I try not to dwell on family here on this blog, but mothers are special. Today marks the one year anniversary of my mother’s passing. October brings this to mind naturally. Her mother, who lived an unhappy life, was born in October. Although she (grandma) only lived to 75, my mother made it to 88. That’s a good long life. The pandemic, and actual mileage and financial constraints, kept me from visiting Mom as often as I would’ve liked. We talked on the phone nearly every other day, and we had done so for years. One topic that had come up in conversation the last three or so years of her life was that Mom had been seeing her mother. Or feeling her presence. This wasn’t a ghost scenario, at least according to Mom. It was simply seeing her mother there.
Although my grandmother lived with us from the time her husband (my grandfather) had died, she and my mother didn’t really get along. Family dynamics fascinate me, and since I was two when grandpa died, pretty much from my earliest memories grandma was living with us. She didn’t approve of my father, and wasn’t shy about saying so. It probably didn’t help the relationship with my mother much, especially when we had to move to a new place and nobody told Dad we were going. He wasn’t invited along. Grandma wasn’t in good health. I still remember when the dining room in our small apartment was converted to her sick room as she was slowly dying and couldn’t manage the stairs anymore. Until her final decline, grandma could be quite querulous, but Mom took care of her, because that’s what family does. Grandma died shortly after Mom remarried.
I never said so to Mom, but I think she’d come to this conclusion herself, that seeing her mother was a sign of approaching death. Mom often felt that her mother was wanting to reconcile with her. I didn’t write these things down at the time, because life was, and is, too busy. Thinking back on Mom, I wish I had. She knew of my interest in the inexplicable aspects of life. In fact, she sometimes got frustrated by my persistent questions about such things as a child. I remember one day she snapped at me for following her around all day because we’d been talking about ghosts. (That apartment was haunted, I’m almost certain.) Mom wasn’t a particularly mystical woman. Someone in the family must’ve been, because I inherited those genes. She was, however, aware of mortality and all it entails. I’m sure she knows her family is thinking of her today.