WAITING ON MORTALITY

My mother is dying.

She recently celebrated her 90th birthday, and she's had a good life. My younger sister and her family have lived with her and taken care of her these last several years. And that has been beyond price, for as Mom has grown more senile, my sister has still kept her as happy and content as possible. Bless her.

Mom is presently in hospice care, which is a relief for my sister. My brother is making a trip to Houston (he's located in Philadelphia) this weekend to attend to the preliminary concerns. But my older sister (located in the Detroit area) and I (in Los Angeles) wait. I don't have the means to pick up and go to Houston for however long remains. And even if I did, there's not much I could do, except the same waiting that I'm doing right now.

It all creates an emotional jumble, though.

I'm at peace with this passing. Mom's a believer, and I know "where she's going". And this will be an end to the pain she is currently in, and the slow frustrating loss of connection to the present that she has been undergoing these last years. This is all good.

For myself, though.... There have been times when Mom and I have clashed. Rather different personalities and approaches have often rubbed each other the wrong way. I suppose that all parents, even the best ones, manage to mishandle their children in some subtle way, so I don't think anyone gets by without some resentments toward their parents. But mine are not debilitating nor bitter. Instead, I've been recalling the good things.

Mom was a musician, a church musician. When I was growing up, we had a baby grand piano in the house, and she practiced regularly. For some time she would serve as a substitute organist to a couple of churches, and then for several years before we moved to Texas, she was organist and then organist/choir direct at a small community church at one of the lake villages near Jackson. She would practice pieces on the piano, and when I was small, I liked to sit under the piano and listen. And it wasn't just about the music itself. I think I was also fascinated by the work she put into the practice, going over difficult passages to get the fingering and timing right.

She came from a generation that had to wait for the camera shutter to work, so many pictures of her show her holding an erect, almost stiff pose. The unfortunate thing is that such poses hardly ever captured her easy grace and fun sparkle. I was quite the shutterbug in my junior high years, and two of my favorite pictures of her I had to plan very carefully. In one, we had gone to the University of Michigan arboretum in the Irish Hills one day. It was a lovely sunny day. My parents did not insist that we all stay together when we went to such places, but rather appointed a time and place for coming together again. So I was on one path, and saw Mom and Dad below me on a slope. I knew if I called out to them and then had them pose, I would get both of them taking those straight, upright stiff poses. So I framed the shot, called out to them, and caught them relaxed and smiling when they looked up. (They did still make me take the posed shot though. Heh.) The second of my favorite pictures of her was set up similarly. We'd gone to Holland, Michigan, and were exploring the windmill they have open for the public. I noticed a spot that was immediately over the curving stairs down to the ground floor. Without letting her know, I positioned myself as Mom headed down, and when she was "just right" I called out to her. She looked up, smiling, and snap! another lovely picture.

These are the sorts of things I think about while waiting on mortality.

And I know how I've been blessed by having good parents. For all our clashes, there has never been the doubt of love in the family. For any missteps and mishandling, there has not been the abuse that so many I know have had to endure and overcome. I guess that is the best way I can honor my mother, my parents -- they did a good job raising us, and we know it.