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Things I’ve Realized Since Mom Died

BY 

ARLENE SMITH

Time passes either in huge chunks or snail-like increments. One day can last a lifetime of seconds. Then I look up and it’s been a year and half since she died. I have nothing to show for this time.

              I have realized I don’t have to hate Charmin toilet paper just because she did. I can put rosemary in anything I like because I don’t hate it. It’s OK to hang on to her ashes until I decide where they should go, and it’s OK to keep them forever if I want. Shopping at Costco really isn’t practical when there’s just me because I don’t need to have two, three or fifteen of everything anymore. Her bedroom makes a very good library. Not every room in the house needs to be decorated in blue and tan. Going to the theater or symphony feels wrong without her there. I can play whatever music I like – and however loud - when I clean the kitchen or cook.

             Except I don’t cook very much anymore because my greatest pleasure was pleasing her. Knowing how much she loved being pampered with my growing abilities in the kitchen, my expanding palette and willingness to experiment, made it fun. How much I loved hearing her call from the living room “Are you going to feed your mother? I’m going to pass out from starvation!” then she’d come in and try to steal a nibble or taste of something.

             I found my baby book cleaning out a closet, and what little mom did fill out included “Baby’s Favorite First Food.” Mom wrote “This isn’t true for Arlene at all, because she doesn’t like anything.” How did mom put up with me all those years? A woman who loved good food and multiple cuisines saddled with a kid who wouldn’t touch 70% of what she saw. But those last years I was finally learning. I even ate asparagus – word to the wise: ditch the tips because they taste like broccoli. I had progressed to where I could not only walk near seafood without plugging my nose, but I would actually touch it. Without industrial gloves, even. Cook it in the house. For mom. After 30 years she was finally able to enjoy halibut, baked in a foil packet with butter, dill and lemon. No complaints from me, even real enthusiasm because she loved it so much. Herbed salmon on the grill, swordfish quickly seared and finished in the oven, pan-fried trout with butter and almonds. She had a little trouble with the skin I didn’t know I was supposed to remove…. But didn’t complain. We were sharing, a communal expression of love – mom, I love you so much that I will take this disgusting fish and make it taste good to you, overcoming my deep-rooted revulsion to season and cook it as perfectly as I can, ignoring the smell. Another word to the wise: you buy fish that doesn’t smell fishy, but you know it’s done when it starts smelling like fish. Go figure. And mom knew I was telling her I loved her.

            We didn’t talk about love out loud. Mom didn’t really know how, frankly. Her parents weren’t demonstrative and she was always uncomfortable with physical and verbal expressions of love. I remember a phone call in college where I tossed out “OK, I love you,” at the end of our conversation. There was a distinct silence, then she simply said she’d talk to me later and hung up.

            Now I’ve realized that love comes in many forms. How she would try hard to pick out a book for me, knowing our tastes were so different that I’d probably hate it. The clothes she gave me, never my style, but she’d gotten it in purple or green or blue; my colors not hers. How she’d walk into the living room in the midst of cooking for us, one hand behind her back, sing-songing “Open your mouth/close your eyes/and you will get a good surprise!” When I was a child and I got upset she would hold me and rock me back and forth. Not a big movement, just a gentle wave. To this day I have a tendency to rock back and forth at odd times, once prompting someone on a ferry to ask me if I had an infant I was used to rocking. I don’t even realize I do it.

            Toward the end, in ICU, she couldn’t physically express anything much. Half the time she couldn’t talk because of the breathing tube. So when she could speak, it surprised me that she told me she loved me. Every day. That she needed me. “I don’t know what I’d do without you here.” 

            Today I think about that, how she gasped it out in the middle of a panic attack, the pneumonia shortening her breath, nurse running for Xanax. Turns out I’m the one who doesn’t know what to do without mom here. I spent my life believing my job was to take care of my mother. Obviously I never realized it would be in such an immediate, intensive way, but it was my only major motivation. She took care of me, raised me as a single mother, surrendered her dreams to provide for me. Now she’s gone, I’m here, and I’m lost. That is what I’ve realized since mom died. I am lost.