Happy birthday, Mom. Day 9

Today is my mom's birthday. Would have been my mom's birthday. Her 81st. Happy Birthday, Mom. We threw her a bangin' 80th birthday party last year, for which I'm grateful, but this year .... it's been a tough day in that regard.

I was talking with a friend who also lost her mom recently, just a few weeks ago, about how hard it is to find time to grieve. About how we have to go on as if we didn't just pass one of the biggest, most painful, milestones of our lives. It's like standing on a speeding escalator watching those days and weeks that surrounded my mom's death recede behind me way before I'm ready to let go. Long before I've had a chance to sit quietly for long spells and come to terms with the loss. I guess that's why we call it loss though. Life moves on at its own pace.

Which got me to thinking about a couple of special times that did help me through it. The times when I felt some space open up around me where I found peace and felt cared for and comforted.

Of course I spent a lot of time with family and friends over the 3 weeks I was in Iowa, and we spent a lot of time reminiscing and laughing and crying.  The viewing the day before the funeral was seven hours long. I saw people I hadn't seen since I left home when I was 17. And those people took care of us, my sisters and brother and me. They brought food -- mostly beef and cookie bars. I had forgotten how people do death in a small town. Food is a remarkable gift to give a grieving family. I was so grateful it was almost painful to be cared for in such a way while I was there staying in my mom's house. I miss that in my life. I digress though.

The Saturday afternoon between Mom's death and her funeral my cousin, who was one of my best friends when we were growing up, drove over from Madison County to hang out with us. We talked about how Mom loved to color in adult coloring books with her colored pencils, and how precise her coloring was in spite of the stroke she suffered 18 years ago that greatly reduced her small motor skills in her right hand. My cousin said she loved to color too, and I told about the coloring party I'd had one evening for 11 women.

Pretty soon we were sitting at Mom's kitchen table coloring in her coloring books with her pencils. laughing and talking. And it was like a space opened up in time where we could step away from the world and just sit together in our grief, coloring like we did when we were kids. My cousin's dad, my mom's middle brother, had also passed away not that long before and I hadn't been able to come home for his funeral, so we were double grieving. That afternoon was a bubble that brings me comfort even today. It was healing.

The next day my cousin, who is a gorgeous quilter, brought 7 quilts so we could choose one to bury with Mom. After we chose, she gave each of us one of our own -- five in all. Mine is shown in the photo above. Her generosity of both the quilt and her time made such precious memories during a time of sadness and loss.

When I got back home I felt like I was trying to keep up on a runaway treadmill. Getting back to work, getting Coraline back to school, picking up the pieces I'd dropped when I had to leave so suddenly. Two weeks is a long time to leave a life untended. I felt like I'd been through so much, and then I had to just go back to normal as if ... as if normal existed.

I'd only been home a couple of days when a friend I'll call Piano Man commented on my Facebook that we should get together and play some music. We're always saying that, but we never do. Seven or eight years ago we played a show together, but he's way out of my league and plays professionally. This time though he persisted. 

How about Wednesday? Does that work for you?  he wrote. It did. I told him to come over around 8:00 and I'd have Coraline in bed. 

When he got here, we didn't get right down to the music. We sat on the couch and the cats came over to investigate and crawl around on him. Piano Man is a cat guy. He was digging it. We talked, and he asked me about my time in Iowa, what had happened.

I told him some of the story, and then I said, "I'm sorry. I don't mean to go on about this. You didn't come here to listen to me talk about my stuff. We should play some music."

"No," he said. "You're wrong. I did come here to hear this story. I want to hear it. Tell me what happened. It's important."

I still get teary remembering those words. Listening is a gift, but asking for the story, especially a story of a mother's death and a daughter's grief .... not many people ask for that.

So I told him what it was like to take my mom off the ventilator and to wait for her body to shut down over those days. And what her death was like as I sat beside her bed with her. And how she gave me a sign when I told her I loved her some time after she took her last breath. He listened to all of it as he calmly petted one of the cats.

And then we played music for almost three hours, and during that time I just focused on the music. Nothing else. Sure we talked and laughed. And we don't have a common book of music, so mostly we ran through some of the songs I like to play by myself. He's a talented, skilled jazz piano player and I'm mediocre at best, but it brought me home, grounded me. He even sang some harmony while I sang melody, which never happens.

It was exactly what I needed. Like maybe the Universe said, "She's had enough for a minute. Let's give her a break." And for a few hours, I was in a bubble of music and harmony and the kindness of a friend asking to hear my story.

Words are my life, and yet I don't have sufficient words for how powerful those bubbles of time were -- the music and the coloring. The telling and the patient listening. And these are not the only times. Just the ones I've chosen to write about tonight.

The lesson is, I think, that we can't know how such simple acts can bring great comfort and healing to someone who is sad and grieving, but we should be open to the opportunity to step into that bubble where time stops and the coloring or the music or the eating or the sharing of memories is all that matters. In the end, these connections are what I call God, the Divine, the Mystery. Or it's just what makes us feel better. Either way.

Happy Birthday, Mom. I love you.