The Saturday before Mother's Day I was thinking about Mom, how this would be our first Mother's Day without her, and wondering if I was ready for it. No card, no flowers, no breakfast out (her favorite), no prime rib dinner, no wine and reminiscing. But with a little reflection, I concluded I was okay with reliving the best parts and letting the rest go. Even so, I made a trip to the cemetery to pay her tribute.
This is such a peaceful place, watched over by a garrulous caretaker who has lots of stories about the items people leave on graves. I can relate, having once cared for an old cemetery in the Sonoran Desert, populated mostly by broken down cowboys (and possibly their horses). Some of the tokens left there were rusty spurs, bits and bridle parts, cowboy boots, stringless guitars, broken bottles and the occasional sea shell. I understand a bit about the slow process of letting go. On this day I left Mom's jaunty red hat. It looked great on her at 89 and kept the sun from her sensitive eyes. I couldn't bring myself to wear it and didn't really want to see it on anyone else. I bet she was glad to have it.
Next door to Mom (as during the last years of their lives) reside Grandma and Grandpa, Mom's in-laws. Mom knew them and loved them, warts and all. She learned about homemaking from Grandma and she gained respect for Grandpa with passing years. His younger sons viewed Grandpa as the town drunk, but Mom saw a loving father and husband who exhibited patience with Grandma as she declined mentally (from abuse of insulin after she became diabetic). She listened to his stories as he sat in the old rocking chair in her kitchen, and they whiled away a lot of time together. He entrusted his whiskey stash to her, and each evening about sundown he would walk over for a glass of bourbon, neat. It did not take him long to drink it, and he seldom asked for a refill. "I don't drink it for the taste, Susie" he told me. When he died she kept his old Stetson; he rarely went anywhere without that hat, it was a remnant of his early culture. "Want to ride along, Pop?" one of his boys would ask. "Don't mind if I do, son" and he'd stretch a long arm for the Stetson where it dangled from the old oak hall-tree. Later the hat hung on a wall in her bedroom in Arizona and then in her art studio, along with her rowled spurs, the deer antlers, bull's skull and other artifacts. I left that hat next to Grandpa's headstone, covering a quart bottle of Beck's beer. He drank Olympia in quarts when I was young, hiding the large brown bottles under the kitchen sink. Grandma was death on any kind of liquor, so Grandpa had a hard time of taking a drink. I never saw him drunk and I understand why Mom respected him. She was a good woman, in addition to being a great mom, and I miss her. Happy Mother's Day, Mom.
The Saturday before Mother's Day I was thinking about Mom, how this would be our first Mother's Day without her, and wondering if I was ready for it. No card, no flowers, no breakfast out (her favorite), no prime rib dinner, no wine and reminiscing. But with a little reflection, I concluded I was okay with reliving the best parts and letting the rest go. Even so, I made a trip to the cemetery to pay her tribute.
This is such a peaceful place, watched over by a garrulous caretaker who has lots of stories about the items people leave on graves. I can relate, having once cared for an old cemetery in the Sonoran Desert, populated mostly by broken down cowboys (and possibly their horses). Some of the tokens left there were rusty spurs, bits and bridle parts, cowboy boots, stringless guitars, broken bottles and the occasional sea shell. I understand a bit about the slow process of letting go. On this day I left Mom's jaunty red hat. It looked great on her at 89 and kept the sun from her sensitive eyes. I couldn't bring myself to wear it and didn't really want to see it on anyone else. I bet she was glad to have it.
Next door to Mom (as during the last years of their lives) reside Grandma and Grandpa, Mom's in-laws. Mom knew them and loved them, warts and all. She learned about homemaking from Grandma and she gained respect for Grandpa with passing years. His younger sons viewed Grandpa as the town drunk, but Mom saw a loving father and husband who exhibited patience with Grandma as she declined mentally (from abuse of insulin after she became diabetic). She listened to his stories as he sat in the old rocking chair in her kitchen, and they whiled away a lot of time together. He entrusted his whiskey stash to her, and each evening about sundown he would walk over for a glass of bourbon, neat. It did not take him long to drink it, and he seldom asked for a refill. "I don't drink it for the taste, Susie" he told me. When he died she kept his old Stetson; he rarely went anywhere without that hat, it was a remnant of his early culture. "Want to ride along, Pop?" one of his boys would ask. "Don't mind if I do, son" and he'd stretch a long arm for the Stetson where it dangled from the old oak hall-tree. Later the hat hung on a wall in her bedroom in Arizona and then in her art studio, along with her rowled spurs, the deer antlers, bull's skull and other artifacts. I left that hat next to Grandpa's headstone, covering a quart bottle of Beck's beer. He drank Olympia in quarts when I was young, hiding the large brown bottles under the kitchen sink. Grandma was death on any kind of liquor, so Grandpa had a hard time of taking a drink. I never saw him drunk and I understand why Mom respected him. She was a good woman, in addition to being a great mom, and I miss her. Happy Mother's Day, Mom. 
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