Reflections on a new loss then, a year ago now

I wrote this on 3-28-2014.  It was my thoughts on the weeks following my mom's death and the process of writing her eulogy. 

To say that this is overdue would be an understatement under normal circumstances.  My life of late has not been overly populated with normal circumstances.  The last time I wrote in this space was August of last year and a great deal has changed since then.  So, let’s dive in.

 

My mother passed away recently.  While her health had not been overly good over the last few years, her passing was rather sudden and unexpected.  A lot has changed and it is a very new reality that our family now faces. 

We held a memorial service for her recently.  We chose music and readings that we feel represented her and her wishes and were very touched by the response we have received, for which we are very grateful.  At the start of the service, I presented a eulogy, much as I did for my father when he died when I was seventeen.  I’m forty now and I found the process of writing those remarks very different and I have found that to be something I wish to write about, so, that’s what I’m doing.

When I wrote for my dad, I had my mom’s help, which to be honest; I don’t know that I really appreciated until now.  I remember sitting in my room with my AmStud notebook and writing line after line of just nonsense.  I remember calling my friend in Colorado and talking with her and that helped.  But in the end I remember mom telling me essentially that ‘whatever it was I was going to say, much like the service itself, wasn’t really for the person who died-it was for everybody else.’  She also told me not to overthink it.  That helped, and as I recall I got through it relatively well.  I remember three main points that I made in dad’s Eulogy. 

The first was something she told me as he’d been sick, and I referenced this point in her speech and also, ironically enough, in my sister-in-laws wedding toast some years ago.  It was that “If you keep your relationships current and up to date with the people you love, then they never really go away.”  She told me this sitting outside the Princeton Shopping Center after we ordered Zepollis from the pizza place there while dad was at Princeton hospital.  We were having probably an overly frank conversation about my father’s chances for surviving his cancer, and she was very direct.  I asked her if she thought dad would live to see me graduate high school, which at that time was nine months away, assuming I passed Pre-Calculus.  She said she really didn’t know and that it was a real possibility that he wouldn’t.  I still respect the daylights out of that.  She went on to say that “Anything you feel you need to say to him, or to your friends as you go through this, make sure you say it.”  It’s a lesson I’ve tried my best to honor.

The second thing I said in dad’s service was that, in light of my mother’s wisdom, I was grateful that there were, as a result, “No things left unsaid, no questions left unanswered.”  We’ll get back to this one.

And finally, I ended with a line that meant a lot to me at the time and in the years after.  I said “from where I stand, the Sun is still shining.”  And it was that day-it was a beautiful day and while I’m really ok with it now, that line rings slightly hollow to me now, after all.  It strikes me now as something a seventeen-year-old kid who had no idea what he was in for might say.  Since that is exactly who I was and what I did.

The aspect of my words on my father that strike me now is not that there were “things left unsaid” as I did really take my mother’s advice to heart and said everything I could think of to say to my father before he died.  I said it all, repeatedly; at times when I know he probably couldn’t really even hear me.  I said it all and I’m grateful to have done so.  The line that strikes me now, and again, I only revisited this in light of preparing my words for mom’s service is, “no questions left unanswered.”  That sounded good at the time, but in retrospect, it seems a very childish thing to say.  I had more questions than I knew what to do with.  I spent the next few years handling those questions in an increasingly horrendous manner, wrote and performed a litany of mediocre songs, and damaged a fair amount of relationships with genuinely good people as a result.  I put on a good face at the time, so much so that I convinced myself that I was fine, but I was a mess for years, and if you knew me then, I don’t have to explain it to you.  I was a kid who had no idea what to do or think or feel, so I did what I tended to do in those days.  I played the role.  I acted my part and I think I did it well.  I fooled myself of course, that was easy, but not everyone.  There were some in my life that saw through me.  That complicated some relationships to be sure.  It ended some.  It strengthened others.  I was of course oblivious to most of this.

Dad’s eulogy took me a few hours to complete in the end.  My mother’s however took days to write and I think I understand why now: Dad and I had an incomplete relationship.  I was sixteen when he first got sick and he died six months later.  He and I were just starting to develop a real relationship when he was diagnosed and that got put on pause and never really had a chance to become an adult relationship in the end.  Mom and I had a lot more time to have a real relationship, both the good and the bad.  We had our challenges and they, as per her advice, never went unspoken about.  I do take some comfort in the fact that there really was to my reckoning, nothing left unsaid between us.  That means something different now than it did when dad died, as I’ve had more of a life and we’ve had far more to disagree on to this point.  The good, the bad, the difficult, it got dealt with, and I feel as though the last few years with her living here in Virginia, close to us, seeing her family more regularly than she did in Jersey, made a positive difference in her life and in ours.

And I think, unlike my relationship with my father, mom and I had a chance to have a complete relationship.  I was a child and an adult with her, and whatever else may come and go, I think the ability to speak to your parent as an adult is a positive thing, and I wish I’d had the chance to do that with my father.  That’s where the “no questions left unanswered” thing causes me a brief pause, as when I grew up a bit, I found I had a whole hell of a lot of questions for my father and nowhere to really send them.

So, where does that leave me?  I don’t really write or play songs anymore (no one has complained…and no one has asked for a re-issue of Kugs-Live at Mom’s Truckstop 1993…though I could make it happen…;) and I have clearly not been using this space as much as I used to, though I’d like to get back to it more.  What it leaves me with in my own mind is that I will remember and cherish both of my parents in their absence.  I’m grateful that my children had the chance to interact with my mother.  I wish they’d been able to meet my father as I think he would have gone bananas for them and I would very much have liked to have seen that.  I’m grateful for my family.

All things considered, I do feel very blessed in my life.  I have a family that both loves and tolerates me, which is likely better than it gets. 

When I ended my mother’s eulogy, I said, among other things, “A hui ho,” which is a Hawaiian phrase we learned on Oahu.  It means, “Until we meet again.”  In life, the last thing I said to her was “we love you” as we dropped her home after the Pancake Dinner at Church.  Among the final words I said to her, in the end, was “A hui ho,” and of course, “aloha.”  I was truly heartened by the fact that as I explained that aloha means both, ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ in Hawaiian in the eulogy, my children spoke aloud right along with me, like we were doing a call and response.  It warmed my heart to no end that they felt called to speak out in the service and I was humbled by the number of our friends that came and brought their children to the service. 

I remember growing up in the aftermath of the death of  Patricia, my oldest sister.  We used to do a memorial service for her around the dining room table when I was a kid.  I don’t remember her as I was three months old when she died, but I remember conversations about life and death, and about honoring one’s life, and I remember conversations about the nature of life and death and the passage of time and about having children be a part of that process.  I know that for us, it was important that our children be a part of the service that honored my mother.  There were those that suggested that such a service was not a place for children, but I don’t agree and I’m grateful for our friends that not only came out in support of us but brought their children.  I didn’t want my kids to be the only children present in the service to honor their grandmother.  There are many reasons for that, but the most honest is that I wanted my kids to have their friends there, much as I did when my father died.

Death is a part of life.  In the end it is really the only alternative to getting older, so most of us choose it, when we can.

Dad died in October.  It was a breezy and unusually warm day in New Jersey.

Mom died in March.  It was a breezy and unusually warm day in Virginia. 

The sky looked pretty much the same on both days.  I don’t make these things fit the model, it’s just what happened.  None of this was what we wished.  None of this was based on choices we would make.  But we carry on.

“From where I stand, the Sun still shines.” 

I said that repeatedly in the old days; I sang it loudly in one of my less awful songs.  But in the end, there really is nothing left unsaid this time-I mean it, and my relationship with my mother was as current and up to date as it was likely to ever be.  There was peace.  There really aren’t serious questions left unanswered.  Not like there were with my dad. 

I will miss my mother.  Just this morning, I got an email from our church here, which I usually forwarded on to her, and I had to stop myself from doing so.  Things have happened in our life that I would normally have made a point to tell her, and I won’t now.  I know it is the way of things and I know that we did right by her, but it is an end.

While it is a different end that my father had it is no less final.  Neither he nor my mother wished for or wanted the end that they met—though they each had neither the choice nor the option to face it in the end.  I like to think they are both at peace.  I want to think they are at peace.

If nothing else, I pray that they are at peace and at rest.  It is for the rest of us to move on and carry on, and, if so driven, to see the sun still shining.