see you darling

We've been working on cards, Valentine's cards. Jennifer brought the fixings--the white card stock with the letters "I (Love) You" cut out. And there's lots of stickers and stamps, even some pink striped papers. Lorna's been tracing and cutting out hearts from the paper and Mom (with the help of Jennifer) and I have begun to assemble the stickers onto the cards.

Whenever Jennifer comes, the conversation is lively. I'm not sure why this is, other than the fact that Jennifer is an interesting, articulate woman and Mom likes to talk with her. Sometimes we talk with Jennifer about things I'm sure Mom would never say if it was just her and I conversing. Always, we seem to get into controversial topics, just the sort of thing Mom reveled in before her strokes and her Alzheimer's. In fact, last Wednesday we talked so long and so hard about religion, of all things, that we never got to the point of making a single card. Our conversation got launched with Lorna's laughter over an article she'd seen in the Seattle Times about a couple who married at 90 and 92 and just left for their honeymoon. For whatever reason, Lorna found this hysterical, particularly the idea that this octogenarian honeymoon couple would be reveling in the pleasures of sex. Jennifer tried to argue that all people can enjoy sex, even those who are in their later years. Lorna's comprehension failed her at this point, however, as for Lorna sex is not a treasured activity. "No fun," Lorna says, "this sex." Sex is something she is glad to be done with.

How sex evolved into religion I'm not sure except that soon we were arguing the merits of attending church regularly and hotly disputing the humanness of church organizations, meaning the many ways that church organizations become flawed with our human failings. Somewhere along the way Lorna dropped out of the conversation and then it was just Jennifer and I, with Mom chiming in at times. By the end of the conversation, we had come to the topic of church attendance and raising children, something Jennifer was interested in as she and her partner would like to have a child. I had nothing to say about this, seeing how I don't have children and don't plan on adopting.

So today we know better and begin the card making right away, knowing that our conversation will follow. And it does.

"When did you feel best about yourself?" Jennifer asks. We've been talking about women's self-worth and marriage, a favorite topic. Because we're making Valentine's cards, we've decided to focus on "love."

To myself, I'm thinking--I bet I know her answer. So I say, "Okay Mom, let's hear your answer and then I'll tell you how I thought you were going to answer."

And so she begins--"After he was...you know...when he was...gone...gone."

"After who was gone?" I ask her.

"Him," she says, "him...him,"expecting that I know who "him" refers to.

"That's it," she adds, and when she does I begin to understand, deducing she's talking about my dad, as either it's her father, Peter or dad. These are the only men who have left her.

Jennifer begins to clue in here also. "So Dorin, you felt the strongest after your husband died?"

"Yes," she says, nodding her head vigorously. "Yes, that's it."

I'm surprised, frankly, as I always imagined Mom at the height of her personal empowerment when she got her master's degree--something so difficult, particularly at her age. But no, it was the year or two or three following my father's accident that produced this largess of self.

"Weren't you afraid" Jennifer asks, "when he died?"

"No," Mom answers emphatically. "No...so much...you know...so much...to...to...do."

So in those difficult months when Eric and I felt immobilized by dad's death, my mom, out of necessity, was coming into her own, assuming the business tasks my father left her as well as the parenting tasks she had already taken on. Her life was full in a way it had not been before, and she was in charge. No more bickering with my father about decisions. She just made them.

It's here in our conversation that I remember a letter written to Mom, something I've been carrying around in my carpet bag for weeks. Recently, I found the stack of eighty-nine condolence cards Mom saved regarding Dad's passing. Most of the signed names meant nothing to me. They came from Denver, Monument Valley, Spokane, Bergen, Seattle, Portland, Boise, New York, Chicago. The ubiquitous phrase--"Our thoughts and prayers are with you"--made me purpose to never write these words to anyone. Not ever. By themselves, they appear to convey concern, but in mass they become platitudes offered in lieu of meaningful communication. Surely there are other words to be chosen to convey sorrow, empathy? Somebody actually sent a placard entitled--"Rules for Daily Life"--where, amongst other things, the reader is admonished to "acknowledge every good bestowed and offer grateful praise." I thought, what about "every bad bestowed"--what was my mom meant to do with these, things like my father's death, my brother Peter's disappearance? I noticed that she too must have tired of the platitudes, as many of the cards remained unopened.

The only letter of interest came typed from a friend and business associate of my father's--Hal. His letter is dated August 16th. Hal was there with my father the day he died--not actually there at precisely the time of the accident but nearby. He writes--"I will never forget that day when he left us both." He goes on to say that two days after the accident he returned to Muldoon Canyon and "felt peaceful as if Paul was there with me saying 'Cool it'. 'Cool it', I thought. I don't remember my father saying words like this. 'Cool it', indeed! I wondered then how Mom came to her own peace with my father...if she ever did? I suspected that even now, all these years later, she still hadn't arrived at a sentiment of 'cool it'. His death would always remain a defection, an opportunity he could have seized to display loyalty to life, to my mom, but rather negligently let pass by when the tires of his vehicle ricocheted off the road.

But who knows? In light of Mom's revelation today about how she felt after he died, about how she came into her own, maybe she sees his death differently?

On an impulse, I decide to read Hals' letter aloud to Mom and Jennifer and Lorna. I've been carrying it with me, waiting for a time when the topic of Dad's death comes up--not something Mom talks about usually. In opening the envelope, a faint release of ribbon-ink reaches my nose--how typewritten documents smelled prior to PCs and printer cartridges. Age can have a smell, a memory. I begin okay--steady, calm. But when I get to the poem near the end of the letter--something from Hal's experiences in a German prison camp during WWII--I find I can't continue. Part of the poem comes out fine--"In some far flung wider sphere/a pilot soars a winged victory/Freed of all overestimate flight/Past all barrier now." But my voice becomes unrecognizable with tears when I read the final lines--"A spirit heads off for home/and behind on earth men and eagles weep."

I don't know why this poem, Hal's words, have caught me, as I've read this letter before, several times in the last few weeks since I discovered it. I haven't cried for my father since that first year, 1979, when that's all I could do. I used up all my tears in that extravagant display, or at least I thought I had, But here they are again and not just a dribble. My voice stops because no sound can escape, nothing except my sobs, a heavy, chest-shaking rattle. When I look at Mom, I notice the rims of her eyes are wet, but not anything close to the saline stream showering my face.

We sit like this for a moment--Lorna cutting hearts, Jennifer sticking heart and cupcake stickers to cards, Mom quiet and me out of control with grief, wondering what's going through Mom's head, heart. It's a long time before conversation is possible.

Later, after Jennifer has gone and the cards are done, Mom says to me as I'm putting on my coat--"See you darling." I feel the heat of her words, like these words and the fierceness of her breath need to be everything she might have to say about Dad and his leaving and the life she and I have had since then. She's willing me to be okay, for us to be okay. I know we'll never talk about this again, his dying and what became of all of us in his wake of his passing.

Deeply, a mother's daughter
--this is alifewithmom--