A few months ago, I was admitted to a club
I would have preferred not to join. There is
no secret handshake, and no initiation ritual.
Its membership is far bigger than you might
imagine. And once you are admitted, you
remain a member for the rest of your life.
I keep bumping into fellow members
everywhere I turn. When I called a midwest
cookie company to order a gift recently,
the telephone salesperson told me that,
"Part of my training is to imagine what I am
going to say to my own mother when I
present her with a box of cookies, but
my mom died when I was 16, over twenty
years ago."
How does she deal with this situation year
after year? “For the first few years, a question
like that would have made me cry out loud,
but now I just see her in my mind’s eye and
try to get through the training.”
Another friend lost her mom a few years ago,
and even though she herself has been a mother
for 21 years, she still thinks of her mom when
the seasonal ads start to play.
The oddest thing about the five months since
my mom died is that somehow the world has
realigned itself and kept on going. Dad moved
in with my brother. A memorial service was
held. Possessions were distributed. A fund
in her name was set up at the local library.
Mom never saw the big tsunami that hit
South Asia last Christmas, and missed her
granddaughter’s wonderful dance recital last
February. Every Sunday I have had things
to tell her during our usual weekly
conversations, but her phone number is no
longer on my speed dial.
If I close my eyes, I can see my grandmother
Ritsu’s burial in 1985 as if it were yesterday.
Her daughters and grandchildren gathered
at the Cypress Hills cemetery plot in Queens
where my grandpa Misao had been buried
over twenty years before. I can still feel the
cool wind inside the hole that had been dug
to house her cremated remains as I knelt down,
hunched my shoulders, and lowered them in
up to my left shoulder.
The difference between that passing and
my mom’s was that Grandma Ritsu, from
my vantage point, had started out life as an
older person. While I had many good times
with her and mourned her when she was
gone, her death was understandable and,
in a way, to be expected. Besides, I had
Mom there to give me cues as to how to
behave and how to process the transition.
This time, Dad was there to lead the
mourners, yet my siblings and I had to
worry about his emotional and physical
endurance as much as we had to care
for our own. Dad was part of a Mom-Dad
diad that had existed since the day I was
born, so to see him alone was a raw
reminder that someone was missing.
When Mom passed away last November
28th at age 79, she was still in good health
and still had big plans. She and Dad had
sold their home in suburban New Jersey
and were ready to buy a home near my
brother in San Diego. She had just finished
making turkey bone soup after a big family
Thanksgiving dinner, and collapsed
suddenly the following morning.
Dad and my brother Paul called an hour
later with the news. I can’t remember the
details, but I know that we had the awkward
conversation that no one is every fully
prepared for. My wife heard my reaction
from the next room, and came to my side
immediately. When I hung up the phone,
she held me, in silence, through those
first volcanic moments.
Five months after Mom’s death, winter has
come and gone. This season’s crop of
fragile pink cherry blossoms fluttered through
two weeks of unseasonably warm breezes,
then drifted down into shifting piles of pink
and white along the streets and byways of
the Tidal Basin.
Friends told me to prepare for the three
hardest days during the year after a mother
dies: her birthday, any holiday where we
regularly convened as a family, and
Mother’s Day.
Well, Mother’s Day has finally arrived, and
the sign near the greeting card rack in the
drugstore just reminded me again not forget
Mother on her special day.
As if I could.
---
NOTE: Here is an earlier piece I wrote that tells
more about my mom's life, if you are interested:
http://news.asianweek.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=fc3f532ff47981a8153226ffabfe89f0&this_category_id=169