Endeavoring to Remember Mom, One Year Later

A few days back, one of my mother's friends emailed me and asked me what her favorite number was. I don't think she had one, but what do I really know? A day or two past that, I asked my father if they dressed me up on my first Halloween after I saw a whole slew of 'babies as...' on Facebook. He had no idea, but I expect Mom would have. So there is the loss of her memory bank of me and my early life, which my father simply does not have. And I do grieve that loss of reference and resource. But then, when I think about trying to write something meaningful on the one year anniversary of her death, I know that the bigger loss is that of her actual person. I no longer call her about once a week (though we spoke more frequently after her diagnosis). I, on a Saturday evening when I have no plans (anathema!), can no longer calle her up and chew her head off for an hour about the whole horror of not having any plans. But it is greater than me. She no longer makes my father dinner; they no longer go on weekend jaunts to the track. She no longer meets up with her lady friends for tea, or sketching, or book club. Nor does she lend a helping hand in food drives or take in dogs whose owners are on vacation.
She will never know any of the men I may find myself with in the coming years. And, perhaps more importantly, none of them will know her. And if I ever find myself married, or with kids, she won't be there to see me down the aisle or through some of those first crazy/terrifying nights. For every milestone or benchmark we shared - from my first step to buying my first car (and it is, unfortunately, in terms of my own milestones and not hers that I think) - there are untold events in my future life that we will never share together.
When I left for Tennessee in late October of last year to go to the John Stewart/Steve Colbert Rally For Sanity, I left tensions and the realization that she was only going to get worse. Once I arrived in the vicinity of my childhood home, I stopped at one of the parks near the Mormon Temple to take a walk along a path I remember going down with my mom during my childhood. I expected it to be comforting and to hearken back better days. Unfortunately the pond that I remembered pulling sacs of frogs' eggs from had dried up, and every photo I tried to take of myself turned out wrong. At the time I didn't see it. But later I realized they came out bleak.
Even when I tried to look more light-hearted than I felt, I still had a look to my face and eyes that better resembled my dying mother's countenance during the the last few days I had been with her: bird-like, wide-eyed, alarmed, sad, weak, resigned, angry.


Perhaps part of the trouble I'm having remembering her and missing her now that a year has passed, is that the most prevalent memories are the most difficult to reconcile.
I would prefer not thinking of her being to weak to walk without the aid of a walker, the toddler-like way she would sway when standing upright for even a second. The fact that almost anything we tried to feed her would quickly be rejected by her body, causing her to hold it in until a bowl or other receptacle could be found to house the offending french toast, stew, muffin or what have you. We were lucky when she would accept Pedialyte with ice.
At times it was difficult because it seemed like no one - her friends, relatives, etc - understood that she was not going to make a recovery of any kind. When I came up to Maryland that weekend, B. and D. talked about us all joining them for Thanksgiving. While I didn't really think that she would be gone by then, I did think that a 12 hour car ride by that point in time (about a month from that time) would be out of the question.
Trying to help her bathe, or wipe herself after using the now-with-hospital-arms toilet. Or, after I left, the decrease in her ability to speak intelligibly to the point where when I called I was just listening to silence, or breathing, or mumbles that had no resemblance to words I could possibly embrace and understand. All of this time period - from going down to Nashville in October through bringing her home later in the month - I'd rather not have as the way that I remember her. She was not her death, which I wasn't even there to see. And yet her death and her dying days are the first layer of any thought I can dredge up about her when I try to sit down and write about this date.
The true passage of 365 days seems like nothing. A snap of the fingers. A camera's harmless flash at night. And this brings me to ask myself what has happened over the last year that my mother would have loved, hated or otherwise cared about. And again, I could talk big picture things like the upcoming elections, the Occupy Wall Street Movement, and who knows what else. But I'm not talking big picture. I'm talking 'me and mine picture.' What would she have had to say about my brief not-quite relationship with an attractive but flighty belly dancer? How would she have shown support for the New York job opportunity that didn't quite happen? What would her words of commiseration been for me on the days when I felt I was falling farther and farther away from my own self-imposed goals? The truth is that my mother's words rarely solved my problems, but the fact of her listening and understanding helped mediate some of the fall-out. While she rarely had the answers, she was a comfort and safety. Simply having her to share my life with was often enough.
At some point, when L. flew down for Mom's funeral in a whirlwind trip that I still feel a bit guilty for having accepted, we were outside, smoking cigarettes. I felt like it was supposed to be the scene in the movie, where the grieving friend finally loses their shit and breaks down, and the good friend is there for a good long hug and a really wet shoulder. But all I could muster or think and say was "My mother loved me. And I loved her."
And in some ways, that's really all there is to say. I could recount my recollections of life in the hospital. Of the strange routine my days took on during our time in Nashville. But, again, that would be besides the point. The point that should be celebrated is who my mother was not only to me, but to everyone who knew her. And, unfortunately, today I can't quite come up with that sort of message or content. And while that fills me with some regret, I'll just have to work hard over the next months to remedy the situation. Til then, I encourage anyone who has gotten all the way to this point in the post, to read things I wrote at other points in time:

Funeral
Maryland Memorial
Fairfield Memorial
Brain Renovation

I also encourage anyone with the inclination to donate to the American Cancer Society's multiple Hope Lodges, especially the Nashville location, as it was a great resource to us during the time after my mother was released from the hospital last spring.