My Last Christmas with Mom, 2009

It was Christmas, 2009, and I was sitting on the bed, on her bed, next to my mother.  Her health and mood were terrific though privately I believe she was in trouble.  As I sat next to her, she took up a duo with the crooner Crosby in "White Christmas," rocking her torso left then right to the soothing melody that took her to teenage Christmas memories.  She interrupted her reverie with a story about her singing in choir and how she was recognized by others for her voice.  No doubt.  Her mother was a prominent opera singer on circuit in the west.  I altered the mood by switching from Christmas music to Crosby singing duo with Louis Armstrong "That Sugar Baby O' Mine."  It filled her with joy.  She began recalling all of the great moments of her youth.  In that moment, in that far-reaching moment years from Dad's amorous and steady gestures of affection with her, I was her sugar.  I was her sugar-substitute.  Not the real thing; nevertheless, some thing.  I sat next to her, swaying gently with her literally at the hip, a gesture that said that we were joined forever at the hip; it was an appreciation of the other.  I appreciated her for her love, as good as she could give it.  She appreciated me for being there for her, thanking me for my efforts on her behalf.  The love was mutual, which elevated the two of us from family, from son and daughter to two friends comforting one another and enjoying each other's company.  No demands were placed on the other.  It was just easy-going love.  Thank you, Mom, for letting me sit next to you, for letting me bring my boom-box and play your music, which after decades of your influence became my music.

 

It has been hard without her.  No one to love.  Loving you was easy, Mom.  You weren't demanding.  If you needed anything, you'd tell me.  I remember the last time that I went to the store for you.  I went to Trader Joe's in Monrovia, got you a loaf of delicious rustic wheat bread, butter, and strawberry jam, what seemed to be your favorite in the last 20 years, if not forever.  And you devoured it.  You loved butter but you understood intuitively the healthful properties of fat.  People always talked about your diet as though it were something odd, but it was intelligently nutritious.  You used to eat peanut butter on bread with a sliced banana for sweetener.  You'd add butter, and lots of it.  You'd eat cheese, again going for the fat.  And finally for an insurance amount of protein, you'd eat the cold cuts, like Oscar Mayer's bologna and chase it all down with a glass of whole or 2% milk.  You'd eat standing stationary, a step from the refrigerator door, and enjoy the backyard sounds of birds or neighbors' voices or barking dogs.  I miss you, Mom, and I miss your house.  Charlen and Sally and Mary miss you, of course.  We all do, and you know this.  The one daughter of yours who seems to best match your wonderful personality is Mary.  With her, I feel comfortable.  I don't know that I would tell her that for she might start to act weird with me afterwards, but that is how I feel now.  The last time I saw her was on her birthday in 2011 and we took pictures.

Christmas was my mom's favorite holiday.  She liked them all, but decorated the house to the hilt on Christmas.  Kathleen Larkin used to send her annually a new wreath with hollies and other flowers.  My mom loved each one of them.  Put them on the front door on full green and red display.  My mom owned a Santa in a truck, several Christmas stockings that she would drape across the brick mantle over the fireplace, a beautiful nativity scene, and Christmas bulbs from the old days.  She might have liked something like this . . .