Today is my mother’s birthday. Day after the first day of spring.
I never forget it. Or Daddy’s. I never forget their anniversary, it’s as much a part of me as my children’s birth dates (and I was there for that!). It’s programmed into my psyche. My heart, body and spirit remembers before my mind does.
Our body clocks, muscle memories, childhood remembrances collide on special days. Both sweet and painful, we remember our loved ones and the days we celebrated with cakes, presents, balloons and hugs. Celebrations are important. It’s our way of honoring the passage of time and impact someone has on our life. Seasons revitalize us. Renew us.
My adoptive parents are no longer here, on this earth. But they are here–with me.
It’s important to keep on remembering, celebrating. We can’t just let that void sit there. Nature abhors a vacumn. It’s still “their” day.
I interviewed a young mother for an article this week who had lost her two-year old son in an accident four years ago.
Her remembering is finally turning sweet. Her son’s pictures of him playing at a park line their living room walls along with a Picasso of line drawing of mother and child. She has to celebrate his life. She has to remember, to declare he was here, he is still here–that his life had a purpose.
I have another friend who lost her husband suddenly a few years back. The first few holidays were spent doing what they had always done–and it was excruciating. Not until she smothered the old memory with a new memory did it become bearable. Since then, she’s taken cruises, worked at shelters and now she has a new grandchild. She still remembers, but she needed something to accompany it during the transitional period when it was still more than she could bear.
When spring comes and the wisteria drips from trellises and weeping willow branches bud green, I remember and the whole world turns pastel Easter colors, I remember my mother’s birthday.
Like others, the first few years of grieving were twinged with loss. Now, the sweet comes before the bitter.
I told my daughters it was Nanny’s birthday. They said, “It is, isn’t it?”
And then we said nothing, just an extra gaze into each other’s eyes.
That’s all it takes to connect with those we love–a few extra seconds.
Caregivers feel birthdays, special days, holidays with a heightened sense of awareness. If their loved one is still here, it’s not the same kind of celebration they used to have, and it becomes toward the end, a day of grieving in some respect. If their loved one is gone, then it makes you feel particularly vulnerable on those days. You see-saw between tender, funny, celebratory times and the void now left in its place.
To commemorate my mother’s birthday I bought myself a present.
Mother was always buying herself presents, so I think I should keep up the tradition.
She knew Daddy wouldn’t get it right. They adored one another, but she always made sure to take care of herself and the older I get the more I admire that. She’d buy herself presents, (books, perfume, a new pair of shoes, and always–chocolate), she’d wrap them and open them and act all surprised even though we all knew. Daddy didn’t mind.
I bought myself some of those fancy new walking shoes, the kind where everything that can be is cut out. It’s like a sandal but it has the buoyancy of a running shoe. I bought my middle daughter a matching pair in paprika red, and when we got home we went for a walk.
Walking with your daughter is like walking next to your former self.
Trim, taut, life straining out of every pore, spunky, ready to tackle the world.
None of this, I’m-tired,-I-think-I’ll-sit-down crap I catch myself saying. When did I start whining about a vigorous walk? I huff it to keep up, match her pace and feel me beside me in that out-of-body way, listening to her worries and complaints, the same ones I had in my twenties. I hear myself console her, tell her it’s normal and that it’ll pass.
Mother walks beside me (metaphorically speaking) listening to my heart, to my worries and complaints.
She compliments me on my shoes and tells me that all the stuff that bothers me, all my worries–will pass.
Author of Mothering Mother: A Daughter’s Humorous and Heartbreaking Memoir
Family Advisor at www.Caring.com
