In Memory

Eleven years ago on this day, my mother passed away.

We have a picture of her when she was attending college, when my dad was courting her. They had sent love letters then, though they are now lost. The picture itself is shaded, though I think it captures her as she must have been back then; a bit lonely, transparent at some angles, unsmiling but still warm. She minored, I think, in French literature; there is a copy of The Little Prince, addressed to "My Little Princes and Princess, 1994." It must have been one of her favorites, matched by her romantic sentimentality.

Eleven years have blurred what recollections I might have had of her. I remember the warmth of her body when I was younger; most of the nights I had fallen asleep hugging her. When I was installed and instructed to sleep in bed, I remember how it was strange, cold, and alienating. My body was not yet big enough to produce warmth; blankets for a mother is a poor exchange. I remember her asking once if getting the middle finger was bad. Yes, it was, we had told her. (She was apparently a poor driver.) When her father died, I remember dad taking us out on deliberate walks, as if to shield us. When she re-emerged from that dark room after we had spent all day in the light, her disheveled look of loss impressed on me. So this is what death does. I remember more clearly the room in the hospital. We did not visit her much, maybe that was our fault. We were still in the happy illusion that suffering never touches good people. (Probability is a bitch; 1/100 is unlikely, but that 1 percent is final.) She gave us her hospital food, and I feigned interest. She would get better, so there was no need to worry. When the stroke left her paralyzed, she still wanted to talk to us. (Oh how!) Her heart must have ached dearly to articulate the sentences in her mouth, but we could not recognize the words or her voice.

She is buried in Rose Hills, off the 605N in California. I have not been back in a year or two, nor do I feel much of a desire to make some blase ritual of the matter. What does it matter if a year or fifty? But when I do happen to return to that spot in front of her grave, we talk. It's strange, since it really is a conversation with myself, and I talk about how I've changed since the last time.

The flowers we buy from the cheaper florist outside the cemetary, and we clean up the marble and uproot the weeds. There are other graves there too; the one near was another mother; but my mother is the youngest.

When I turn 23 next year, I will have lived most my life without her. I don't know why this is significant, but it feels as it ought to be. Perhaps when I do turn 23, I will finally feel out of the shadow of her passing.

"Where, Death, is your victory? Where, Death, is your sting?"