What reminded me again was the weather. It was exactly like today, not on the morning of her death like I had thought, but on the day before, when I was alone with her and said my good-byes. I guess that day just stuck. I remember the tearful walk I took afterwards through the grounds of Hospice. It was a cool day for June, breezy, and the sun dappled down between the leaves of all the trees. Flower colors popped in all that brightness. As I walked in and out of shade and sunlight on the brick paths, I remember the pleasantness of being physically comfortable and the sorrow of being emotionally wrought.
June 6, 1991:
"I said good-bye to Mom. I told her I would miss our lunches and our trips together. I said that my wardrobe would suffer and I laughed. I think if she heard me, she laughed too. Some people believe our spirits can leave our bodies and then go back. I believe it's possible - so I told her that if she was looking down, I would be okay. That I had God and Craig. That I would take care of Dad and try to help him. That I didn't know if I would have a baby, but if I had a girl, I would name her Marie. I promised her that. Marie Steffen. I think that's pretty."
After digging up old journals, it was obvious that not only had I had the date wrong but that months before her death had been stressful, which is probably why so much of my recall was faulty. Craig had started going to college full-time on top of owning his own business. Our dog had puppies two weeks before my mother's surgery in Florida to have her stomach removed. One of my best friends was diagnosed with breast cancer, so there were visits, radiation appointments, crying, and awkwardness. Several friends' marriages were falling apart, as well as one of my brother's. And another brother, who had been estranged for 28 years, was unsure how and when and with whom to reconnect.
Reading all of this 25 years later left me exhausted and bewildered. How could I have so many details wrong in my mind and not even remember much of it? We are not at our best under stress or in grief. This was true for my family and especially my for my parent's long, rocky relationship. What also struck me was the lack of any entries in my journal about my parents during the four months my mother continued chemo treatments in Florida before she came home, only to die one month later. What I did write about incessantly and passionately was my own lack of feeling significant, my artistic frustrations, and my desire to lose weight. We are not at our best under stress or in grief...
I had listed all my prayers, too. Prayers for healing, for restoration, for peace and for redemption, which never really came. At least not the way or in the timing that I asked. My mother died at the young age of seventy. My friend died the day before her 42nd birthday. And most of the couples got divorced. But disappointment, heartbreak and vulnerability are the Divine's good and wise teachers. The swaying trees this morning on the porch reminded me of that.
They say that smell is the sense most connected to memory. But I have tried very hard to forget the smells in my mother's room and in the hallways during that week in Hospice. What I remember most is the weather, just like today, when I let my mother go at the young age of thirty-five. In fact, so much so, it is in the first line of a poem I wrote after her death.
On cool, breezy days in June, I will remember you...
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