Category Archives: mother

Hold onto the Old; Welcome the New

2011 was a year of change and adventure, and a year of sadness. I moved yet again, back home to New Hanover County, without doubt the most beautiful area in the world: sun, tall pines and live oaks, dunes, the ocean, sunrises that stun the senses and sunsets over the water on the EAST coast. (Yes, it’s true[i].) I visited Iceland, land of severe and startling beauty. I met interesting people and developed lasting friendships. I accepted a position with DODEA and am preparing to move to Europe, another homecoming of sorts. And I have wanted to share it all with my mom, who is really and truly Home, but to whom I wasn’t ready to say goodbye when she went to be with Jesus just over a year ago.
 In the blog entry from June 19, 2011 I said, “Life is precious, life is sweet. And sometimes it is bittersweet.” I would amend that now to say “often” instead of “sometimes.” This recent move to Wilmington has been filled with bittersweet reminders of the years we spent together here when I was a child —
The USS North Carolina:  I recently visited the noble vessel with friends, something that I had done with Mom when I was about eight; she taught me to admire the sailors who served on her, to the point that I even served in the US Naval Reserve myself. The smells on the ship are overwhelming memory inducers, and this recent trip took me back to that first visit.
Carolina Beach:   The tiki bar is one of my favorite places. It sits on what is left of Center Pier, across from the land that once held the motel that Mom owned. Eons ago, when I was about seven, she walked me all the way out on Center Pier during a strong gale. She was terrified of hurricanes but loathed the thought that I would be, so we walked in the furious wind, my hand held firmly in hers, and she talked with me as if everything were perfectly normal. Only later would I learn that she was absolutely beside herself with fear, but so sternly determined that I not be afraid of wind storms that she swallowed her terror, and I, because of her sacrifice, have literally slept through category 3 hurricanes.
Wrightsville Beach: Standing on the sand, watching the waves and the fishermen, I remember Mom casting the line from the shore. At 5’4″ and 110 pounds, she could cast as well as most men. She taught herself to throw a cast net and gig for flounder, too, which she filleted and cooked like nobody else.
The Intracoastal Waterway: Every time I pass over an ICW bridge, I can almost taste the oysters we gathered and ate, standing on the sand. I still feel weight of the knife I held in my hand and how it scraped against the oyster bed as I mimicked her motions, learning to pull the individual shells away from the bed and then open. If I lick my lips, I taste the salt.
These and countless other landmarks, smells, and tastes cause memories to flash in my mind of things we did together here over the course of my life. She shared her love for this beautiful and varied place with me. It will always be home to me, as it was to her.
Now the move to Europe floods me with thoughts of her; she and I made a similar move many years ago, to Germany, and I so want to hear her thoughts. Just a few nights ago, as I was driving to a New Year’s celebration, I thought of calling her to ask her advice. After over a year, I still reach out for her frequently. The past thirteen months have been filled with memories of Mom, thoughts of what I want to say to her or ask her about, of things I wish I’d done differently, of questions about what eternity is really like.
2011 was a tough year. I have worked really hard at my job, and I’ve moved once and begun a second move. I’ve embraced my singleness, letting go of most of the vague dreams I once had of some fictional Prince Charming, realizing I am pretty content in my life with my pets and my friends. I’ve done all of it while mourning the loss of my mom. I have confronted everything with enthusiasm, in Mom’s example. So, in spite of the pain, I’ve begun to be relatively happy again.
There is a saying, “out with the old, in with the new.” I prefer “hold onto the old, welcome the new.” The old must never be tossed out; it makes us who we are. We must hold onto it, cherish it, nurture it, so that we are open and ready to enfold the new into us, and assimilate it all into a new whole.  As I face 2012, I resolve to hold onto the memories of my mom and all she meant to me, as well as all the rest of the good and bad of my past, and welcome the new adventure that is in front of me. There will be difficult days ahead, but life is still precious, sweet, and bittersweet. I am grateful for all I’ve been given. God is still good, and I am still His.


[i] Because NC’s coastal geography juts in, then out, then back, some of its coasts are western-facing. Little known and lovely fact.

November Again

It is November. The brisk morning air and falling leaves remind me that summer is long past, and all around me I see evidence that Thanksgiving is just around the corner. I saw, in fact, as I drove home from work tonight, the years’ first stupidly early Christmas tree behind a neighborhood picture window. It is now just two weeks shy of the anniversary of my mother’s death.
On Sunday, I was gladdened to hear a friend tell me how wonderful it has been to have her mom nearby for the last few years. She expressed her disappointment that her mom had just left to visit her sister in another state through the holidays. A few minutes later she asked what I was doing for Thanksgiving, and I hesitated briefly before telling her that I’ll be taking my mom’s brother to her grave that weekend, that it’s been a year since her death and he hasn’t been back since the funeral. My friend commiserated a bit, then said how happy she is that her mom lives nearby now, and how lovely it is to have her here to be a grandmother to her children. She paused, then began, “I don’t know what I’ll do when Mom…” She couldn’t finish the sentence, of course; who can? My heart broke anew when she looked at me as her eyes filled. Finally she said, “I can’t imagine how horrible it must be.”
This month has been and will continue to be, I expect, the most difficult period in weeks. Every reminder of Thanksgiving fills me with regret and anguish. It is not surprising; I was expecting this month to be difficult. How can it not be? One nightmarish, empty year has nearly passed, and nothing fills the void. I continue to be shocked occasionally by the sudden realization that she is gone, to disbelieve it briefly, to think of things I want to tell her. There is nothing I can do except remember her with love, offer profound gratitude to God for giving us the years we had, and remind anyone who will listen, as I did my friend on Sunday, that they must leave nothing unsaid or undone, and that they must take advantage of every fleeting opportunity for sweet communion. 

Generous Empathy

A few nights ago, my phone rang and I didn’t answer it, as I was occupied with something else. Several minutes later, I listened in anguish to my voicemail, as a friend tearfully told of his mother’s death the day before. I called him back and wept with him as he told of his all-too-familiar disbelief and overwhelming grief, her relative vigor in spite of being in a nursing home, and his recent hopeful thoughts that she might actually outlive him. In spite of everything I’ve gone through in the past months, I didn’t have anything to say to him except that I am so sorry.
He is the second of my friends who have lost their moms in the past few weeks. In both cases, the ladies were quite elderly, had lived long and relatively healthy lives almost right up to the end, and their adult children and grandchildren knew they had only a little more time with them. Nevertheless…death came as a hateful shock and left behind people feeling like orphans. I wanted to help my friends somehow, to say something that would assuage their sorrowful hearts. My pastor recently spoke about how God’s dealings with us are not for us only, that they are meant to teach us and lead us to a place of generous empathy for the pain of others, and I’ve lived that truth out in the past. I’ve experienced the joyful awe of being an agent of comfort for someone because of what I’ve gone through. This time, though, when my friend called, I had nothing of value to say.
As I drove home this evening, I realized I was, and am, a little depressed. My friend’s phone call is on my mind, making me remember. I can still hear my uncle’s voice on the phone telling me, “Your mama’s dead.” He didn’t mean to sound insensitive, and I suppose he was hurting so much he wasn’t thinking clearly, but those words call out in my head over and over, and each time they tear my emotions apart. I think of my friends hearing those words from someone, and it breaks my heart all over again.
Losing my mom has made me more sensitive, and I am particularly empathetic toward those who are suffering loss. I’m glad to have this heightened empathy, but the ache in my own soul intensifies when someone, even someone with whom I’m not close, loses someone they love. Perhaps my own grief is too recent, too fresh and raw for me to draw on that empathy in a way that will help them. Maybe time will do its work and I will eventually be able to minister to others. For now, I just don’t think anything I might say will help them or me. Their grief, like mine, must be allowed to take its course, as long as it must, and generous empathy will have to wait.

Still

So it’s been a long time since I’ve written anything in the blog. Part of it is busyness. Part of it is an attempt to escape.
I have often thought of things I wanted to say in this medium. There is a stack of ideas in my head. They are not yet on paper. Every time I’ve thought of something I wanted to write about, I’ve gotten myself involved in some other activity and put the ideas out of my mind. They recede into the shadows but reemerge shortly, in vague feelings of melancholy or overwhelming waves of grief. They are always with me because thoughts of Mom are always with me.
In August, I went in to see my doctor for my yearly physical. She always chats with me a bit before getting to the exam. As usual she asked me, “So how are you doing?” I responded, “Well, it’s been a tough few months. My mom died last November.” And the tears started. When she was able to wipe the stunned look off her face, she recommended antidepressants, and I didn’t argue.
In recent months, I have moved home to a coastal city where Mom and I lived when I was little. I had wanted desperately to move back here while she was alive, as it would put me within two hours of her house. The move away from here just three years ago seemed so right at the time; I sincerely thought that an extra hour in the commute to her house would not be all that significant. I was so wrong. It was a terrible, horrible decision. That extra hour made an easy day trip impossible, and I was no longer able to be the kind of help she desperately needed. I am absolutely convinced that the absence of my frequent help contributed to her death. That is hard to take but take it I must. So here I am again, “home,” and I’m glad to be here. Nevertheless, it is bittersweet. Reminders of her are all around, and knowing I managed to get back here too late is a dagger in my soul.
My doctor said something to me as she was discussing the antidepressants: “I want you to feel sad when you think of your mother. I just don’t want it to stop you from living your life.” I think Mom would agree with that, frankly. I can go on. I can live my life, spend time with friends, even laugh and have fun. Nevertheless, the ache is always there, the knowing that she is not here with me, and yes, the wishing I had made different choices. I feel her presence and her absence at the same time, and sometimes it invades my whole being. Medicine may help, but there is no remedy for this, except maybe for time, doing its work, little by little. 

In the Wilderness

One of the devotionals that I often read, Streams in the Desert, was compiled by an American missionary named L.B. Cowman, who served in the early 20th century with her husband in the Far East. As its name implies, it is intended to minister to those going through difficult times, what we Christians often call “wilderness seasons.” I’ve been reading this one for a very long time.
This present wilderness began in Spring 2006, when a very important companion animal died. I had a bond with this particular cat that was unusual, even for me, an avowed “animal person;” he was as much a child to me as I can imagine, never having had a child of my own. I mourned him hard. Follow that in Summer 2006 with the death of my marriage, then the death of my work in 2007, then in 2008 a move away from ALL of my friends, and the restarting of a former career. In 2010, I began to think I was coming out of the wilderness: I was rekindling some lovely old friendships, was in my element at work, had traveled twice to Spain, the land that has my heart, and was enjoying an interesting relationship with a guy I was undoubtedly falling in love with. His insulting rejection of me in August of that year proved to me that I was not out of the woods yet, as it were. A few months later, the dénouement: the death of my mother. I plunged deeper in the wilderness than I had ever gone before.
Recently I had lunch with a friend I hadn’t seen in more than a year. This friend and I have both gone through some pretty deep wilderness seasons. I was happy to hear that she seems to be coming out of hers. She has a new job, one that seems to suit her perfectly, is living in a city she loves, three minutes from her parents and less than an hour from her brother, she just joined a church she’s excited about, she’s content in her singleness, and she is happier than she’s been in years. It was good to see her that way! She is coming out of her wilderness and I am beyond happy for her.
This friend had met my mom a time or two. Naturally, she asked about her death, saying “All I know is she was here one day and the next she was gone.” I said, “That’s pretty much all I know, too.” It seems I don’t know anything except that I hurt for the absence of her; I continue to feel more alone than ever.
I don’t often subject people to my sadness. I just try to be happy when I’m with people, and I usually am. When I’m alone, though, all bets are off. I still cry regularly; songs or something I read may set me off. When I get in my car, if the drive is more than an hour or so, sadness will usually overtake me at some point along the journey. This heaviness has become a part of me that I can’t shake. I don’t want to stay in this place, but I can’t seem to come out of it, and maybe I’m not supposed to, at least not for a while longer. It scares me a little though because I don’t want to make this wilderness my home. You’re supposed to go THROUGH a wilderness, not set up permanent residence there.
Most of my friends who’ve lost their moms attest to the lasting quality of the loss. One, a 72 year old woman, told me, “Sometimes I still think of my mama and just boo hoo.” Another friend lost her mother probably thirty years ago now and the last time she mentioned her to me, her eyes filled with tears. Apparently this is normal. So I am coming to terms with the fact that I will probably be in a similar state when I am much older, years from now, and that is okay; she was far too important for me to think I will ever stop missing her. I will not accept that this wilderness is my destiny, though. I will come out from here, when it is time, because my Father will bring me out. He will not leave me here forever.
Who is this coming up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved? I awakened you under the apple tree. There your mother brought you forth; there she who bore you brought you forth. Song of Solomon 8:5 Holy Bible, New King James Version

Therefore, behold, I will allure her, will bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfort to her. Hosea 2:14  Holy Bible, New King James Version

The Importance of Hearing

A few days ago, a caring friend asked me what I missed most about my mom. I thought for only a second or two before I responded, “Her voice.” Suddenly I felt the tears and before they could overflow, I said, “Stop, enough. I can’t talk about it.” My friend felt terrible as he tried to change the subject for me and move on from my unexpected reaction. I realized later that, strangely, I hadn’t thought before of this horrible truth: the familiar voice that I loved so much is slowly fading from memory and becoming harder to recall. This disturbs and saddens me.

It is said that of blindness and deafness, deafness is worse. Most hearing, seeing people seem to disagree with that, but I can totally understand it. I am a language geek, dialect mimic, music lover and dilettante maker of same. Sounds of nature fascinate me; one of my favorite CDs is music interspersed with nature sounds and wildlife calls. I so love the ocean partly because of the sounds of the waves pounding the shore and the seagulls calling to each other. When I study, I must have quiet; music only distracts me, draws me in. Often in the car, I turn the radio off so I can think. When I’m doing housework, however, I want music playing, loud enough for me to really hear it. And when I go to a concert, I want it LOUD, really loud, so nothing distracts from the entire experience of the music. Sounds comfort me, excite me, fascinate, disturb or distract me. Whether lovely or loud, sound is of vital importance to me.

Right now, just over seven months since her death, I can still hear the rich, velvetiness of my mother’s voice. For most of my life, she had a soft North Carolina accent that made her a delight for employers in Colorado, California and Germany; they were thrilled to have her as one of the “voices” of their organizations. During the last years of her life, her accent was made more pronounced as she shared her home with her sister, who rarely left the Southern Appalachian Mountains; I teased her sometimes about sounding like a hillbilly. Her singing voice was deep in the alto range; treasured are my memories of singing with her. She took the harmony as we sang together, until I learned from her to harmonize as she did — a third below the melody; we favored Gospel and Country songs as our repertoire. After years of smoking, she lost much of her range but the notes she retained were still strong and full.

Hearing her voice in my head makes me smile. Bits of our conversations sound as real as the times I actually heard her speaking. Several specific things she would say are fixed in my memory. When anyone said something nice about me or my sister, she would affect this silly and unidentifiable accent and say, “Well, of course; she only takes aftah her mothah!” When she would call me and leave a message for me to call her, she would usually begin with, “Now, nothin’s wrong…” because she knew I worried about her. And her usual greeting to me: “Hey, Baby Girl.”  Her laugh is there, too, uninhibited, throaty, filled with abandon and absolutely contagious.

It scares me, though, that already some of her words are starting to fade from my memory; I have to think really hard to bring them to mind. She loved to watch “Dog the Bounty Hunter,” and she would tell me about it sometimes. I can’t hear her voice saying the word, “dog,” though. I can’t hear the accent exactly right. She would greet loved ones with a happy, “Hey!” but I can’t remember which word she favored with people she didn’t know very well, whether it was “hi,” “hello,” or something else. This forgetfulness is disturbing; I want to remember her voice!  I want to remember how she sounded as we sang together, and the sound of her laugh. Most of all, I want to remember her calling my name or calling me “Baby Girl.”

I realize how blessed I am to have been “Baby Girl” to her for so long; she called me that for fifty years! How lucky I am! It doesn’t do to feel sorry for myself; there are so many who don’t have their moms for nearly that long. I really do hope, though, that the memory of the sound of her voice stays with me for many more years yet; I dread the thought of saying goodbye to her voice, even though it lives with me only in my head.

Lessons on Darkness

A few days ago, my stepfather and his daughter packed up and drove away with almost everything out of my mother’s home, including photos of my sister and her children, a collection of my mom’s dollar-store figurines, some of my 20 year old nephew’s high school athletic trophies, and a dog that belonged to the same nephew. They did not do this because of love, but rather out of spite and hatefulness, largely because the humble house that my mother lived in belongs to me and so they have no claim on it. How do I know this? I know it because the stepfather actually said, less than two weeks after my mother’s death, that if he couldn’t get the house in his name, he’d burn it down. I know it because of the hateful words his daughter flung at me for no reason, starting just days after my mother’s death and culminating in a phone conversation where she told me that if I wanted her father out of the house, I would have to formally evict him.  I know it because of the mean-spirited insults aimed at my dead mother that so upset my nephew that he had to leave the house in order to maintain his composure.
The day after these angry people finally vacated the house, I read the following Scripture in my favorite wilderness-season devotional, Streams in the Desert[i]:
                And the ugly and gaunt cows ate up the seven fine looking and fat cows…and
 the seven thin heads [of grain] devoured the seven plump and full heads… Genesis 41:4, 7
The author expounded on these verses and drove the point home to me: it is possible for a good life to be overcome by hatefulness, bitterness, and anger, and the transformation God has made in a person may be undone, may even be reversed, if those evil emotions are given space. It reminds me of the words to a popular Christian song: “I don’t want to end up where You found me, and it echoes in my mind, keeps me awake at night…”[ii]  These words ring true; in recent days, I’ve thought of these two people with more hatred than I thought I was capable of feeling. The depth of this darkness in myself disappoints and frightens me.
We who call ourselves by the name of Christ are called to love our enemies![iii] How do I do that? How do I love such unlovely people, people who have done things expressly to hurt me? I frankly do not know how to do this. Somehow I have to find it in me to forgive them, and I don’t know how to do that either. What I want is to punish them, make them pay for the wrongs they’ve done, the things they’ve said, the disrespect that stings my mom’s memory. But to live the teachings of my faith, I have to admit the hard truth that I don’t have the right to do that. That right belongs to Another, One whose sandals I am not fit to untie (John 1:27, Holy Bible).  He can choose retribution if He wants, but it isn’t for me to decide.
The price for failing to forgive is high: there is a certain law of reciprocity in place. Jesus said that if we forgive those who hurt us, we will be forgiven, but if we refuse to forgive, we will not be forgiven (Matthew 6:14 – 15, and 18:35). I think the reason for this is not so much God’s unwillingness to forgive us, but rather the toll taken on our souls and minds by anger and bitterness. They fester, like a dirt-filled wound, and before long, infection takes over. In the end, if the infection isn’t overcome, death results. The only way to maintain my relationship with Christ is to cleanse myself of the foul emotions that are poisoning my soul.
I know what Mom would say: “Don’t let these people destroy you, Baby Girl; they aren’t worth it.” And she’d be right. It may take me a while to accomplish, years, I would surmise, and along the way I will probably often give in to my baser self, but with the help of the One who won’t let me go, I will forgive. I know that I’m not holding on to Him, but he’s holding on to me.[iv]

[i] Cowman, L.B. and Reiman, J., Streams in the Desert, Zondervan, 1999 edition.
[ii] Casting Crowns, East to West, The Altar and the Door, 2007
[iii] Matthew 5:44, Holy Bible, Zondervan.
[iv] Casting Crowns, East to West, The Altar and the Door, 2007. 

Mother’s Day

Dear Mom,
Happy Mother’s Day. I know you are not HERE, breathing the air of Earth with me, but you are HERE, in my thoughts, in my soul, in my heart. I could say I miss you, but that would not begin to express the depth of what I’m feeling today, this first Mother’s Day without you.
The world feels darker and colder this year than in Mother’s Days past. The sun shines less brightly and the birds don’t sing as prettily. Music is less soulful and the stars don’t twinkle as they once did. Even the flowers are less colorful and fragrant. But the worst of all is I am more alone than I’ve ever been.
On the other hand, because you were and are my mom, I appreciate the warmth of the sun on my skin and the melody of birdsong; because of you, I know that these are gifts of the Most High and that I must never take them for granted. I adore daisies and black-eyed Susans and the scent of roses, thanks to you. Some of my most treasured memories are of singing along with you and the radio or with you playing guitar; because of you, Mommy, music moves me. And thanks to you, I know that the stars shine brightest when the world is darkest.
It is true that I am more alone than I’ve ever been. But I’ve never been really alone, not even now. I carry you and your legacy in all that I do, think and feel. Thank you, Mom, for everything you did to make me who I am. For better or worse, I’m your daughter and I always will be.
I love you still, Mommy. 

Fear and Doubt

Fear and doubt have been nagging at me since Mom died. It is one thing to believe in Heaven and a good and sovereign God when the sun is shining and all is right with your world. It is quite another when the person you love most in the world is no longer living and breathing next to you. I have found my faith shaken these past few months.
If you listen to some Christian teachers, you’ll be asked to believe God sits on His throne rolling His eyes at our stupidity in doubting Him, yet the Bible is full of reassurances to the faint of heart. Max Lucado, in his Fearless: Imagine Your Life Without Fear[i], says Christ is recorded as having said, “Fear not,” “Have courage,” “Take heart,” or similar imperatives 21 times in the Gospels. The psalms again and again urge us to trust in the Lord and not fear. Psalm 112:7 tells us that “[the righteous] will have no fear of bad news,” that they trust in the Lord.” Perhaps the most famous word to us faint of heart is Psalm 91.
 I had asked Mom a few weeks before her death what her favorite Bible verse was, and she unhesitatingly said, “Psalm 91.” “Verse, Mama, VERSE,” I replied. She couldn’t narrow it down; the WHOLE CHAPTER was her favorite. I like it, too; that particular psalm comforted me over a period of time many years ago when I first lived alone and would be nervous going from my car to the front door.  I re-read it after Mom died, and it’s really no wonder why she loved it so much; she, as I, often needed comforting.
Mom’s life was hard. She had lived life exuberantly and with abandon for many years, but for the last ten or so, she was very, very poor, at least by US standards. Her back and neck surgeries, necessary because of two car accidents she had in the early 1990’s, left her in pain most of the time and robbed her of her income. She worried a lot about getting by, and she worried even more about those she loved. When I was a teenager, she was afraid for herself and my sister and me because of the violent men she attached herself to. Until their deaths, she was anxious about her mom and her sister, for various and very real reasons. But lately, her greatest concerns were for my sister’s children.
She loved those children more than she loved anyone, even me, and she loved me with all of her being. She would often ask me to pray for them. She was afraid that her precious grandchildren would quit school, get involved in drugs and crime, never make a good life for themselves. She used to call me after talking with my sister or with one of the grandkids, to tell me whatever was happening, and I could hear the fear in her voice. She just wanted them to be safe, happy, and living “in the shadow of the Almighty.”
Psalm 91 portrays God as having wings. Verse 4 says, “He shall cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you shall take refuge.” Some have said that this is referring to angels, because if we are created in the image of God, we would have wings if He does, and since we don’t, He doesn’t. Perhaps. There are other things in the Bible that I don’t fully understand. I just know my mom took comfort in knowing that she was safe under the wings of God, and she wanted the same for those she loved. 
Did God provide all these words of encouragement not to be afraid because He was mad at us? Isn’t it more likely that our loving, Heavenly Father knew that we are weak and frightened and wanted to reach out to us in hopeful reassurance? That’s what my Mom believed. It’s what I believe, too. My faith isn’t in danger, I don’t think. I’m asking questions now that may never be answered, at least not in the Temporal, and I’m not as sure of myself as I once was. Nevertheless, I can still say with doubters everywhere, “I may falter in my steps, but never beyond Your reach.”[ii]

[i] Lucado, Max, Fearless: Imagine Your Life Without Fear, Thomas Nelson: 2009
[ii] Rich Mullins, “Sometimes By Step,” The World as Best as I Remember It, Volume 2,” Kid Brothers of St. Frank Publishing, 1992.
All quotes from the Holy Bible are from the New International Version.

Mom’s Car

I sold Mom’s car yesterday. It’s a good thing because I had cosigned on the note, and we were totally upside down on it. But it’s bittersweet. Seeing that car pull away pulled at my heart.
I had become accustomed to seeing it parked in my carport, and it was somehow comforting and painful at the same time; it was almost as if I expected to find her inside when I got home.  Mom loved that car so much; she had always admired big, fancy cars.  When her Intrepid’s engine gave out about a year and a half ago, she found this Cadillac, a 2000 Deville. It was a gorgeous car: silver, shiny, and beautiful. Mom was in love. I can still hear her voice on the phone when she got the car home:  “You should see my beautiful car!”
Mom didn’t get to drive her Cadillac very much. Her health deteriorated a bit soon after she bought it, so she didn’t feel up to getting out a lot, and she had a little trouble with the car, too. She put about six thousand miles on it, and then she had to put it in the shop for about two thousand dollars’ worth of work. That’s why we were upside down on the loan; she had to refinance it to pay for the work.
The last year of Mom’s life was even more stressful than the preceding ones: the deaths of two important family members, the instability of my sister and her children, my issues, her very crabby, jealous and opinionated husband, her financial struggles. Now even her car wasn’t right. She was such a lover of her independence, and for a few months, that independence was severely impaired. She was really happy when the car was finally repaired and running as it should. Unfortunately, she died less than a month later, even before the first payment on the refinance was made.
I know I had to sell the car. And I’m very grateful that God sent a buyer so quickly. Nevertheless, it’s another piece of my mother that is no longer with me. I noticed when I was preparing the car to sell that there was a rabies tag on her keychain – it was Annebelle’s. Annebelle, a poodle we’d gotten when we lived in Germany, was a piece of Mom’s heart, that one-in-a-million companion animal that Mom loved as much as she did her children. She died in the 90’s after some 20 years with Mom. Her rabies tag is on my keychain now. Mom would be happy about that. It makes me happy, too. Or at least less sad.