When I started this blog 2 years ago, it was so I could write down some things that have been bouncing around in my head for years. Things like basic principles of good engineering, observations on people and the world, maybe the occasional rant (I'm saving one for Election Day). I haven't much gotten to those long-form pieces yet, and instead up to now it's been mostly travelogue pieces and other short posts.
My mother died last week.
She was in a car accident, got banged up but thought she was fine and so refused medical attention, and then proceeded with her day. But she had bleeding in her brain, and as the day wore on (at work!) she got groggy, was taken to a hospital, fell into unconsciousness and then into a coma. She passed away a couple days later, by which time the whole family had gathered at her hospital bedside.
She was a force of nature, and was an unforgettable presence for anyone who knew her. Raised in Germany as the runt of the family, she emigrated to the US on her own pretty much as soon as she could, continued her nascent dental career here, met my father and started a family. She ran the household, ran the finances, ran us through school, ran her career as a dental hygienist (and occasional artist) and ran whatever else needed running.
After getting divorced in 1985, she established her own home in Lambertville, a masterpiece of a house by all counts. She had worked with the contractor to adjust the design per her desires, and the house became a huge personal statement. Beautiful, open, lush ... it was and is my mom's place. She continued raising my littlest sister there until she left for college and the world in the mid-90s. Then, after her third and final heart surgery, she really seemed to bloom and started pouring her energy into all sorts of things.
We talked many times about how she was envious of my career as an engineer; she was always so interested when I started explaining technical things. Just like her son, she was meticulous and thorough in her work and life, to the point of appearing nearly anti-social (but not as much as her son ...). So much to do, no time for chit chat! If she'd been born later maybe she'd have followed the same career path that I did. In recent years I've been looking for Iridum flares and she really took to that, even finding some herself on clear evenings.
She demanded excellence from me as a child, which was pretty tough going because although I was damn smart, I was also damn lazy. Seems like I was always getting in trouble for blowing off some big school project until the last minute, which gave her grief to no end. This continued pretty much into college, with me skating along on my smarts (and test performance, including blistering SAT scores) and getting middling grades. Finally in my third year of college, after nearly flunking out and spending a dreary six months back at home living with Mom and working some deadend job, the proverbial lightbulb turned on in my head and I started taking charge of my own life, and haven't look back since. How do you thank your parents for putting you through college? By taking advantage of the opportunity, and I've tried to do that. I often think about what motivates me to keep doing the non-work activities that I do, such as [formerly] helping to run WREK and [lately] helping to run Eyedrum, not to mention other smaller deeds. My parents gave me a stable childhood and a good education, with no trauma to put me in therapy or otherwise bind me up in tangles of self-doubt or indifference. And so I've tried to use that good start to plow forward and get stuff done with my life.
It was in recent years that she really seemed to be coming into her own. All three children were raised and successful, she'd paid off the mortgage on the house (that she designed), she'd found a lucrative job with a great employer, and was starting to think about retirement. But retirement always seemed to be getting put off, because she loved work so much. And it wasn't just "work" work, it was doing things for other people. Somebody at the Oct. 22nd gathering at her house (nearly a hundred people showed up) said that my mother had this ability to make you think that you were the most important person in the world to her. So many people had stories of her bending over backwards to help them, whether it was building and painting theater set backdrops, or driving a friend to and from chemotherapy, or just getting together for lunch once a month to talk. But she was private about a lot of these activities, so we (the kids and ex-husband) really had no idea about it all until we started calling through her Rolodex last week. We just knew Mom was always on the move.
Two weeks from today she was supposed to come down to Atlanta and visit me and Sharon for a long weekend. Finally she would see for the first time the elaborate stained glass piece that she had made for me (did I mention that she sold stained glass?!) installed in the custom window box that I'd designed as part of our house renovation of July 2004. I was going to finally take her to Eyedrum, where a new sound-based show is opening in mid-November. We had a yard project all ready for her -- it was a running joke in our family that you better have some big project ready for mom when she visited because she was definitely going to do *something*. I'd already bought tickets to the Georgia Aquarium, an afternoon trip which surely was going to get us talking about our week-long trips to the Georgia barrier islands, some 15-20 years ago, to patrol the beaches for nesting loggerhead sea turtles. We'd talk about the trip to the Galapagos Islands that I had promised to her just last month upon her 65th birthday; it seemed like my mom had been dreaming about going there for decades, and suddenly last month it occured to me that *I* needed to take her there. So that was going to be my 2008 trip.
So obviously I wanted more time with my mom. We always want more time. But I also remember, growing up, how my mom's heart condition was always in our consciousness, whether it manifested itself as her being tired and winded after [deservedly] scolding me for some offense, or heading into open-heart surgery as she did about every 10 years. The specter of being a motherless child seemed to be there, always, until after we'd all grown up and it seemed that, in fact, she was going to live forever. She made it to 65! Instead of being robbed of the future years, it's almost like we got 20-30 extra years. Years during which she re-established herself in her own household, forged an incedibly close and warm relationship with her youngest daughter, got to share in the joy of the first grandchild, and watch her family blossom around her.
Last week was full of sharp, sobbing grief. This week has the constant undercurrent of dull, lonely pain. There's a huge hole in my life now, and forever. I'm settling back into my regular life, listening to music, watching TV, even laughing occasionally, but there's still that hole there.
God, I miss her so much.
Bye, mom.
Update Dec 5th: Added pictures. It's almost two months later and it's still a shock. Not a day, an hour, goes by without me thinking "damn, I'd love to tell my mom about that". Without seeing her in some random detail of the world.
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