I'm back: What Happened

Ashen Wings

My sister and I flew back today, and I’ve just gotten home and decided to post before my bags are entirely unpacked. That was the most emotionally and physically exhausting thing I’ve ever done, and I’ll post more thoughts about the whole process later. This will just be about how Mom died and what we did to send her off.

Mom died in her sleep, apparently peacefully; we were told her covers were still on her and there was no sign that she’d been struggling to get out of bed or go for help. For personal reasons, we didn’t order an autopsy. I talked to her doctor, and he said it’s possible that she’d died from cardiac arrhythmia leading to heart failure. Mom had hypertension and diabetes and had been being tested for a weak heart valve, so her heart was under a lot of pressure. He told me nothing she had was necessarily hereditary, although diabetes always bears watching.

I flew up Friday, arriving Saturday morning, and stayed with one of Mom’s two closest friends, Carol, who runs the Neko-Chan Trading Company. She and Mom’s other close friend, Liz, called the three of them the “Weird Sisters,” and Carol and Liz were Godsends to me, giving me a place to stay and driving me around and telling me wistfully affectionate stories about their times with Mom, which meant a lot to me. They, of course, were devasted, too, but they stopped at nothing to support me and Leah, who flew up several days later.

A few months ago, Carol’s mother had died (she’s had a bad time recently, I’m afraid), and they had her cremated. At that time, Mom had expressed an interest in being cremated, so I used the same service Carol had used. Neither Leah nor I wanted to attend the cremation, so I simply picked up the box of ashes when it was done. Since we knew we were going to spread them, we didn’t invest in an urn.

The night Leah flew in, we held a sort of Buddhist/pagan wake in the glassed-in patio in Carol’s back yard. I think most of you knew that Mom’s beliefs were esoteric; she was a Tendai Buddhist with a strong interest in Tibetan practices, and she was an animist in the Native American tradition, as well, with the Kodiak bear as her totem. Carol and her son Dave and his wife Kate; Liz and her husband Randy; another of Mom’s friends, Sabitri, and her niece; and Leah and I were all there. We put Mom’s ashes on a table to one side along with a candle, a bear skull, her medicine basket, and a beautiful image of her made by one of Mom’s friends on Creative Matrix’s tribute site to Skydancer. A large, old leather-covered drum sat in the middle, and everyone started beating on it as the Buddhists chanted a mantra to guide Mom on her way through the bardo, the “49 day” journey from one life to the next. Later others drummed on their own hand-held flat drums and other mantras were chanted, including ones to Fudo Myo-o, a Japanese god whom Mom was particularly fond of, and to Ganesh, who removes obstacles, and one meant to guide spirits to the Pure Land. Chants and drumming between friends at night in candlelight is more moving than you might think, and I believe Mom would have appreciated it very much. At the very end, they moved her ashes and totem symbols to the big drum and Carol and Liz did a “drum smudge” around it, moving around and around the drum and her ashes in a circle as they drummed her spirit onward. Everyone was in tears at the end, even Randy, who was an elder in the Lutheran Church. Coming from a Catholic tradition myself but having a one river, many wells view of religion, I added my own quiet prayers to the rest, bidding the saints to help her along her way, too.

The next afternoon, after doing more clearing of her apartment, Carol, Liz, Leah, and I went down to the park behind Mom’s apartment and found an old tree that Carol and Liz said she’d especially liked and had photographed. We walked in with the ashes, a drum, and a thick white sage smudge stick. Something crashed through the woods and we all started, half-expecting a questioning ranger, only to see two brown deer running past. Leah scattered the ashes around the base of the tree not visible from the path while Liz drummed and Carol smudged. I simply bore witness. Then Liz read a farewell she’d written for Mom and also said the night before, and we headed back up for dinner at one of their hangouts, Joe’s Crab Shack, and some stiff drinks.

So, that was how we said goodbye to Mom. It’s been difficult, and now that I’m not running around trying to settle all her affairs, I’m afraid I’ll finally be hit much harder. Mom wasn’t an easy person to get to know. She moved far away after the divorce and never asked Leah or me to visit; when we offered, she’d demur and protest that she wouldn’t know how to entertain us; as if family needs entertaining. As a result, we only saw her a few times, years apart, and not at all in recent years. In fact, Leah and Jerimy had just been planning to visit her in October, because we all agreed it had been too long, so this was an especially hard blow to Leah.

But Carol and Liz agreed; Mom was very introverted and, while she loved spending time with them and enjoyed all her e-friends on various art and parrotlet and diabetes lists, she needed a lot of time to herself. So on the one hand, I hadn’t seen Mom in many years, and that makes this final separation, maybe, a little easier than if we’d been very close. On the other hand, it leaves me with lots of questions about her life that I’d hoped might eventually be answered by her in future years; I don’t feel like I ever knew her very well, and now I won’t get that chance. And I’m deeply grieved that she’ll never see my first book published; that pretty much brings me to tears every time I think about it. It’s going to be very difficult.

I’ll write more later: about how much all of you need to write wills and make sure your family has wills, and about clearing her house and “100 Buddhas.” In the meantime, thank you for your comments, and thanks to you who have sent cards: I still need to go through my mail, after I’ve finished unpacking. One thing this emphasizes to me (always seek the lesson, and I’ve learned several) is that life can’t be predicted. I haven’t seen some of you in a long time. Let’s get together soon for dinner.

drupagliassotti @ August 23, 2007