March of 77

I wore a floral, green, long-sleeved dress sewed by my mother. My raven black hair lay straight down my back, reaching to my shoulder blades. The parking lot was overfilled with cars and milling with chattering people. As if on auto-pilot, I was seated between my Daddy to my right, and my Uncle Jasper, Mommy’s youngest brother, sat to my left. The hard wooden bench was cool under my thighs, and the bare-back felt bruising to my spine. 

At twelve years of age, I felt like a grown-up; however, as I look behind, from adult-hood, I recognize my youthful naïveté and hubris. I was but a child. I was but a mother-less daughter. My Mommy had died.

It had been a hard death. It had been a short path from diagnosis to coffin. Each step along the way smoothed away my childhood, leaving a rawness, a precocious knowledge, preferring me a spot mid-way twixt adult and child. 

Mommy lived in the side-table drawer for years. At least that’s how I remember, that one day, snooping around, uncovering that manilla box, with the return label from the crematorium. I really don’t know precisely when Daddy was able to say good-bye and set her adrift on the Clifvons Shallows River, backing onto Auntie Marisol’s farm. One day, the box had disappeared; however, my fear had fled already. 

Without Mommy, our house was not a home, it was a place to sleep, to shower, to eat, to read, to study, and for my Daddy, to drink, drink, drink, bottles upon bottles of snub-nosed brown lager. 

Daddy sent me back to school three-days after her funeral. School resumed, without any discernible recollections, save one.

The classroom was stuffy, dark, scents of sweat and citronella swirling, when Miss Barnes flicked the movie reel to run, inviting heads to rest on hands-on desk-tops. Seated among my classmates, soothed by the dimness, lulled by the soundtrack and the melodious voice-over, I did not see the searing pain, the profound sadness, the sheer fear of losing control until, at once, I flew on fleet feet, out the door, to the hallway. I ran down the hall to a far corner, snuggling up against my back to the edges, curling my arms around my knees, dropping my head, making myself small, secure, secret. 

Miss Barnes touched me on my shoulder, I shuddered her hand away as if she had burned me with an iron. 

“Come along, Christy. Let’s go to my office. You can sit there. I never thought. I’m so sorry.”

No-one seemed to think much beyond the body in the grave. You were just supposed to put your grief in a box, on a shelf, in your mind, and shut, it did not lock the door. 

My psyche didn’t follow the script. Nights developed new steps — music played on the radio, a small light alit — both extinguished nightly by Daddy on his way to bed. Dreams were overtaken by nightmares — visions of my Mommy, with those abhorrent fake pink nails, lying prone on her abdomen, in her eternal box. Those eery, pink shaded lamps surrounding the corpse, whose head was covered in the shag wig, whose skin was waxy, wan. 

There was so much more freedom without Mommy. Mommy had always been shining webs to encircle me, gossamer strands keeping me in my routine, her schedule. Daily piano practising — dreaded scales, arpeggios — facilitated by stopping my beloved ballet classes in favour of ‘the instrument.’ The piano was the first to go, thanks to my eccentric, gifted musician, less capable piano teacher and his penchant for pulling guns on me, for hitting me, for bullying me. 

One day, May, I think, I became a woman, all by myself, alone, with only my Mommy’s voice in my head, telling me about ‘the curse.’ I was never as grateful to my Mommy for her foresight in foreshadowing menses, and for stock-piling months of tampons, saving me the shame of buying them for myself. 

Somehow, Daddy seemed to know, and in his inimitable way, signified this without saying anything at all. One day, a Reader’s Digest health tome, opened at sexual intercourse, lay awaiting me, in our tangerine 1970s living room. In high-school life class, I was a fount of medical vocabulary thanks to my careful reading. 

That first Mother’s Day in school, those classes where everyone, even me, the motherless-daughter, were given the time, the materials, the model to create that perfect gift. When I became an educator, this scarring experience shaped how I addressed that dreaded day, with my deep intention to never cause through ignorance, harm to children in my care.

Auntie O, my favourite aunt, my Mommy’s immediate older sister, was my saviour. I had long adored her, from the tips of her tanned, varnished toes, to the matching ensemble of shoe and handbag, to the expertly applied makeup, and of course, her jewels, her scent, and her deep, unbinding adoration, respect, love for me. Me as I was, me as I became, me, me, me until at age twenty-two, I lost Mommy number two. 

March 27th was the forced fork in the road of my life, that annual reminder, even after forty plus years, even after I am now older than my Mommy was when she left me, that who I am bears little or no resemblance to who I could have been, had Mommy lived. 

Mommy smoked, as a way to escape the shackles of her family home. Mommy’s smoking painted a target on her lungs, which spread through her body, invading her brain, taking all of her away. 

One regret I hold near — never knowing the woman who I knew as Mommy. What conversations, what arguments, what trips, what wines, what embraces, what kisses, what letters: all that potentiality unrealized. Mommy seems to me to have been a much more interesting person than a parent. 

Back, back to that chapel: Amazing Grace, Abide With Me, Rock of Ages, those melancholy melodies played on the organ by Miss Barnes, Reverend Norton, in the pulpit, my Grade 1-3 teacher, a real-life Snow White, seated on a pew. I'm but a child again, deep inside, still hurting.

I miss you, Mommy!