Monday, January 21, 2013
As much time as I feel I had to prepare for writing these words about my mother, putting pen to paper to say goodbye and thinking about the reality of life without her is the hardest thing I have ever done.
I wanted to share stories of her with you, my life is rich with her presence but somehow, faced with the loss of her my mind is blank and the words refuse to come easily.
My memories of Muriel from my childhood are of the special things we did together: trips into the city for shopping and lunches, road trips with the family, but they are mostly of the mundane: I'd come home from school and find her upstairs working on a project, her sewing machine going and the tv on. We would spend the afternoons together until dinner time, me with homework and her with whatever craft had struck her fancy that day. I remember evening meals that would end with my mom finally sitting down with a cup of coffee and dessert and our silly dog at her feet, growling for her attention. I remember summer days on the porch of our house -- no matter how hot it was, she said, it was always cool on the porch. I remember her cooking and the pride she took in the recipes she learned, perfected and made her own. It wasn't just pasta for dinner, it was Muriel's special spaghetti sauce.
When I was a teen out of high school, I was full of myself, in a hurry to grow up and away from home. I left for a time without even a backward glance. When I returned, not unlike the prodigal son, my mother was there with her arms wide open. It was a good time for us, a time when I was old enough to finally appreciate our relationship and that is when I think we really became more than mother and daughter, we became friends. She'd come into the city to visit me in my tiny studio apartment and knowing I would have nothing much more in my fridge than milk, coffee and some leftover take out meal I had eaten the day before, she would always have a shopping bag filled with food. When I lost my apartment and needed a place to live, she and my dad created a space in their home for me to live. My days once again ended with coming home to Muriel, sitting in her crafting corner working on a project: sewing, knitting or working on a quilt. I went to my very first semi formal event in an emerald green silk dress my mother made for me and I don't think I have ever felt as beautiful.
My mother did things quietly and under my radar. When I first met my husband and he called the house looking to ask me out on our first official date, more often than not it was Muriel who answered the phone. I know little of what they said to each other but when I resisted and hesitated in returning his calls she said, Susan, he keeps calling. Aren't you going to call him back?
Zki and I moved in together and my parents were always first on our list to call when we felt like going out. One of us would say "what do you want to do tonight?" And the other would respond I don't know. Lets call our friends, Al and Muriel and see what they want to do." When Zki and I were living together for a long enough time, it was my mother who quietly suggested that he make an honest woman out if me. "I am making this quilt for you," she told him. "It is a wedding ring quilt. Before it's done, you will propose to my daughter." Having my mother there to help me get ready for my wedding day will always be of my most special memories of her.
My mom came to stay with me when both my children were born. I know they brought her great joy and she was very proud of both of them. I am sorry that time and distance and then her disease prevented her from being a bigger part of their lives.
My mother was always there for me and I know that even in her final days when her illness took her farther away from us than she had ever been, I was still in her heart. I didn't want this to be her story: none of us wanted to see her struggle to retain a sense of herself or lose the ability to communicate with those she loved. The Muriel we knew was taken from us a piece at a time over the course of many years.
I can only imagine how hard it was for her to watch herself disappear.
When my son Nick was just a little guy we went to a county fair and while sifting through a stack of children's books I found one called World Famous Muriel. The Muriel in the book is clever and brave and she solves Mysteries while munching on an endless supply of peanut butter cookies. I loved the title of the book because in my world, as small as it is, my mother always deserved the title of World Famous Muriel. I know that some of you only know my mother as she was after her illness took hold. I wish you could have met her before when she could express herself through her exquisite handwork, her beautiful garden and her quick wit.
I know that despite her illness, many of you got to know and love World Famous Muriel. She may have lost her ability to do many things and her communication was difficult but her spirit was strong and she fought her illness until, sadly, being the stronger entity, her illness won.
ee cummings wrote
If there are any heavens my mother will (all by herself) have one. It will not be a pansy heaven nor a fragile heaven of lilies of the valley but
it will be a heaven of black red roses
If I believed in heaven (and as a Unitarian I feel like I am keeping all my options open) I know there would be a heaven full of blackred roses for Muriel.
When I graduated from high school my mother wrote this poem in my yearbook. It is titled:
Invictus by William Ernest Henley
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
I will always have a Muriel shaped space in my heart. Who she was shaped who I am and so a part of her lives on in me and in those she loved. I will miss you forever, my mother, my friend, my World Famous Muriel.
