Waiting in Advent:2008

Sometimes it feels as if I’ve been waiting for something or other my whole life. As children, we wait for Christmas, our birthday, summer vacation. Then we can’t wait for high school, learning to drive, graduating, and just getting on with an independent life.

There is the obvious waiting experience for women, and that is pregnancy. My daughter’s dad and I were having hard times, all types of hard times, so the waiting was bittersweet. Once she was born, I had an epiphany about my life. Suddenly, it wasn’t about me anymore. Everything I did had to be considered through the lens of what was best for this helpless child entrusted to me. I waited two years for her dad to have the same epiphany, but he never did. I realized I didn’t have a baby and a husband, I had two children to raise, and no partner. So I divested myself of that older “child” and plunged into single parenthood.

On that front, as the mom of an eighteen-year-old, I have been waiting for lightening to strike my daughter with maturity. Obviously, I’m still waiting.

Some days, I realize I’m waiting for my mom to come home from the hospital. As reality dawns, it’s as if I’ve slipped on a coat that’s several sizes too large, and the grief is overwhelming. It has now been a year since she died, yet sometimes I think it was yesterday. I can’t find my way, and I don’t want to, I just want to lie down and try to remember how to breathe.

In the days immediately following her death, there was so much to do, such paperwork and phone calls. I focused on my dad, and helping him. My grief was for him; how was he going to manage, how would he go on without his life’s mate? I knew I could fill some holes, but I’m only a daughter. Then June rolled around, and we started preparing for my daughter to graduate from high school. I got a letter from school telling me she was salutatorian of her class. Awesome! I gotta call Mom! Oh, damn. That was a turning point; my grief was now for myself. My mom is gone, but I still need her! What was it like for her when my sister and I graduated and gained more independence? How did she deal with her anxiety over our driving? (some of which was well-earned!) And who am I going to talk to about menopause?

My daughter has been a challenging child to raise. My mom and dad have seen that close up. My mom knew she didn’t necessarily have answers for me, but being a mom, sometimes just telling her was a help. After splitting up with my daughter’s dad, visitation was almost a nightmare. That first Easter, after waving ‘good-bye’ to my two-year-old for the day, Mom gave me a TickleMe Elmo, to take the edge off the waiting. My sister, in all her wisdom and compassion, has never understood what it was like to raise this child with her different wiring. So I don’t see her as a resource as I navigate these transitions. There were some wonderful fellow sojourners at her school, other moms who “got” it, but now that we’ve graduated, and yes, I mean ‘we’, it takes extra effort to connect with them, and those connections happen less often. The loss of my mom and the loss of those daily contacts have made these transitions seem stickier.

At my mom’s memorial, I couldn’t speak. The singing was easy. Speaking was out of the question. But there are a couple little stories about her I want to share now.

When I was growing up, we had desserts. A lot of the time it was a 13x9x2 cake from a box mix, or a bundt cake. My job, when I was little was to prepare the pan. So Mom would get me a paper towel and the margarine out of the fridge and I’d slather up the pan. Then she would sprinkle in a little powdered sugar and I’d shake it all over the inside of the pan. When I got to junior high school, I took “Hostess Club.” (glorified home ec!) One day, we were making a cake from scratch, in our little kitchens, in teams of three girls. I volunteered to prepare the pan. I greased it, but didn’t see any powdered sugar, so I headed to the class pantry to get some. The teacher stopped me and asked me what I was getting. When I told her I needed powdered sugar for the pan, she was horrified. She told me in no uncertain terms that the pan was to be floured. Well then it was my turn to be horrified. I remembered biting into pieces of my mom’s cakes and getting those little balls of powdered sugar from the bottom of the cake, and I tried to imagine that as flour. Yuck! Of course, I had never read the directions on the box mix. Imagine my surprise to see “grease and flour the pan” printed there. Rest assured that was the only day I have EVER floured a pan for a cake.

Sometimes life’s little absurdities would tickle her fancy, even if she committed them. I found in her papers a dividend check from the brokerage that she never cashed…relax- it was only for a penny! She had gotten in the habit of typing her correspondence and then signing it “rosie d.” with a lower-case r and d. She wrote to the broker about something or other and typed, “dear dear Bob.” About a week later, she wrote to him again about something else, and typed, “Bob.” At the bottom, she signed off as usual, then put a post script: “You’ll notice there was no ‘dear’ on this letter. That’s because you got two last week.”

I know I have to stop waiting for her, because if I don’t, I won’t be here for my daughter, my husband, my dad, even my sister, and I’ll miss all the great and wonderful things God has in store for me. I mean, gee, if sixty is the new forty, then I’m only in the previews!

I have a poem to share with you. It’s attributed to a gentleman named Charles Henry Brent, an Episcopal bishop and I’ll give you the title at the end.

I am standing on the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails
To the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch her until at last she is but a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says, “There! She’s gone!”
Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side, and she is just as able to bear her load of living weight to her destined harbor.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.
And just at the moment when someone at my side says, “There! She’s gone!” there are the other eyes watching her coming and the other voices ready to take up the glad shout, “There she comes!”

The title is “Death.”

I have to stop waiting for my mom. I think those other eyes and other voices are waiting no more, and the choir of angels has welcomed another singer.