I know I’m making strides in the grieving process because I’ve started sharing stories about my mom with others. Of course, I know sharing stories about parents is not unusual but, in the first months after my mom died, I just couldn’t.
What stopped me?
I suppose as I continue through the beginning stages of grief, swapping the present tense for the past tense within those stories was something I wasn’t ready for. Was versus Is. Accepting that someone you were so closely tied to now lives in the “was” is a lot to swallow. Using “was” when talking about my mother often launched a signal for some to ask when she’d died. Using “was” served as a reminder that there would be no new stories coming. Using “was” caused my voice to crack without warning, creating an awkward conversational pothole.
On a basic level, I didn’t tell many stories about my mom because I wanted to hold all of those tales close to me as if they were a lifeline that I wasn’t yet willing to release.
Last week, midway through a phone call with my dad, I realized that I was, in fact, telling a story about my mom. Whoa. Where’d that come from?
I was telling my dad about the Hollyhocks growing in my garden, one of Mom’s favorite flowers. My dad didn’t remember Hollyhocks as a favorite, nor could he remember Mom ever planting them. I kept going, explaining that, during a few of my visits to Mom’s nursing home, she’d asked me to take her across the street so she could see the Hollyhocks growing at her parents’ house.
“Across the street” was where all the good things were in Mom’s dementia’ed mind.
“Across the street,” there was an animal shelter, a hardware store, Target, the campground and, yes, her parent’s home on Tuscaloosa Avenue. Sometimes, the hardware store would have a box of kittens out front, and sometimes Target would be having a sale, and sometimes the Hollyhocks were in bloom. It was quite common to arrive for a visit and be greeted by Mom with a demand that we take a ride across the street.
In reality, the only thing “across the street” from Mom’s facility was a ball field, usually empty. We learned to play along by kicking the adventure “across the street” to a later time, knowing that she would eventually forget what she wanted to do over there.
Last year, a friend brought me Hollyhock seeds from her garden after I’d shared the story with her. I dropped those seeds in the flower bed and never saw a sign of them again—typical in the life of my garden. Give me the easiest plant to grow, and it will be a guaranteed goner. This year, that same friend brought me an actual Hollyhock plant and put it in the ground herself using holy water or a rosary bead or something while begging it to stay alive.
Today, something strange is happening in my garden. It started shortly after Mom died and right where I’d dropped those original Hollyhock seeds: Growth. Something was growing. Something was pushing its way to the surface and life, and, yes indeed, it was Hollyhocks.
A few weeks after Mom died, another friend brought me a Hydrangea. I thanked her profusely while trying to hide the fear that it would end up dead like the three previous victims. Instead, it has grown with such confidence that I planted a second Hydrangea just to see if I’d finally found my green thumb.
Today, my garden currently looks to be managed by someone else.
I have Hollyhocks, Hydrangeas, Roses, Sweet Potato Vines, Lantanas, and a few plants that I’ve yet to identify. The primary difference this season is that all of these beautiful plants are…alive. I’m not sure if I found my green thumb or if my Mom finally had enough of my dead plants and has taken to tending my garden from beyond (a much more likely scenario).
I’ve started telling stories about my mom again. I know that’s a good sign, but it comes at a cost. The more I talk about her, the more I find myself reaching for the phone to call her, ready to tell her stories about my day. I reach for my phone and then quickly catch myself, remembering that Mom will not pick up.
Rich and I just returned from a beach getaway to North Myrtle, as we finally grabbed some downtime after nine months of chaos and stress. We chose North Myrtle out of habit and realized in the days leading up that we would be driving right into an area where we’d both vacationed with our now deceased mothers.
This was my first visit to North Myrtle without my mother in my life, as we’d started vacationing there as a family five decades ago. It was also our first time at North Myrtle without our kids, whose to-do lists often drove our daily activities. My dad would be there, making this trip our first visit with him since Mom died.
Rich and I packed our suitcases with trepidation as we wondered whether we’d just planned the most idiotic getaway on the planet.
It turned out to be more perfect than idiotic, partially because our travel agent accidentally picked an Airbnb well north in North Myrtle rather than in our planned, usual spot. Am I that travel agent? Is that really important? My inability to read a map paid off, in this case, as we found the quiet end of the area perfect for silencing brains that had been running on overdrive for months.
Without kids to tend to or mothers to visit, our days were essentially empty.
We felt the beginning of new traditions form, driven by what we wanted to do rather than the predetermined list that had been followed for years. We visited with my dad a few times, discovering a revised version–much more relaxed as he has finally been able to move forward.
The simplified summary is that this trip was nice.
Still, there were differences–differences that sent me reaching for my phone.
I wanted to ring up Mom and tell her how it was going and about each funny moment or new discovery. I wanted to tell her that Dad was doing great or that Rich had unleashed his shopping gene. I wanted to tell her how much I loved monitoring the Marina mosquitoes as they untethered their boats each morning while I drank my coffee on the balcony above. I wanted to tell her about our two stops to Nahunta, where Rich found piles of fresh pork awaiting his credit card. I wanted to tell her about our stop to Buccees and the piles of Beaver Nuggets awaiting mine.
There was so much I wanted to tell her.
Instead, I have to assume she is witness to it all and that, wherever she is, she is smiling down on us.
Within minutes of arriving back home, I walked out to check on the flower beds, relieved to see that most of my plants were still thriving. I picked some weeds, relocated a few sad residents, and got my hands in the dirt–something I learned from Mom to be very calming. My mom may not have given me the gift of keeping plants alive, but she did give me the gift of finding comfort in tending to one’s garden.
And it seems, perhaps, that Mom’s finally gotten across that street and is back to tending to mine.