Magic in Mirrors

More things of Mom’s keep finding their way into my home.  Just the other day, Dad brought me some odds and ends of hers, including her old stapler.  Apparently, it was something she had before they were married.  Dad loves staplers, so either he was being quite unselfish by passing it on to me, or he feels that he has entirely too much stuff since Mom died and he consolidated two households.

Another item he didn’t have room for, or didn’t want, was her full-length mirror.

“Do you want that mirror?” he asked when he called.

You bet I want it.  I knew exactly which mirror he meant.  Mom always spoke of wanting a full-length mirror, and she finally ordered this one from Pottery Barn.  I’m glad she got to have it…one small dream realized in a lifetime far too short to grant all her wishes.  But aren’t all lifetimes too short for that?

“Where will it go?” my husband worried.  After eight months of assimilating countless books, an impressive array of heirloom furniture pieces, and an extensive collection of decorative throw pillows, it was a fair question.  The mirror is tall and rectangular with an espresso-colored wood frame: simple, modern, elegant, and timeless. (Do you think Pottery Barn should hire me to write copy for their catalog?)  And it is large.

“In the corner, I guess,” I replied.

The mirror was placed in the corner, where it stands, working its magic.  I love mirrors.  They add depth, light, and mystery to a room.  They show us new angles of ourselves, but they are also enigmatic by nature.  Somehow, they seem to represent an answer and a question, all at the same time.  In this way, mirrors both frighten and reassure me.  There I am, but then again, there I am not.

As I look in this mirror, I imagine Mom standing before it, elegant and willowy, giving herself a sharp, appraising look.  Now that it is in my house, I shuffle past it wearing the new fleece monkey pajamas I received as a Christmas gift.  The beveled glass has been anointed with dog slobber.  My elegance, I suppose, is more sutble than hers.

Still, I’m glad the mirror is here.

Processing Grief: Acceptance

(June 17, 2012)  It is nearly the summer solstice.  I love these summer evenings when the sky glows almost unnaturally into the late hours as if lit by a neon city glow just beyond the horizon.  When the temperature outside feels the same as my skin, I seem to be melting, dissolving into the warm night air.

This year, though, I greet the passage of time a little reluctantly.  Each day takes me further from my mother.  When the weather is almost exactly like a day when I remember seeing her, speaking to her, I can imagine we have just been together.

But now summer is here.  Mom is gone, and the days don’t even resemble the days that she was in.  I can’t imagine us together now.  I am writing a new history, and although she is in it, her role is quite different.  She is not mother, tyrant.  She is not mother, supporter.  She is not mother, I-wish-she-would-be-less-self-centered-and-place-more-emphasis-on-family.  She is a mother of memories, of tearfully discovered pictures, of family members’ sometimes tiresome monologues.  Mom, gone.  What is that?  I am finding out, day by day.

It’s not like when I was little, and I would think about my mother dying and cry and cry.  Just the thought of her being gone registered in my body, a terrible hopeless ache that I couldn’t bear.  The reality of her death is a different kind of sadness, one that is at once awful and bearable.

Even when she was sick, I knew I could bear this.  I was almost certain I would be asked to.  I applauded her efforts at wellness – she never gave up, and I never gave up on her.  But intuitively I did not believe she could be well again in this life.  I believed she would succumb to the cancer.  I don’t feel guilty about this.  My thoughts did not make it so, just like many prayed for her and those prayers did not change the outcome, either.

Cancer is a process that does not care one whit about our wishes or our dreams.  It is simply a biologic sequence of events that, once taken hold, is extremely difficult to eradicate.  Is this tragic, wrong?  It seems that way when it is happening, but no.  It just is.  I have no blame, no anger.  Just the sort of acceptance that is needed to face things I cannot change.