Underneath the mask

We all wear masks.  Mine comes complete with a red lipstick smile and aviator sunglasses.  I had to remember to pick them up on the way out of the house.  My eyes had sprung a leak you see.  It is Boxing Day and if I lived in England, where my other half is from, I would not have to get up in the dark and get dressed to go to work.  It was dark when I got up but I slept long enough for it to be light when I actually left the house.  I was late leaving. 

I had stood before the mirror the first time my sleep broke.  I had glanced at the clock on my way back to bed to make sure I had enough time to sleep.  It was just a little after 3 am.  I could still get a good 3 hours of sleep.  So I went back to bed.  My alarm hadn’t gone off.  My cell phone had failed to charge and the battery was dead.  His went off and he woke up.  Thankfully, he woke me up too. 

I did my hair, washed my face, and put my eyes in.  I looked passable, maybe even human.  The white clown make up was off as was my painted smile.  I caught a glimpse of it lurking there, behind my eyes.  But I turned away, satisfied with my mask firmly in place, ready to face the day.  That’s when my eyes started leaking.  Drop by drop, my eyes began to rain, tiny little streams, leaving a streak across my cheeks, flowing steadily.

 

I felt the wave of grief as it ebbed and flowed, rising around me, crashing over me, over and over again.  I had spent so much of my time and energy to ensure that this year was distinctly different than any that had come before.  I had taken every precaution to surround myself with the love and laughter of family and friends.  I had tried so hard to find just the right gift.  But all had been in vain. 

Her birthday came and went.  Christmas Eve became Christmas morning.  I could barely move.  I told myself it was expected, after all I had all of 3 hours of sleep in the last 48 hours.  Kids were cranky and fought to play with toys that belong to the other, not their own.  I didn’t participate in the tree massacre.  What would be the point?  It would only remind me that there was nothing under the tree for me.  

It was her Christmas tree, hers to fill.  I filled it with presents for her grandson.  After all Christmas is for children who can still experience the anticipation of joy that a brightly wrapped gift brings.  I had filled the bottom of her tree with gifts, chosen with care for the recipient.  It was such a pleasure to pull out a gift, large or small, and just see the surprise on the receiver’s face.  I realize that I am like my mother in that my pleasure is giving gifts more than in receiving.  

The first time I bought my mother a present for her birthday, I was 18 or 19, I think.  I don’t remember exactly.  My dad always bought the presents for her and put our names on it.  I had looked high and low and found nothing that would do.  My mother was a re-gifter.  If it didn’t suit her, she’d turn around and gift it to someone else.  It’s not a bad practice as my mother always got a lot of nice things.  I actually helped her re-gift a lot of her gifts.  I was determined that she wasn’t going to re-gift anything I gave her.  I think that was the year I discovered the Body Shop.  I found out that they actually mixed fragrant oils into their unscented lotions.  So I bought my mom a lotion and had them mix sandalwood oil into the lotion.  She opened it and didn’t once ask me why I wasted money to buy her a present.  She would always tell me when she was out of her lotion and I’d always pick up a new one for her up until I stopped going to that store.  By then she and I had stopped using their products already.

It’s funny the things you notice when someone is gone from your life for good.  I introduced my mom to Oil of Olay face cream.  We used the same one.  I changed it to Avon Anew when I started selling Avon and again, I introduced her to the Anew face cream and she changed to that.  When I first started cleaning out her medicine cabinet after moving into her house, I opened her Avon face cream.  It was done.  If she had lived, I know she would have told me to get her another one.  I was relieved.  Then I found her Oil of Olay face cream and started I started using that instead.  

I think in some ways, I’m luckier than my brother and father.  She just left them and all they have are the memories.  Eventually they will fade.  But when I cook, I get to smell the food as its cooking, something I picked up from her.  She pointed out to me that the smell of Indian spices change while they are cooking and you can tell when the spices are ready just by smelling them.  I told her that if you boil cloves in water after cooking, it removes the pungent smell of onions that cling to clothes like bad body odor.  Everyone who has ever grown up in an Indian household knows what I mean.

She made my clothes for as long as I can remember.  She loved to sew.  She got so mad at me when I got rid of all my clothes as a teenager.  I had no choice.  They were clothes for a girl and I was halfway to becoming a woman.  In plain English, they were not accommodating my growing curves.  So she stopped sewing me clothes and started buying clothes for me.  Somewhere along the course of my dramatic teenage years, my mother let me grow up from her little girl into a woman.  We fought when I became a mother but then I think maybe she just didn’t believe I could be as good a mother as I needed to be.  But before she left me, she told me she wasn’t worried about me anymore.  She had seen I had changed.

 

Once when I came to see her in her hospital room, I had tried to cheer her up, make her laugh.  So I said to her that it could go one of two ways.  She could either see her mother again or be stuck with me.  She said she had her ma already.  I was her mother here.  In that moment nothing else mattered, not the drama, the misunderstandings, none of it.  Funny, how easy forgiveness is.  I told her I shouldn’t have told her the things I said to her on the last occasion when we had our ugliest fight.  I didn’t mean any of the things I said, not really.  All she said was, I know.  I told her I was sorry.  She said I forgave you already, as if I should have known.  I didn’t care in that moment that this woman had disappointed me in more ways than I cared to admit.  None of that crap mattered, not really. 

In 1 Corinthians 13 Paul talks about love.  Oh how, every romantic loves that chapter.  He starts off saying that you can speak with tongues of men and angels, have prophetic powers, have incredibly strong faith, give to charity, live a sacrificial life, but if you don’t have love, you have nothing.  No one really knows how much my mother’s death cost me.  Financially, it cost me.  Mentally, it cost me.  Physically, it cost me.  Those are the usual costs most people understand.  No one saw the strain on my husband or children.  No one saw what they sacrificed for me.  But in the end, the price of love was worth it.  I can look back on those 2 and a-half months and know that I didn’t squander my time with her.  She knew how much I loved her.  It was the only gift I had left to give her.  

In return, she left me a legacy of love.  She showed me who I am.  Maybe she had failed to instill in me self-confidence because we communicated using different languages.  I don’t mean that literally but figuratively.  Often, we can say something but if we don’t take into account how the other person will hear it, we fail to effectively communicate our true meaning.  This is where most discord comes from.  My mother made a point to call me every day and ask how my kids were doing.  She never asked me how I was but neither she ever fail to tell me she loved me.  She had high, exacting expectations from me, but if I shared something with her and it was better, she always listened, even if she never gave me credit for introducing the idea.  

She never complimented my ability to artistically arrange things but she always told me arrange things before her guests showed up.  Since she left, I had a few opportunities to arrange dinner tables.  My efforts were appreciated and admired and the sentiments were communicated to me.  I realized now, that my fastidious mother let me arrange a lot of things in her life that she would never allow anyone to do.  She already knew this.  Maybe it’s time, I accept what she knew about me as facts too.  Somewhere, deep in my brain is the knowledge, it’s time I use what I already know.  She said those words to me in a letter she wrote over 13 years ago.  Maybe it’s time to trust those words and trust her faith in me.  I have a big job to do if I’m going to get a chance to move on with my life.

This is my new normal.  Behind the mask, behind the clown make-up and pasted on smile is a woman waiting to be born.  The birth pains of grief are strong and her time is at hand.  But we will get through this, she and I and when she is born, I will embrace her.  My mother will never see her but I think maybe, in those last few months I spent with her, she saw a glimpse of her.  That was her gift to me, her love.  I know now that I am strong enough to love and not ever be afraid of the pain that comes with loving unconditionally.  My one regret will be that I will never get to share any of what’s yet to come with her.  That is the hardest thing to bear.  I never thought of my mother as my best friend.  But she always did see my best parts even while loving the worst of me.