2 Years Gone & It Still Hurts

My Mom died two years ago today at a hospital in Crosby, Minnesota from lung cancer. She's been 2 years gone and it still hurts emotionally, sometimes badly. Two years of living life without my Mother, two years without hearing her voice or feeling her touch. Two years....

Random memories flashed through my mind today, all day, about what happened on this day two years ago.

I remember I was the one that shut off the IV unit that was dripping fluids into her arm after she had died.

I was the one who called her only remaining close relatives alive, her aunt and uncle, I remember calling them but I don't remember what we said to one another. I also remember calling my father, her ex-husband, and telling him that she had died; I remember hearing his voice fill with tears and wondering what was going through his mind at that exact moment.

I remember going out to eat at the local cafe that was open for dinner, the waitress asking us how are day had been, and telling her my Mom had died earlier in the day. That caught her by surprise and she didn't know what to say, except that she was sorry. The look in her eyes went from being very friendly to sad.

My husband & I stayed in my Mom's apartment that night, although she hadn't lived there in months because at the end, she was living with my sister. It was so surreal to be in that apartment, finding a grocery list unfinished, Valentine's Day cards that never got mailed because she took a turn for the worst and went to live with my sister right before the holiday, smelling her in the sheets and pillows.

Then, of course, we had to arrange to have her body brought back from Crosby, Minnesota to Minneapolis for the funeral and burial. More random memories...

I remember the casket we liked best was one that looked like knotty pine paneling, which was what lined the walls of the family cabin and that was Mom's most favorite place to be. Then we found out it was the cremation casket and couldn't be used for a regular burial. What a weird thing to remember.

Lilacs were my Mom's favorite flower and they had bloomed early that year. Many bushes had few flowers on them, but mine the backyard had some. The funeral director did a wonderful thing; he brought in lilac blooms from the bushes in his own backyard because he knew they were important to us. He did not charge us extra for that.

I remember seeing my father crying at the graveside ceremony and I asked him why he was crying. Why did I ask him that? He had spent over 20 years of life with my Mom and fathered three children with her; was he crying because he still loved her in a way? He told me it was because he hated seeing "his girls", meaning my sister and I, hurting. Even then, beside the grave of the woman he'd been legally married to for 24 years, he couldn't admit that he might be crying because maybe he still loved her, maybe he regretted leaving her, or maybe he was telling the truth.

His wife, the woman he left my Mom for, was beside him and she was crying too. I felt little emotion about it at that time, but now I wonder what her tears were for. I never asked her why she was crying and I never will. But I did see her in a new light that day; she cared for my Mom, someway, somehow. By that point in time, I no longer felt any anger toward her for role in the break-up of my parent's marriage. The part of me that blamed her, the part of me that was still a little girl, was almost completely gone by then. Seeing her cry made that part of me go away forever.

I remember being at the cemetery, after the graveside ceremony was over, listening to my sister wailing that she didn't want to leave Mom alone to be put into the cold, hard ground. I didn't either, but I kept silent because I knew it had to happen. I tried to comfort her. It did no good. Her husband had to pull her away from the casket.

Random memories. Why did I remember these things today? What meaning can be found in these memories of the day of my Mother's death and the days immediately afterward? I look that them now, in writing, and see no pattern really, no reason why these are the memories that jumped out at me today. Sometimes, memories are like that, random and without reason.

I did not go to her grave today. I will go tomorrow, the day after her death anniversary and the day before Mother's Day this year. I will take her the lilac blooms off of the small bush in my backyard and maybe a few from the neighbor's bush, I will put them on her grave, and I will share my memories with her. And I will cry, and at least I will know and understand why I'm crying.