Seven years on

We do not pick our parents, but we get even, because in the lottery of life, they did not pick us either. I am pretty sure my father never really liked me very much, which was OK, for the most part, I seemed to have spent the better part of my rebellious teenage years more than returning the favor. At some point we declared a truce.

My mother, on the other hand, we had one of those love hate relationships. Apparently mothers have some sort of deep attachment to their youngest child, knowing that when that child grows up and flies away, the nest will be empty, so the mothers tend to really put their claws into the youngest child. Needless to say, I was that youngest child.

My mother was described by both her friends and former friends as loud, garish, obnoxious, insecure, flamboyant, hyper-intelligent, neurotic and probably paranoid. So, it would not be an underestimation to say she was complex. She drove a car like she was racing, she smoked like it was a federal requirement and at some point she took up cussing like a drunken cattle salesman. She was a New Yorker stuck in a small town in Southern California and she was so far out of her element that she seemed to attack the laid back ladies of the golfing set, only because she was wearing fur in 100 degree weather and thought they should be too.

There was a moment in the late 90’s where I was just finally at a point where all my children were out of diapers and I was able to converse with them and play games, board games and outdoor physical games and ride bikes and I could see that our lives were getting much better. Right about that time my mother showed up, in need of diapers and care. A cycle of life playing out right before my eyes. Children progressing forward, my mother in decay.

For the next five years Alzheimers and cancer would decimate her. For a while she remained sharp, but fading. In early 2005 she had a stroke and for a while she hung on in a Seattle hospital. I had to remind myself of that link that the youngest child and their mothers always have. We all knew she would never leave that hospital bed. Machines were keeping her alive for the most part, but the Alzheimers had robbed her of memories and the intelligence that she cherished. The stroke was the final straw. She was helpless and she was dying. At one point the kids came into her room and they all had a chance to say goodbye to her and they did. They left and I was alone with my mother. I held her hand and I whispered in her ear that everything was going to be OK and that it would fine if she wanted to go.

I thought she needed to hear that from her youngest son, the one she had become overly attached to. She died that night, January 7, 2005.

There is the most wonderful postscript to this. My mother was cremated as was her wish. I was living in Seattle and her ashes were in my house for a while, but I was not going to keep them in Seattle and she certainly did not belong in California. It only seemed right that she would return to her native homeland. A dear friend of mine volunteered to take my mother to New York. Which she did. My good friend did the most spectacular thing, because when you think about it, what would you do if you were carting around a backpack with a small foldable shovel and a box of ashes in New York City?

I am not sure how many Native New Yorkers are buried in Central Park, but now, my mother is one of them. That is true.