24-May-2007


Within the weeks before my mother passed I busied myself with lists. Lists of recipes I knew I wanted, lists of questions not yet asked, things to locate, and so many things to say before it was too late. Of course there wasn’t enough time to cover them all, much less time than anyone thought. What I miss the most now are the daily conversations about small things, like how I could never seem to remember how long I had to put a roast in and at what temperature. It was just so easy to call mom.

The list of questions ranged from what is your favorite song to, if you were still here when I got married, what would you say to me just before I walked down the aisle? She was supposed to have walked me down the aisle. I wasn’t the only one thinking of questions. Although it was usually not a problem for me, I enlisted the help of all my friends. One of the many questions was what my mother’s plans where for her farewell.

“I don’t want a funeral,” she said. This is something we did not agree on.

“Mom” I exclaimed, in a half sigh and whine, a mono-syllabic word I had turned to three. I said it in the way I had so many times before. The word had turned into an unspoken dialogue that said, come on, let’s do it my way, when she told me no short shorts to the mall, no calling boys, and no riding in my friend Sandy’s jeep. Probably uttered a thousand times before, I thought her presence was permanent and we would have forever to disagree.

“How can I be left here to explain to the rest of your family, to your own brother?”

Not only did she not want to see anyone during her last living days, but she also would refuse to give them the closure a traditional wake was supposed to provide.

“I just want them to remember the way I was Jessica, it is bad enough you have to see me this way, you can’t even look at me.”

It was true. It was so difficult to see my mother the way she looked that I had started wearing sunglasses inside to dim the reality. Each time I entered the house, I would take a deep breath and try to shield myself from what was inevitably inside.

I would sit there in a chair next to her bed, but my mind couldn’t wrap itself around the reality. I remembered long car rides to my grandparent’s house in Whiting down Rt. 539, I was a teen and the distance between us was amplified by the silence as we each looked down the road ahead lost in our own thoughts.

On occasion the silence was broken when we agreed on the Don McLean song on the radio, or when I asked her questions about her past, and she would tell me about growing up in Brooklyn, or after many years when we acknowledged together how strange it was to visit my grandparent’s house without my grandfather.

Sometimes I would sit there in the car with the sun hitting my face, staring at the passing farmland, smiling to myself, thinking of how much I loved the woman behind the wheel, though I was too scared to tell her. I knew she knew. I remember on one car trip I confessed to her shakily that I was mean to her when she was sick. I was thirteen when she was first diagnosed with breast cancer. My brother had moved to Texas to live with my father, and she was all I had and failing me. I was resentful that I had to keep it a secret from my brother, for fear my father would try to take me away. Though it was ok for her to tell all my school teachers and my guidance counselor, soon the other kids knew and I was mortified that I was different. I was in high school at the time ready to move onto college, and she had been cancer free for five years, and I was just now admitting, “I was so scared”, “I know honey, I knew then.” She turned to look at my glassy red eyes and gave me that look that said I love you forever no matter what. She knew I did what I had to, in order to cope I had tried to push her away and fight with her then the way I did now about the funeral.

What my mother wanted was to live out the rest of her days on her own terms and to be remembered the way she wanted. She had always hated funerals. I remember when I was a little girl she made me wear a red dress to someone’s funeral. I was eight and I distinctly remember saying “Mom, isn’t it bad to wear red to a funeral?” She told me that was old-fashioned thinking. When we were at the funeral home later that day, the minister commented on our bright colors, as I was wearing bright red and my mother a very bright royal blue. She said “I love these bright and strong colors.” Immediately I realized my red was much brighter than her blue, and my red dress must have been the planned decoy.

“I want to be cremated right away.”

“Then I want to go on the carousel in Central Park and have lunch at Tavern on the Green, with you Spencer, and Dorathea”

It was decided; the four of us would go to New York together, but of course I couldn’t let her off the hook so easily. I told her “I will whisper in an unsuspecting young carousel rider’s ear that I have a dead lady in my bag.” She just shook her head and we laughed through the tears.