I’m in the beginning stages of mourning. I’ve been there before with my Mama, that place where you know time spent together is coming to an end and you try to be prepared, but you never are. Knowing something and actually moving through the happening are two different things. For me, the beginning stage is like Limbo. I’m unsure of how I feel, unsure of how to act, what to do, or what to say. Strike that. It’s not Limbo, in some ways it’s a little bit of Hell on earth.
My Mama passed away 14 years ago, and with her, the family gatherings that were a way of life passed away too. Our family is scattered geographically and the years between us siblings isn’t the standard of two to three years apart. My brother is 16 years older than I, and my two sisters are 12 and 7 years older than I am. The ages of my two eldest siblings place them almost a generation apart from me. When Mama died, it was almost as if we scattered to the winds, making our own places with our own families. My Christmas gatherings became my own, with my own little family and my husband’s beautiful parents. It was not the home of my youth, but a new one with new joys and memories to make. Still, I missed my Mama’s kitchen and the gathering of sisters around the table.
Mama died of COPD from too many damn cigarettes, a lifetime of them. She still made it to 78, but unable to breathe, in her last days, she was in and out of reality, calling me Kathy (one of her older sisters). She talked to people in the room who I couldn’t see and sometimes seemed to look through me. The doctors told all of us the time was fast in coming, but you don’t get it, not until the last breath is drawn and you know you can’t call, hold their hand, relive a memory, check in, lean on their shoulder or just look into their eyes, ever again. It bites, and the sorrow never leaves, it lives somewhere under the surface, not quite as biting, but none-the-less there. Now I’ve learned one of my sisters has severe COPD.
It’s a progressive disease, it won’t get better, and it won’t be stopped. It can be treated and eased to an extent, but my sister won’t get well, and she will die from it. When I first got the news, I was angry, my sister is only 59. I had always hoped that the four of us would be able to gather around a table someday, for all the right reasons. But, that kind of someday won’t come. Several days later, on the phone with my lovely niece (my sister’s only daughter), I broke down and sobbed. I should have been giving words of comfort to her, some kind of guidance for this woman-child that I love, but I was shattered and my voice was broken.
My Mama used to say, “Don’t tell Mary,” where bad news was involved, “she’ll just start crying.” It’s true, I cry at commercials and almost all of Emma Thompson’s movies, but I’ve only ever broken down and sobbed four times in my life. The sobs are a kind of gut wrenching, pitiful-broken-soul-sounding, keening, uncontrollable vocal. I sobbed on my Mama’s shoulder when I lost my baby, I sobbed after my mother died, and twice now, over my sister. I’m wandering, lost in a limbo of knowledge and the knowing of what will come, and there is nothing I can do about it.
My Mama used to say, “Don’t tell Mary,” where bad news was involved, “she’ll just start crying.” It’s true, I cry at commercials and almost all of Emma Thompson’s movies, but I’ve only ever broken down and sobbed four times in my life. The sobs are a kind of gut wrenching, pitiful-broken-soul-sounding, keening, uncontrollable vocal. I sobbed on my Mama’s shoulder when I lost my baby, I sobbed after my mother died, and twice now, over my sister. I’m wandering, lost in a limbo of knowledge and the knowing of what will come, and there is nothing I can do about it.
