My mom never knew what facebook was. She never even knew something of this nature would exist. She never knew it could exist. Silly of me to write about this or care about this, I know. But let me explain, please. There was once a time, not so long ago, that people lived without electricity. Babies wore cloth diapers. Cars didn't run manually and neither did cameras. This present time, this time of facebook and a black President, is a time that my mom isn't a part of. She is no longer part of any generation that says, "There was a time when facebook didn't exist..." and proceed to tell stories of playing outside for social interaction.
I understand that life goes on. Buildings that once housed her first job (Poppin Fresh which transformed into Bakers Square nestled next to a train track in St. Anthony) are being torn down and new development is cropping up everywhere. Her favorite strip of wide open land is home to Medtronic. Her wig store has been demolished, Target has upgraded, Ground Round is dust and so is our favorite Snyder's drugstore. Herberger's has been replaced with a Walmart and a Chipotle but she wouldn't know that restaurant anyway. It came after "her time."
All these trivial things of businesses slowing, closing and renewing and what do they have to do with me or the death of my mom? Well, nothing, really. Life goes on. Life slows, closes and renews everyday. The day my mom died I watched an old woman in an outdated white Olds-mobile laugh with her white haired passenger. I was at a stoplight and I watched them smile at each other, sharing stories. The memory plays like a slow motion reel in my head as I watched her arthritic hand reach for the top of the steering wheel and turn her head downward in a fit of hilarity. Those two white haired women had no idea that I was wishing, despite their beautiful smiles, that one of their long years could have been replaced with my mom's short years. I felt envious of the life they were breathing because just 44 minutes before, the breath of my mom's life stopped.
After my encounter with age at that fateful red stoplight, I felt that stop lights needed to be red all day, week, month even, until I was properly grieved for and had accounted for all the aches of missing the beat to my heart. But clocks still ticked, registered still beeped, hair still grayed, shoes still tied, laughs still echoed and people just like me were saying good-bye to someone they loved. Life didn't stop for them and wouldn't stop for me.
Some days though, I can't swallow that my mom will never know facebook, Chipotle, my degree or my daughter. Those are things of the present, something that she isn't. My mom (gulp) is a person of the past...like Abraham Lincoln or Mother Teresa. She doesn't exist but in my memories. Her body and mind has seen and lived the years between 1955-2002 and everything before that is what it is now. Gone.
I had one day short of sixteen years with my mom. As anyone likely knows, at 16 there is not much going on in the world outside of oneself and let me let you in on something: it doesn't matter if your mom is dying or not. I didn't have curiosity or interest in my mom's life outside of being my mom. Her family history, previous boyfriends, friendship squabbles, martial issues, pregnancy, child births or cancer diagnosis came invisible to me in her package as "mom." I was robbed of any of those stories.
Luckily, for me, I have her journals. She bought a green Mead notebook for $0.39 sometime in the summer of 1976. She questioned whether my dad was the right one, graduated from college, said no to four of my dad's proposals, finally said "yes," welcomed Travis, endured my dad walking out on them, welcomed him back and conceived and gave birth to Taylor all in one notebook. One of her first entries she describes how she is sitting alone at school in her final year at the University of Minnesota and is looking out the window at the Washington Ave. bridge. She's quiet and contemplative. My brothers, nor myself, are even a thought inside of her. Fast forward just seventeen years later and she has Stage III metastasizing ovarian cancer. She never saw it coming. Her plans didn't include this.
When I first discovered her notebook she was already gone. I sat on the floor where her hospital bed was, the one she died on in her bedroom, and opened up her past to read the words of a woman full of hope and promise and beauty. I read each page in her empty bedroom that she died in, knowing in just four short days the place she made home would be someone else's. I cried heavy in that spot on the floor because I wanted her back. I plain and simple ached for her. I laid down on the floor, directly below where she would have been laid in her hospital bed and tried to imagine saying goodbye to my future children and I cried even harder for her. Her plans didn't include this.
Forty seven years and she was able to change my 16 year old self for a lifetime. Her plans probably didn't include this either.
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