Where Moms Go when They Die

When my mother died, more than a decade ago, I was brought to my knees with anguish and grief. Maria had been ill with Multiple Sclerosis for many years and she had many close calls with death. When she did die, as well prepared as I had hoped I would be for her death, I learned you simply cannot prepare. I knew my mother was quite ill and would die very soon, but I could not prepare myself for the profound loss and sadness that engulfed me. I was her first born child and one of two daughters. I had lost my best friend and my most formidable foe. My mother was many many things, some good and some not so good, but she was my foundation and my compass, and without her, I felt fragile and frightened.

My mother left me some money. It was not a lot of money but it was enough to seed a trip around the world. Maria knew this was a life long dream of mine and so I took those few thousand dollars and spent night after night for a full solid year planning my trip. I saved, I scrimped and I planned for hours every day. My marriage was over and I have no children. In a matter of months, my beloved father, maternal grandmother and dearest friend were dead. I felt a great deal of loss but at the same time a need to affirm my own life and breath.

I planned my trip with the same care a surgeon would a very complicated surgical procedure. A week before I was to leave I started to get cold feet and was about to back out when my supervisor informed me that she would have to maim me if I squandered so much money and weaseled out of my world trip. For reasons unknown to me, I listened to my friend and the following week set off from JFK. I managed quite well Europe, where I had traveled many times before, but upon landing in South East Asia I became quite the motherless child.

I arrived at Bangkok airport at 4 in the morning. I was to have been met by my English speaking guide, Kevin. Well, Kevin overslept our meeting and I was left sitting in the airport at Bangkok wondering if I would cause a scene by crying. I did not like the way the airport smelled and I was grateful to have used the lavatory on the airplane. I looked around the building and there was not an English or European sign in sight. I was surrounded by many signs, spelled out quite well in Thai. The Thai language, of course, is built on characters quite alien to our alphabet. I could not begin to decipher one word. I was sitting on my luggage which I had carried on and just about to let loose a torrent of tears when I remembered something critical to my survival. I remembered that I had lived and worked in the Bronx for more than twenty years so if anyone was able to handle a situation like mine, it was me.

Muttering to myself my way out the airport door, I repeated the same mantra over and over."Bronx chicks kick butt, now go out and find your hotel Cathy". I did find a cabbie who was sleeping soundly in his car, but awoke, when I rapped on his window. I showed him the address of my hotel on a little card I had been sent months before and off we sped. Now, this man could have taken me anywhere he wanted and robbed me or held me for ransom, but luck was on my side and I was delivered to this magnificent Shangri La Hotel just before dawn.

Bell boys took me and my bags to my room, bowing and speaking in soft tones all the time. I tipped them, looked around and called the front desk. I explained to the lovely front desk man, whom I had checked in with, only moments before, that there must be some mistake. I explained that I was on very strict and tight budget and that the room I was standing in, could not possibly be mine. I gazed at a marble bathroom with gold fixtures, a magnificent bedroom with a grand chandelier, and a balcony overlooking the Chao Phraya. "No, no, Mrs. G", he softly assured me, "this is your room". I hung up the phone grabbed a 10 dollar Snickers bar and a poured a twenty dollar gin and tonic from the minibar and drew a bath.

Someone was watching over me then, I just had no idea whom. I cried many times on that trip. I wept for all of Viet Nam and all of America when driving into the former Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City. I cried again at the enormity of the Great Wall in China. I cried because I remember my mother's daughter straining to see China from the well in her backyard on Portman Street in tiny Windsor, CT. "How did a little nothing girl like me from Portman Street wind up here"? Just then of course, I watched as a group of strangers from many nations grouped together and pulled a man in a wheelchair up the many stairs to "The Wall" for a better view. The man in the wheelchair was joyous, his helpers were grunting, and of course I was just blathering tears and so deeply moved. I was not alone, many others shared my emotions. At least this was one occasion in which I was not a public embarrassment.

I still did not see that Maria was watching over me. After this trip I still had many hard times and many hard lessons to learn. Most of the time I felt lost and lonely. Even after having undertaken some dangerous missions and solo adventures I still had the self appraisal that I was a very abandoned middle aged lady who was always poised on the precipice of ruin.

I was.

In a matter of years, and after a series of poor financial investments, I found myself homeless and without resources. Left to my name were an old clunker of a car, a few boxes of books and my loyal West Highland Terrier, Albee.

Albee and I were offered temporary lodging by a colleague who lives quite far away from my offices. It was a rather primitive set up and our accommodations were rough hewn at best, but I knew we could manage the two months we needed to get back on our collective feet and paws. Our landlord revealed himself to be not the nicest human or most conscientious landlord. We had a lot of snow that winter and for whatever reason the driveway was never plowed. This made getting to work each day a terror in and of itself. I managed to do about five hundred dollars worth of damage to my car in that first month alone of living there, just in trying to escape the snow and ice drifts that I had to battle every day to get out of the front yard. Albee and my funds were running low and I began to get scared again. Of course the other down side to this arrangement is that our room was unheated and apparently heat and later running water and electricity were not included in the rent. I clutched Albee to me every night as we slept fully dressed and covered in all the blankets I had rescued from our foreclosed home. I shivered less from the unrelentingly cold weather those nights then I did the abject terror I felt those two months.

One day I had decided that I was beaten and would not fight on further. I went out to leave for work one morning as my landlord sped by me and waved me off. My car was stuck on the top ledge of his property. I used all my best winter driving skills, rocking and rocking, running my transmission stick up and down and was not able to budge the skidding and slipping car more than a few inches. The sun came up and I gave the car one last shove and then suddenly something very strange happened to me. I gave up.

Now, ya know I am not the kind of girl who gives up. Tenacious is my middle name. My nickname is "Pitballerina" less because I am a dance therapist and first responder of the "Pit" where the Trade Towers once stood and more because when I dig my steely claws into something I just have to see it through.

That morning, however, I stopped trying so hard. I turned off my car and shouted heaven ward, "Is there no one up there who can help me on this"? I got out of my car, slammed the door and was walking back to the house when I noted that my front wheel wells were quite close to the edge of a twenty foot rock ledge. Had I rocked that car just one more time, I would have gone over and died. I was shaken but brushed it off and called Triple A. "Drama Queen", I self accused, as I sat on the front steps waiting for the tow.

By now the tow companies in that part of Massachusetts were on a first name basis with me. I was becoming a "regular" customer in the get out of snow bank business. The tow pulled up and nice Ryan jumped out of the cab and approached me and said, "Okay Cath, sign here and I will have ya right out". He looked back at me and grinned and added "I will try to get here earlier tomorrow". I was puffing hard on a cigarette and stomping around the yard when Ryan came around my car and motioned me to follow him.

He showed me that I had been on the ledge during my rocking and skidding and, had I tried just a moment longer, would have plunged to certain death. Drama queen, apparently, I was not. Well, at not least for that day. Ryan pulled my car off the ice patch and bid me farewell. I moved out of that hell house within hours and took up residence in a more tenant friendly hotel miles away.

I knew that morning my mother had been watching over me. I heard her voice in the hours after this event and since then I have never stopped talking to her. We speak daily in fact. I have a little conversation with her during my morning meditation and while on my knees before I jump into my comfy bed every night. I thank her for good weather, warm baths and safe driving when I have to drive long distances. I ask her guidance when I am frightened and I remember to thank her for every single morsel of food that crosses my lips, every veterinarian bill I find a way to pay and especially for the one piping hot cup of coffee I drink every day. I cannot tell you how much I missed that one cup of coffee each day during such dark and meagre times.

Albee and I are fine for now. We do not have much but that we have matters so much to us.
We are happy, safe and most of all grateful.

I have a friend who recently lost his mother and is trying to cope with such profound grief. He wrote today and I responded. For those of you who do not know, Moms go to a place where they can watch over us. It can be in your living room, the passenger seat of your car, or in your office. They sit there, quietly and they watch over all of us. They gently manipulate crazy drivers out of our paths and they make sure you do not scald yourself when you are boiling water. They pop up in all kinds of places you do not expect. My mother usually makes herself known if I am listening to Leonard Bernstein or Nat King Cole. She will blow a breeze through my window shades or she will make the kitchen faucet hiccup. I know it is her.

And finally, to my friend Peter, your mom Jennie and my mom Maria and of course our shared Aunt Louise were last seen sitting together at an Ella Fitzgerald concert. They were headed off to Olde Towne Restaurant back in our home town of long ago. They were seen there surrounded by their many friends and relatives who had also passed on. I heard them laughing and I even heard the juke box play. Sunshine, you are my Sunshine.......

Of course then Maria sent the linguine back, and Aunt Louise told her to try and behave, and not be so picky about the food. Jennie nodded in agreement with Louise. After a while Burl Ives was singing a song on the juke, and the three of them were chuckling about their kids spending far too much time playing Farmville, on Facebook. I am glad we left them Facebook one said and the other two smiled.

Love to all moms, their sons and daughters, but especially their sons and daughters who miss them so.