head on the umbrella cabinet hard enough to break the door, and I suspect had a closed-cranium concussion. I had one of those at 40. It’s different at 91.
I find that funny, because it’s the most mom thing ever. And if given the choice of that or going quietly in her bed ten years from now, she’d probably have picked going at 91, still on the run and doing things.
She used to call every Saturday. Usually when I was in the middle of my cleaning time, the phone would ring, and it was mom, which meant the next two hours were toast. I didn’t realize all the news from the entire family over there came through her.
I now can clean uninterrupted, but my Saturdays are… kind of lonely.
How am I doing?
I’m dealing. We never got along well as it were, but her presence and her personality, in approval and disapproval, and in the spaces between, shaped a lot of what I did and do, and how I did it.
For instance, I stole her smile. Perfectly aware I was not a beauty like she was, and I certainly didn’t have her way with people, I fixated on the one thing I could copy. My own smile was awkward and odd. So I sat in front of the mirror and practiced her smile until it became my smile. And I learned her trick of memorizing funny things people do, and then replaying them for the family, like a skit. Oh, and my house is 100% cleaner than those of my peers all the time, because …. what would mom say? (Nothing good, is what she’d say. We’re in the middle of a move and both houses are filthy.)
When she vanished, it was like driving along a Colorado road, and suddenly the mountains vanish. Look, you live on the foothills, you don’t do anything with the mountains. but suddenly they’re not there, and your world is curiously flat and colorless and why did they vanish? Where did they go? Can you even orient without them?
… I’m managing. Most of the time I’m fine, really, except suddenly, out of nowhere I hit something: a word, a phrase, a memory. A way to cook a dish I still do routinely. Her never fulfilled (often repeated) promise to teach me how to put in a zipper. (I can’t put in zippers in clothing. It’s like a disability.) Something. Sometimes just a quality of the light. And suddenly I’m crying. I’m not even sad, and I don’t know why I am crying, but there it is.
She always ended our phone calls with orders, “Go get your family in gear. You know they can’t figure their way without you.”
…. She has no idea. The boys are in gear enough. So is Dan. But mom meant that I should do what I can, I think. And was afraid I’d disappear into book and neglect the important things.
Do I do that? Sometimes. But then again, I love the boys. All three of them, even though Dan is a little superannuated for a boy. And sometimes they need me.
I try to be there for them, because I know mom expects it of me, so here I am, grinding through the speed changes the best I can.
I’m dealing. No one said this stuff was easy: mothers and daughters, the way we can’t help disappointing each other, the big love that has no need of shared interests to echo it, the persistent sense that you disappointed someone and you’re not sure who or how, the memories of shopping for shoes together, the ridiculously large ice creams she bought me and watched me consume, because she couldn’t… This weird feeling when someone who is so much a part of you is now a part of eternity.
I’m dealing. I’m getting the family in gear (I think the gear is turbo reverse parking, but hey) and I’m doing the best I can with all of this.
I can’t believe it’s been a year. And the horizon still retains the outline of the mountains that just vanished one day.
According To Hoyt 
I had a somewhat similar relationship with my father, although I just filled up notebooks instead of actually publishing until last year. He passed away in June 2011 and it never really occurred to me until 2025 that I could start sharing my “weird” stories with others…
So thank you, Sarah Hoyt, for building a community that gave me confidence and a path forward.
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First, hugs.
And yeah, I suspect my mom had similar feelings (why is my chick covered in down? And why does she keep falling in the duck pond?)
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“you can’t remember what you never paid attention to” I’m not sure about that. My thought processes sometimes seem autonomous, running in the background and popping up with notions and ideas as if they came from somewhere outside of me, sometimes decades after the thought started. Perhaps we have multiple layers or ways of paying attention.
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“Look, my daughter. She’s not a bum ALL THE TIME, okay?” Reminds me of months in my mid 70s (not the 1970s) when I decided to grow my hair and beard long after going most of my life clean shaven with a buzz cut. Hair and beard ultimately grew so unmanageable I kept getting one or the other in my eyes, nose or mouth. I went back to “normal” after two separate occasions of walking into Wendy’s in different neighborhoods to buy a chili and having people walk up to me and press $3 into my hand as if they took me for a homeless bum. I hadn’t even had time to make eye contact with them.
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Damn, I must not look scrufty enough. I grew mine out mainly to please the wife but also as a disguise in a very liberal small NW town to hide my deplorable gun toting and Republican voting side from the general public. Never got any money from anyone, but then they were mostly bleeding heart liberals, and the real conservatives already knew me since we were a small cabal. Now I keep it cause wife likes it and shudders when I threaten to go back to giving myself ¼ inch haircuts.
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I’ve no idea of the political leanings of my donors, but I did feel more and more appreciative of the kindness of local people I’ve lived with since 1976.
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Oh I did not mean to cast aspersions on your donors. I suspect you are in a different region ;-)
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Heh, opposite for me. In college (starting in 1970), I’d get a haircut every 6 months whether I needed it or not. Shaving was somewhere between annoying and painful, so starting from Day 1, the beard grew. There were a few times when I had to be almost clean shaven, but the mustache always stayed.
After college, I’d get a haircut when it got annoying. Generally more often than 6 months, but the haircutters never got rich off of me. Fast forward to 2020 and Covidiocy, where you’d need an appointment, a face diaper, and dispensation from the governor (Despicable Kate Brown D-mented of OR) to get a haircut. Out came the clippers and a mirror. Every couple-three months, I get really short hair.
Now, I’ve found that a full-face CPAP mask works far better for me than the nasal variety. Yeah, I sleep with my mouth open barring assistance. With partials out, there’s a gap wide enough to run a small jet engine, so new full-face mask. That in turn meant I needed to be at least partially clean shaven to prevent leaks. Norelco shaver FTW. Still have the ‘stache; there’s a scar in there from a bike accident that I’d rather not be reminded of every day.
In town, I’ll dress up. Decent (Carhartt) shirt, Riggs cargo pants (IWB holsters and I don’t get along) and clean shoes. On the property, overalls in various shades of filth, a crappy shirt, and boots. The ball cap is a decent one for town, a grimy Stihl cap at home
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My Mom will be gone 10 years, this December- the moments still come, I’ll want to ask her a question and… she’s not there. May all our deceased mothers Rest in Peace.
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My Mom’s been gone for 50 years, and I still occasionally ask her questions. Dad’s been gone for over 10 years now, same deal. I wonder if both of them are saving up the answers for when I see them again?
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Hugs, I know that losing a parent leaves an emptiness in the heart. Both of mine are gone now, dad since 09 and mom since 2021. Still find myself wishing I could talk to them, tell them how things are going and show off their great grandkids. Let your heart be at peace and believe that someday all will be reunited.
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I hear your voice but you’re not there
I turn to look but you’re not there
Simple things. Small things. Anything.
Echoed silence fills the air.
I wait. I sigh. I sorrow. I pace.
Fitful memories. Fading pictures.
Void of presence. Void of face.
When I want, I cannot find you
When I don’t, there you are
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Its been 30 years for me. Dad fell and broke his hip at 92, but Mom had a cancer and a stroke long before. Many parallels between your Mom and mine though. I was going through old scrapbooks I don’t remember looking through which I had attributed to Dad but were hers. From before High School and through civilian then Navy and eventually meeting Dad and ending with me as an infant in her arms and her looking down and smiling. I was doing OK UNTIL THAT PART. So much she never shared with me. I had to sit hugging those albums for a while.
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“… This weird feeling when someone who is so much a part of you is now a part of eternity”
This reminds me of my mother, who was brought up Native American and didn’t learn English until she got to 1st grade. She declined to teach her kids her mother tongue, said she couldn’t remember it well, which contradicted the many times we saw her sitting with native friends, chattering away in a foreign tongue. However, she was full of stories in English, of her native friends and relatives, living and dead, which she repeated countless times. She did not share many common beliefs about death. To her, everyday life, death, and eternity were simply always present to us and always alive. 25 years ago she “walked on” as her native friends describe death. Talk about weird feelings….
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“Well, I’m dealing.”
Yep. Eventually muscle memory builds enough that you don’t step in the hole they left behind every day.
But I still don’t drive through our old neighborhood where our house is. It belongs to somebody else, but it’s still “our house”. It’s a nearly physical pain. Two years ago I’d cry every time.
Mine both went the hard way. I’ve not clung to those memories, let’s just say. The memories do inflict themselves on me fairly regularly though, because a thing once seen cannot be unseen. I think your mother wiping out down the stairs was a far better way for a lady like that to go, having seen the other way. I’d chose wiping out on my bike at 91, if anybody asked me.
We get what we get. I try not to be angry and bitter, because nobody suffers but me. Any time for recrimination is past, and really most of the things I get angry about are stupid. I admit it. Petty, and stupid. If I didn’t speak up at the time, there’s no point dwelling on it now.
So hold your head up, give all the bad memories the finger, and drive on. Maybe both fingers.
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If you’re driving, both fingers is not advised.
“One hand for you, one hand for the ship.” 8-)
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My mother passed away from cancer on December 7th last year. I was packing to go to the Philippines to marry my fiancee. Aside from running around to get the last bits of papwerwork for us to get married, I had to get a form noterized that said I agreed to her body being cremated. I still miss her a lot. I did get to have one last pizza lunch shared with her the weekend before she passed. I almost feel like she was waiting for me to come see her before going on the next leg of the journey. I had a really good relationship with her and I would call her at least once a week during my hour long drive home. I miss that.
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Take care Sarah.
About beards, I have a beard for reasons.
I shaved it off one time and it was amazing that people at work knew something was different but couldn’t pin it down. [Crazy Grin]
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Five years this fall. My mom was much like yours, Sarah. Glamorous in her youth, always active, able to do so many needlecraft things she never had the patience to teach me (including putting in a zipper!).
And she kept the studio portrait from my first (brief, failed) marriage in the living room for years, long after I found and married the love of my life. Why? Because I was wearing the heirloom wedding dress that had been handed down from my great-grandmother. Displaying the portraits of everyone in my maternal line wearing that dress was more important than how I felt about that marriage. (She did eventually take it down — at least when I was visiting!)
Dementia took her from us before death did. But she came back for a last few days of lucidity, long enough to say goodbye. Chalk and cheese… yes, I miss her every day.
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Mom had Dementia and my sister Ruth had said that Mom didn’t know her when she visited Mom.
However, the last time Ruth visited Mom, Mom appeared to know who Ruth was.
Mom died a couple days after that visit.
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I am better than my mother at many things. And not just as her senile decline takes hold. I do totally understand that “WHY are these things important to you?” concept. (She places huge importance on having short/ curled/ styled hair, matching outfits, etc. I did dutifully try these things when I was younger but I never Got It.)
My father died eight years ago. I did not weep at the funeral. (Dad was a real piece of work.)
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Fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters. Sigh. My parents are 13 years gone now and I miss them every day, but not at all in the same way. My mother never approved of my wife and never got “Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh.”. Sigh.
She was outgoing and graceful and when she died the cars in the funeral procession stretched out of the graveyard and down the road. She also cared what other people thought of her, which my sisters, each in their opposite way, do. I don’t, never have. Strange in that I’m just like my Da.
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Big hugs, Sarah. Much of what you wrote–“chalk and cheese”–describes my mom and me. Enough to bring tears though she’s been gone since 2021.
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