Whispering

Monday, July 7, would have been my Mother's 90th birthday . . . except she died in 2006. My daughter still refers to that date as "Grandy's birthday," and I never contradict her. She is 27, after all.

My mother and I were very close. In 1987, as a single parent of a six year old, juggling two jobs and a 45-minute commute each day, I was -- dare I admit? -- struggling. That year, my mother retired at 65 after working all her life at a variety of middle-class, white collar jobs, and was planning to move from San Diego to Florida, to be close to her brother. On her way, her '81 Maxima loaded down with those things she'd never trust to movers, she made a brief stopover at the house my daughter and I shared in Blue Diamond, Nev. The brief stopover lasted almost 25 years. She fell in love with her granddaughter, and all thoughts or retirement went flying out the window.

When I decided to move to Reno, in 2003, to get a Master's in journalism, my mother followed after a year or two. My daughter had moved here a few years previously and was just about to graduate from UNR with a BS in criminal justice.

I received my Master's in December 2005, but by then, my mother wasn't feeling well . . . she wasn't even able to watch me walk across the stage to receive my degree, but that was okay. She was old, after all, I thought, and fighting the crowds of equally proud and jubilant parents.would have been a strain on her.

After the first of the year, wishing to continue the idle-student routine, I moved back in with her even though I could have stayed where I was; I told myself that I was saving money and keeping my mother company,

The fact was, though, that she was keeping me company. Somehow, during the time she'd lived with me, she'd literally become my best friend. We'd discuss everything -- movies, current affairs, politics -- oh yes, politics -- and she was always interested in what I was up to. What I was doing. I don't think she was living vicariously through me or my daughter, though . . . She was genuinely interested.

In September my mother was diagnosed with leukemia -- unusual, but not unheard of in somebody of her age. I remember her asking, when the doctor gave us thediagnosis: "What about food? Do I have to change my diet?" She'd suffered from high blood pressure for almost as long as I could remember and had to monitor her salt intake pretty scrupulously. "Eat anything you want," the doctor said. "That when I knew it was serious," my mother told me later.

Somehow, I never thought my mother would really die, even when my daughter and I held her hand and watched the life drain from her then-ravaged body in the hospice two months later. Though tears streamed down my face and unaccustomed sobs jarred my body like seismic events, it still didn't hit me.

It wasn't until shortly after her cremation and interment that the finality of her death came to me. I'd find myself doing something or correcting something or achieving something my mother and I had not see eye-to-eye on, and I'd want to call her to proudly advise her that, yes, I'd finally done this or that. Or, to tell her I was right about something, or vice-versa, or to offer an apology, or to do something different. Ask her advice.

That's when I realized that in death, there are no do-overs. You can't take back that unfortunate move. You can't apologize and tell the person you'll never do something again. It's death.

I wish I were able to believe in an afterlife, where I could be reunited with old friends, old acquaintances, relatives . . . my mother; those who have passed away.

I've started attending church. I'm still a disbeliever--although I seem to be leaning toward the "deist" side of the faith chasm these days. I don't attend because I'm curious, or because I'm comparing costs and benefits (as if religions were like items on Walmart shelves.) I go for two reasons: First, the moment I enter the Episcopal or Catholic or Newman church, I kneel and whisper a prayer to my mother or to God or to whoever might be "listening." I'm not going to share what these whisperings consist of, they're too personal, but I'm sure they're not too different from what millions of others say under similar circumstances every day..

I also attend because it provides the structure to my life that my mother's death voided. And, because of the possibility that someday, unexpectedly, lightening may strike.