The Blue Heron, part 1

After two years, I wouldn’t say I’m in mourning anymore. 

I would say I feel a lack of closure about a few things, but I don’t even know what those “things” are.

I would say I’m uncertain. Unsure of how to write about the night my mother died in August, 2019, not only because the experience was surreal on so many levels, (as surreal to anyone as the death of a parent or loved one can be, I suppose.) I guess I felt our relationship in particular came with heavy baggage, whether we intended that or not, and despite the fact that we’d resolved so much. Part of the reason for my ambivalence and confusion must be the events of the two years following her death, to the present, which have been full of so much other illness and crisis, but in which I think I stumbled upon a few realizations, some I’d rather not face. 

Maybe these things are clear to everyone else, but I’m a terribly slow learner, and, just in case they aren’t clear, I’ll tell you. When your parents die, and I think especially when your mother dies, if it hasn’t already, it becomes quite apparent that you are next.

The realization isn’t so much frightening, except maybe when, waking at odd hours of the night, you realize how much just the mere reassurance of their existence (the existence you took for granted) helped comfort you, and you see with stark clarity that the days of being a child to your parents are definitely over, were long over when you were in the business of helping to care for them as they aged and failed (my parents seemed to age and fail quite rapidly, although it was really over a period of 6-10 years; but that’s another thing: as you get older yourself, time appears to accelerate. Suddenly you see that your own remaining days are finite, countable.) 

Today we receive reminders on our cell phones, of photos taken fifteen years ago. If you’re over fifty, you might stop and scratch your head a moment wondering how fifteen years passed so quickly, how the photo scenarios seemed to have happened yesterday. Funny how I used to remark inwardly, 30 or 40 years ago, on those “quaint” comments made by elderly relatives when they, without the wonders of a cell phone, said the same thing about the passing of time on occasions when we met. Back then their words had little meaning for me. I vaguely thought I knew I had more time than they did.

I’m aware I don’t want to wax so nostalgic about the past that I don’t enjoy every moment of the present, especially now. Not that I didn’t before. I have been, and am, fully alive, and my life has involved a lot of joy, a lot of pain, a lot of my own drama, but still, I lived and continue to live conscious of the miracle of each day (although I confess when I’m feeling blue I don’t consider each day a miracle but something to grind through.)

But I felt I needed to preface what follows about the night my mother died with these words about the fallout in the last two years. For a few months after both of my parents died, I struggled to get out of bed every day. Their deaths were momentous occasions, but I have to admit, my mother’s death had the most powerful effect on me.