Leave the dishes.
For the past few weeks I’ve been emotionally unsettled, off balance and vulnerable. I have blamed it to the post vacation funk that I used to finding myself muddling through when I return to work after time off. I’ve also blamed it on the added stress that I’ve been encountering in my professional life the past few months and the reality that a new program year is about to begin and with it many questions of what it will bring. Then toss in the subject of my two previous posts it’s no wonder that I’m feeling a little off kilter. Many questions are haunting me and I don’t feel like I’m standing on solid ground right now.
On Sunday while cleaning my bedroom and I came across a poem by Lois Erdrich, Advice to Myself. I sat down on my bed and read the poem slowly then set it on the floor next to my bed. The next morning I read it again and carried it out to my van and brought it to the office with me. I started reciting bits of it in my head throughout the day and during the course of yesterday. The poem wasn’t letting me go and I needed to solve the mystery of why in order to let the poem rest in peace.
Don’t keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll’s tiny shoes in pairs, don’t worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Last night as I crawled into the safe, dark serenity of my bed a loud memory came rushing to the front of my mind. JULY 29. “Yes,” I told myself, “tomorrow is the 29th.” Then softly whispered I heard this line from the Lois Erdrich poem…
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don’t even think of cleaning out.
I flipped through the calendar in my mind. August 2, 2005, that was a date I remembered on that day I received the call from my Dad that I had been expecting. Mom died.
So where did July 29th fit into this and why was my mind screaming it out to me last night? Digging a little deeper I realized on July 29th I spoke to my Mom for the last time.
My Mom had deteriorated to a point that recovery was not possible. She needed dialysis and a level of care that my Dad and I were no longer able to provide her at home and so a month earlier she left the hospital for a nursing home. The nursing home was 45 minutes from where I lived and so I didn’t get to see her every day. I had a 4 year old and an uncooperative husband. I had been losing my Mom slowly and painfully for over a year and honestly I was numb to it all. I was living in a hell that I can’t even begin to describe. My marriage was in the middle of a death spiral.
July 29th.
I remember the sun shining so bright that day. My Mom, once a strong and powerful figure in my life, lay crumpled and invisible within the folds of the the blankets. I sat in the chair telling her of the weekend trip that I had planned to visit family and how I would give them all love from her. I sat there for awhile listening to her breath and watching her sleep. Her body was working so hard just to lay there. I walked over to the bed leaned down close to her and kissed her cheek.
“I’m going to go now Mom”.
There wasn’t a stirring.
“I love you,” I whispered into her ear.
Your heart, that place
you don’t even think of cleaning out.
I’m not sure if what came next was what really happened or if it’s what I wanted to have happen. She whispered, “I love you too”.
I remember the vastness of room and how it contrasted her small and fragile childlike frame.
July 29th was the last time that I saw my Mom alive.
Recycle the mail, don’t read it, don’t read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.
