Ealain

Around this time of year I try to ignore the commercials, the signs in stores, the endless emails from Kodak Gallery telling me that I can get free shipping on my Mother’s Day gifts, and my dad’s pressure to get my stepmom a card (seriously, can’t there just be a stepmother’s day because there really IS a difference). I do this for the simple reason that I don’t want to break down and cry. I do this because I don’t have my mother anymore. But in our materialistic society, the only time you can ignore it is when you have a mother and you take her for granted, like I did for 16 years. This year in November will mark 5 years without her.

Today I’ve been scanning a lot of her old photos to add to Skyefairy gradually over the coming months (69 photos, adding a few at a time sporadically when submissions are slow). I don’t know why but a flashback came to me. I was fifteen and we had just gotten the internet. I found that you could add a profile to your AOL and I was asking her the questions to fill in hers. I came across the “Likes” box. What do you like? Like hobbies and interests? I asked her.

The first thing she said was photography. Really? I asked. Looking at her two huge photo albums full of photos (more than 69; I only scanned my favorites) and the big box of non-albumed photos, it’s suprising that I wouldn’t know that about her. She must have taken pictures constantly in the years before I was born. Now I wonder why she stopped.

Now that she’s gone, I wonder what else I don’t know about her. We never entered that stage in a mother-daughter relationship (that we’d probably be coming to about now) where we share things on a more friend-like basis. I know her as a mother but I don’t know her as a person.

So, this mother’s day, do me a favor and sit down with your mom. Talk. Tell her what your favorite things are, ask her about hers. Ask her what she liked when she was your age, what she wanted to grow up to be. Get to know who she is as a person and cherish her; don’t take her for granted. You never know when you won’t have her anymore.

*Today isn’t Mother’s Day. It’s May 11.

I woke up crying the other morning from a dream about my mom. In it, she was still alive but still not within reach. I called her and she didnt answer so I left a voicemail, mad at her for never answering the phone and telling her that I needed to hear her voice again. She sent me a letter instead. At first it was coherent but then it gradually became more poetic and metaphorical and incoherent. She called me heatherflower and said something about black indiana rain. I remember that the letter was in three, like the paper had been folded horizontally before she wrote. Everything was in poem form.

I miss her.

It feels like that sometimes. Like she’s still here but I have no way of seeing her or hearing her. Like I need her and need her and she has no way of reciprocating. I need her but she has no way of being here for me anymore. All I’m left with is incomprehensible ponderings about death and faith and love.

I like to think that she is my guardian angel (am I allowed to have more than one? She used to say that Grampa was mine…), watching over me. For that matter, I like to think that she can see me still and keep up with my life. That she knows who Josh is and how I feel about him. That she loves him like a son. That she’ll be able to see her grandchildren someday when they’re born. That when I talk to her, she can hear me even though I have no way of hearing her response.

That seems to be the key number: sixteen. Sixteen years before I was born, my mom’s twin brother died, sixteen days before his 18th birthday. Yesterday I was able to go see his grave for the first time. Donald A. Stone. However, when I walked up from behind (as it was the first time, I had to walk around and search for it), for one split-second, I saw Donna written in place of Donald with the two Ns rather than one. I was sixteen when she died.

My mom was never buried. My Gramma spread her ashes in North Carolina, in the mountains, where my mom always seemed the happiest. But I know my mom, if anywhere in this human world, is not in North Carolina. She is just mere miles away from where she grew up, in a teeny cemetary mostly now populated by Spanish tombstones. Nunca te olvidaremos. Siempre te recordaremos. She is with her brother, as she wanted to be for the approximate thirty-two (sixteen + sixteen) years between their deaths. I did not know her before he died but I’m told she was never the same. She held grief in and did not let it go.

I am the opposite. I have lost three people dear to me and each time I have naturally accepted the fact that they are gone. I love them, I miss them, I grieve for them. But I don’t constantly suffer as she did. It’s a bargain, a decision. Because she held on, she had more tangible memories. I have found my memories fading in return for being able to live my life. It has been three years, eleven months, and three days since my mom died. In less than a month it will be four years. About a month ago, it hit me in the face that I find it hard sometimes to picture her, to hear her voice, to feel her. Sometimes I wonder if it would be better to be able to constantly feel her presence. Every once in a while I can, but in return I grieve heavily each time. Like yesterday, like now.

I felt her at his grave. I knew that they were both there. She doesn’t have a physical resting place but that grave is shared by them.

I cannot put how I feel right now into words. I lack that.

In loving memory of Donald Allen Stone. July 25, 1953 - July 9, 1971.
In loving memory of Donna Ellen Stone. July 25, 1953 - November 11, 2003.

There were also two graves that caught my attention while there. One because it was immediately next to Don’s. There were no flowers in his cup-thing above the tombstone so I put some that I brought in his. Antonio Bustamante, “Nico,” Dic 3, 1920 - Nov 26, 2003, usted no es olvidado. As well as one a few rows back whose flower-cup-thing above his tombstone had been completely knocked over and had moss, spider’s webs, complete with spider himself who was not too happy that I rid it of its home. I fit the cup back into place, cleaned it up, and put flowers there as well. Ivory J Reid, 1913-1982, you are not forgotten.

posted with phone so excuse writing.

have you ever had that awful sinking feeling that something happened? where something has gone off in your neat organized and secure life? i had it the night my brother died five years ago next week.

have u ever had that feeling that everything in your world has changed in an instant? i had it the morning my mom died four years ago this november. next wednesday would have been her birthday.

i have both of those feelings right now.

have you ever felt that death and loss followed you? i do. ive lost six people in my life, the most ecent being my brother and mom.

im hoping these feelings are just the effects of next week being the anniversaries of my brothers death and what would have been my moms birthday. i hope it is just me going crazy. id rather that than be right.