For My Mom at Thanksgiving

Warning:  This post is just me talking, mostly.  And it's long.  Sorry, no pretty pictures today.


The little lady in the center
of the picture, below, is my mother.  
Our two daughters and my sister's four girls surround their Muttie.

I don't remember exactly what year this was -- 2004, 2005?  
We had not yet moved to That Old House; this is in the living room of our last home.
That's my brother-in-law Scott's ear in the lower right corner . . . it was Thanksgiving Day.

Maybe someone else in the family can pinpoint the year.
I think it was the Fall that Aine was born, as I remember Mama holding a baby girl in her arms.
Now ask me if I can remember what year our great-niece Aine was born.

Whatever the year, it was the last time Mom joined us for Thanksgiving.
The Alzheimer's was already taking a terrible toll on her cognitive and other abilities;
it was a triumph of her will and my father's stubbornness that they got to this last gathering.

The next time they crossed the rivers to New Jersey from Long Island, it was to assisted living.

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Alzheimer's took Mom's life in January 2010.
As all too many of you know, losing somebody this way is a long, slow, heartbreaking ordeal.
One of the heartaches is realizing that your grief, afterward, is all mixed up with relief.
That feels so wrong. 

In the year that followed, I was absorbed with our Dad; at 90, he was getting more frail, and there were repeated hospital admissions for one thing or another.  When he passed away, 13 months after Mom, my grief was keener, more immediate, and I missed him terribly.

And it bothered me that I missed Dad more than I had missed Mom.
I thought it was because Dad had been there with us, was still enjoying life, loving parties, making cell phone calls, watching his big screen TV, flirting with pretty girls . . . he was still Dad, and still very much a presence in our lives.

But my feelings for Mom are more complicated.
I began grieving for her in 2002, when I first suspected that something was seriously wrong.

As Alzheimer's destroyed more and more of her brain, it took her further away from us,
and really -- isn't that what grieving is?  Mourning the loss of someone's presence?

By the time she left this Earth, most of her had already gone.  And so had much of my grief.

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So that brings me to this year, and Thanksgiving.

And in my holiday planning, my TBDBT List making, my menus and timelines and guest lists and more . . . 

I am missing my Mom.  More.  More keenly.

I guess I've entered a new phase of grief.  I'm grieving for all we lost in those last 8 or so years, all those phone calls that never happened, all those laughs that weren't shared, all those memories that weren't made.

I am ridiculously angry that my mother suffered so terribly in the grip of this monstrous disease; what good is anger if there's no one you can be angry with?  Stuff happens, and Mom drew the short straw on this one.

In an odd way, it feels good to be feeling so bad.

I'm grieving the old Mom, the whole Mom, the Mom before Alzheimer's began dismantling her brain.

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So, Mama, I'm doing a little more crying these days.

Like, now.

How lucky we were, you and I, the two Catherines, to be so close,

laugh so well together, argue so well sometimes, too.

Hello, Mrs. Tip Top Lady Bread . . . wish you were here.  -- Cass

Mom's Recipe Box, jammed with memories.
I like seeing her quirky handwriting.