June 27th: Mother’s Day

My mother would have been 82 today.

In a word, Mom was feisty. It was often said that when Edith walked into a room, that room became Edith. Yes, she adored being the center of attention, but I believe that even if she hadn’t craved the attention, it would have come her way anyway because she was simply one of those people who turned heads – not because of her beauty (although she was beautiful – more so as she got older and believed herself to be less so!), but because of her indomitable spirit.

The problem with living the death of a loved one is that the memory of that death often over-shadows the memory of that life. Because of the intensity of my last week with mom (which I chronicled in my journal), my first thoughts of her often land in that week when she asked if she was dying on Monday and breathed her last tiny breath the following Sunday. I hate that the memory of death is so disturbingly pervasive. I think that’s the reason why we so often see slideshows of loved ones’ lives at memorials. Here’s Mom’s:

When I reach further back than the very end, a life full of memories comes to me. At mom’s memorial, I spoke about the three different roles Mom played in my life. She was my mother, of course. Then, when we traveled together much later in our lives, she became very much like a sister, and finally, as she began to lose her fight with cancer (a fate that she never admitted or accepted until her very last days), she became more like a daughter.

By her own admission, Mom wasn’t exactly maternal. I don’t have memories of lots of hugs and kisses or lap-sitting and story-telling with her. But she loved her family ferociously and I never doubted that. Ever.

After she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, Mom and I traveled together to Bavaria, where she grew up, and in the span of those two weeks we became equal partners, more like sisters than mother and daughter. I loved that time, but it was short-lived, as her cancer returned with a vengeance the following year and I was suddenly thrust into more of a maternal role with her. And by the end, by the last week of her life, the one I can’t purge from my head, I stroked her head like the mother of a feverish child and watched her curl into a ball and fade away in front of me.

Unfortunately, that’s the memory that stays with me – all too pervasive and undeserving of such prominence.

Today, on Mom’s birthday, I have decided to remember her life instead of her death. I am choosing to remember my feisty and ferociously protective mother as she was. She was this to me:

…and this to me…

…and this to me…

…and this to me…

and because a story is a story till the very end, she was this to me:

But mostly, I think, she was this to me:

Happy birthday, Mom. I miss you every single day.