I dreamt about my mother last night; I do that a lot, and now that the twenty-seventh anniversary of her death has passed, I don't feel quite so sharply the gut-wrench of grief that I suffered for the first twenty of those years. I dream situational dreams when she's in them, and my mother's role is almost always that of a beloved traveling companion, the best kind: one of great humor and tireless optimism. I wake thinking that it's easy for her to play that role now, and not so easy for those of us still struggling to untangle this mortal coil, and I feel a little bit put-upon that she's in a better, clearer place than I. However, I am always grateful for her company.
Another friend reports that she too dreamt of her mother last night, and she doesn't have those dreams as often as I do. It seems to be time for a review of mothers, generally and specifically, not least because Mary's mother is slip-sliding away right now, and we are all trying to be Mary's beloved traveling companions, the best kind. I can only help by freely offering up my experience and my love, and not making a difficult situation worse by mooing over my own, admittedly devastating, loss nearly three decades ago.
Mary's mother had a tough life, made tougher by being surrounded by beautiful, brilliant people: her husband and her children all handsome and handsomely educated, and if not educated to the hilt, then blessed with great good looks and calm, gallant personality. Junerose, of small stature and rampant insecurity, dealt with living in the midst of this glory by going on the defensive, and it was not pretty, nor nurturing, nor loving, nor helpful in getting any of her kids on their way in this life. I myself have taken a lot of punches from her, and while it really pissed me off and made me avoid contact with her at almost any cost, I should have realized somewhere along the line that she was only defending herself against another, newer relation, and this one big and glib and sometimes frighteningly forthright.
Mary has made those allowances for her mother all along, at first out of huge guilt and obligation, and more recently out of love and the rock-ribbed philosophy that we are all human, all children of God and all of us doing the very best we can. Like her mother, Mary also has a small body, but I don't know anybody stronger than she, nor anyone with a bigger heart.
I summarized the situation with other friends this morning, and one of them remarked that with her mother's death, Mary will have lost all possibility of having a good mom. That stopped me cold, and I haven't been able to get it out of my mind all day. I think it's true that all of us (though maybe it's just women) hold out that absurd and irrational sense that somehow we can retrieve our eleventh or fifteenth or twenty-first year of life, and THIS time get the mother we needed then. As long as she lives, she can take us back to that time when we stumbled badly and her counsel and love were required and she simply was not available. Doesn't matter what her troubles and her limitations are or were, it doesn't matter that perhaps we did not tell her how much we needed her at the time, it doesn't matter if that solitary struggle made us stronger and better prepared for life in a difficult world, and it doesn't matter that we have long since passed the age where good mothering can make us happier. It only matters that she didn't come through in what we thought was a life or death crunch.
And then she dies, and our hopes for retroactive salvation are dashed, forever. I'll bet a pretty big slice of our inconsolable grief can be attributed to that. It's aside from -- it's beyond -- all the things we wish we had said to her, our regret of all the disappointments we subjected her to, all the good family fun we will miss so acutely; it's even beyond losing the one person in the world that will by God love us no matter what. It's having to give up a doomed expectation that we didn't even know we had.
I have posted in my profile on Facebook that I am a mother in recovery, looking for a more respectable line of work. I still feel that's true -- it really is time for me to take up my few remaining years and enjoy them in freedom from responsibility for anything my children do or say -- but I also owe my mother, and Mary's mother, and my children, and most of all myself, an apology for asking, even demanding, the impossible. The irony of the universe is heavy and unavoidable; just another opportunity for growth, folks. Step right up.
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