Mom left this morning to go back to Durham.Two weeks she spent with us. It went by like few hours. A lot has happened over the past two months. A time or two I thought Mom would break under the burden of it all. For that matter, I thought I might. But the violence of the storm is now past. The dark clouds and rain have given way to springtime.
You could see it in Mom's face. So tired she seemed on her last trip here, a short month ago. Her pace was painfully slow, her movements strained. But even the memory of that is now fading. She laughed a lot while she was here. I haven't heard her laugh like that in ages. One night at the supper table she laughed so hard at something Connie said that it made me look at her--is that really my mother? Then I joined her in the merriment.
For a few moments she was a teenager again when Connie brought home several bags of clothes discarded by a friend of hers. Many of the outfits fit Mom perfectly, including a red raincoat which she was modeling for me when I came home from work. She required a large yard waste bag to fit all her "new" clothes in. The raincoat even came with a matching cap and I joked that the next time it rains she could be Little Red Riding Hood. She grinned at that.
We did a lot while she was here. We took her car in to the shop and she spent a lot of money on it. Got a lot of overdue repairs done, but she's still got the knocking/grating noise in the front when she turns. Oh well. I took her with me to Columbia to visit a Warrant Officer's Basic Course graduation at Fort Jackson. She met one of the young men there, now a Warrant Officer (WO1), that I put in the Army about a dozen years ago when I was on recruiting duty. We stopped at a Fatz Cafe for lunch on the way back and she ate the cheese fries. When we left she remarked that John would sure love this place. She was sick the next day.
One day word came that the Mount Airy Paper had published a story on the autopsy reports of Mike and John. Reading the story made us all relive the events of Christmas Eve. We were ticked off that news like that would leak to the press and that no one had tried to get in touch with the family. It wasn't a very nice afternoon and evening. But it didn't stay with us long. It was over and gone by next day. In fact, I'm just now thinking of it again.
She spent a lot time alone in the house because all of us work. Connie usually left after Mom got up and had breakfast. Sarah might pop in and out during the day, in between work and school. I usually came in about five and, if Connie had left the crock pot going, Mom and I fixed supper, or else we were in the middle of it when Connie finally returned. We did most of our visiting for the two weeks around the little table in the kitchen.
Connie took her shopping a couple of times. I think it was last Saturday they stayed gone forever. They went out with Mrs. Claire, our nextdoor neighbor. When they returned, Mom was sporting a new purse. It was huge! She kept losing things in it--like her car keys when she and Connie took Mom's car to Walmart. They even went back into the store to report the missing keys and while they were doing all this Mom found the them in the bottom of her purse, under a fold. At the car dealer's I noticed that she would put things in her coat pocket that would seem naturally to go into her purse. She dropped it once, the purse. She was clearly not used to it. But she sure liked it.
She was on the phone here and there. There was a call to one of her cousins. She talked to Greg for a good while. Of course, she checked in with Jack. She kept up with all her business. She used my computer, then hers. She talked of the new place in Durham.
We drove around for hours last weekend looking at small houses and apartments because she said that she might like to live down here near us. Later in the week we were able to visit some apartments nearby. Very secure. Clean. Less than five years old. And affordable. We toured a two-bedroom unit and she really liked it. But I think she will stay in Durham, near her doctors. It's familiar there. Augusta would be too much of a culture shock.
She had driven down here from Durham all by herself. She borrowed a GPS device from Anne and never got lost. I programmed it to navigate her back to Jack's house and she left about 1100 this morning. She got there in time for supper and went with Anne and little Max to see if her apartment was ready.
The biggest lesson I learned about grief these past two weeks visiting with Mom is this: it passes. I mean that the hard part passes. We still think about John and Mike. Only the emotions have been dialed back a few levels. Memories remain but without the hard edges. They don't consume all our thoughts like they did when all this first happened. Our lives keep moving on. We've got stuff to do. We still think about them, but we mix good memories with the bad, thoughts of good times with thoughts of their demise. It doesn't hurt like it did a few weeks ago. The heart heals just like the body. I could tell by her laughter at the table that Mom's heart is a lot better now.
My thoughts on grief and what it means to people. I have read your posts, and there are a lot of psychologists and sociologists out there that try to fit emotions into categories and processes. Some of these fit, some do not. For the most part, grief is an individual thing. I have noticed, however, that there is one thing in common with every one that experiences grief. This commonality is love. If we do not have the capacity for love nor experience love, then we will not experience grief. The grief for the loss of your family members is a tribute to the amount of love that is felt for them.
ReplyDeleteWell said.
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