So. It has been a long time.
I'm at my father's house in Chicago. My sister and I came out here the weekend before Thanksgiving to try and go through things in the house that were Mom's, seperating out things that should be kept in the family, things that she would've wanted to give to others, things for us, things to be kept, things to be given to Good Will, things to be thrown out.
We came knowing that it would be hard, or at least I did. I came thinking that it wouldbe hard. It has been, though not, perhaps, in the way that I would've expected. Shannon and mom were closer than mom and I were, and so she knows more about what "things", antiques, and "stuff" is in the house than I do. What are things from Grandparents, and great-grandpatents, and what were things that were just picked up on a "junking" spree with Carla. Shannon had already gone through most of Mom's clothes and most of her Bedroom things before I got here. I'm sure that was tough for her.
Honestly, though there are a few exceptions, the "things" in the house are just things, and they don't hold very much sentimental value for me. Like I said there are a few exceptions - paintings that she did or "things" that she really loved. Some of those things I recognize are things that should be kept, but that I couldn't imagine having "out" in my house as the sadness of their presence is almost tangible.
I came, really, looking for books in which she had written copius notes, and sunday school lessons she had written out long-hand (an old practice she got further and further away from I think). I wanted to get everything I could find that was a result of her pen, pencil, brush, pen, pastel, crayon, etc., on paper. I sortof understood why - it was personal - something SHE had written, something she had touched by way of her putting something she had thought or felt down on paper.
In going through filing cabinets, and stacks of paper (whatever was left after Carla had made an initial pass, throwing away what she felt were scraps and things of no value), I found all kinds of things I wasn't looking for, and a few things I was. And I came to a startling recognition.
As I was going through reams of stuff in the filing cabinets, I came across (Someone had set the package aside before I got here) a white envelope like those you would generally find pictures in, as they come from a developer/phonto-mat. I picked up the package, and pulled from it one of several pictures inside. I turned it over, and it was a black-and-white picture of mom. She was in a suit, not a suit I particularly remember, but in this picture - she was beautiful. She had a wonderful real smile, as if she had been in true laughter when they took the picture, and a sparkle in her eyes that she had when she smiled for true. Her hair was very pretty - simple, and the best hair-style I think she ever had (mom wasnever satisfied with any hair-style and was constantly a slave to the perverbial greener grass). The picture had been taken for work - it was a portrait, and so there weren't any gaudy or rediculous backdrops, and nothing else in the perifery to distract; it was just her. Mom struggled with her weight for as long as I can remember, but in this picture, she looked healthy, and happy, and she looked beautiful - and I was shocked when I saw it. It has been so long since I saw mom looking healthy, and happy, and full of energy, and vibrance, and so long since I had seen even a picture of her at "her-best" that I was shocked at how beutiful she was. The picture was taken while she was with IMC Global, and was not more than 12-years old.
In the moments I stood in relative shock looking at the picture, a storm of emotion swept through me. First I was shocked - that was clear and present, really throughout. But on the heals of shock - there were other things; some that make perfect sense, and some that do-not. I was proud of how pretty she looked. I was ashamed that I had forgotten, or not been aware of how pretty she was. I was sad ... so sad I thought that the weight in my heart might steal the light from the room. And a tumult of things roiling in the passing of a small fraction of a moment.
And then, I had a thought ... that was clear. Something that rose out of the storm, clear and crisp, and true, and terrible. "...surely, there can be nothing sadder than things left unsaid...". I was startled at the clarity of the thought, as a nanosecond before I had been thrashing about in an emotional confusion like having been tossed by a wave in the surf. Then this thought, like a clear beacon through the twisting clouds. As I looked at the picture, and as I dwelt on the thought - it became clearer still. I thought of all the things times I had seen her in the last years and not loved her enough. How many times I had heald close to the ways I surmised she was wrong, or weak, or unfair, or unwise, or any number of things that she "wasn't", such that I didn't welcome, or comfort, or soothe, or love in any obvious way. Its not that I didn't love her inside. I loved her very much in my heart, but the doing; it was raspy, and challenging, and shearing, and brusque, and harsh, and cold. And, now I am broken, and my heart is full, and tender, and the loving kindness that I should have been heaping upon this beautiful woman in this picture, is present and warm and alive; but she is not.
My mother died. The knowledge is there. The image of her breathing her last in this world is a picture that I don't think will ever wane in my mind, and yet I see this picture of her, and I can't believe it. There is all this love in my heart, all this warmth, and joy - the same joy I see sparkling in her eyes in this picure - but there is no-one there, and I realize the time I was given to share it is past, and it can't be recovered. But it's all there. All the love. Every memory of every wonderful thing she was, and everything I should have said, and everything I should have done, and every way that I should have tried to show her. Its all there, and it's too late. So where does it go? A breaking heart is no destination for a truth that has broken it. The truth, and the love that breaks the heart is palpable, I can feel it threatening to squeeze the heart from me even now. Where does it go? Does it hide in the smoke and dust of the battle between heartache and duty, to steal your strength when faced with a phontogragh, or a smell, or a melody? Does it act as a catalyst and make a heart hard and dark and sad and cold? Does it act like ash in a scorched and blackened landscape, adding to soil what it needs most?
My heart has known pain. Pain in a funhouse mirror where it seems a mere fraction of what it should have been, and some seeming so large from something so small that it would threaten to burst the heart that felt it. This pain is large, and made larger because there is nothing to be done with it. There is no heartfelt reconcilliation that can be made. No grand gesture aimed at ammends. There is no way, at least in specifics, to take "the lesson learned" and apply it to the future, as there will never be another Mother for me, and the things which seem minor variences and differences between relationships are as great cavernous chasms over which there is no path. Certainly there are lessons to be learned ... but what to do with what is in this heart now for no-other than the one who is no longer here?
I think that there is nothing sadder than love for one that is unrealized, unshared, unsaid, unshown. Like a loving mother who loses her child - a life-full of love that has no-where to go. Or love from a son for a mother - a life-time of love, a rushing tumult like that released from a dam, having no-where to go.
All this, in moments I spent looking at those eyes, that smile, that beautiful woman in the picture.
