1985

It was my thirty-seventh birthday party at my parents' home. August third. Seated about the table with us were my sisters and their families. Cobalt blue and white plates held steaming food, generic food, as it became so unimportant as to be invisible. The plates my mother had purchased in Germany when she went there with my father rather than be left in the U.S. alone. "Maybe we should just go our separate ways," Daddy had said. "I am taking the sales job in Germany." Uprooted in her sixties, she went. She loved the dinnerware set, though. Each piece had a picture of a serene cottage nestled amongst the foliage of pine-scented mountain firs. Mother had an eye for beauty.

As I recall it, now that time has made the birthday scene more hazy, drenched in an incandescence that softens the death sentence pronounced there, I am not as completely overcome as I once was. Cancer coursed through Mother's veins and clenched its fist about her liver and turned her saffron-colored. There was no sparkle left in her eyes; the joy had been siphoned from them one waking moment after another. Stick-thin and concave save for the tumor that protruded from her abdomen and threatened to consume her bit by bit, she managed to pick at the food before her though I do not recall her eating much of it.

August third is also the birthday of my first child. My best birthday present ever, delivered to me from my own body, warm, sweet and beautiful eleven years before. The meal this day was made more festive by the dual celebration. There was cake and ice cream and, of course, presents. In her naivety my mother handed me what would be my last gift from her. Hovering over the small package was a sense of import that its size belied. It came with a message that permeated the air with dread and turned our joy into mourning with the swiftness of a knife blade to the heart. I had not removed the first piece of tape from the little wrapped present before my mother said: "I wanted you all to know that this is my last meal. I am ready to die. I have prayed about this. Eating nauseates me anyway. So, I will probably be gone in the next few days."

No tears. No passion. No fear. Ailing even more in soul and spirit than in body, my mommy just wanted to go "home." My mind had to reorganize the words that punctuated the air, arranged in a meaning foreign to my experience. People want to live, not die. The brave fight; they don't quit. Mothers do not decide to leave their children even when their children have children. "You cannot do this, Mother," I said, not so dispassionately as she had made her death announcement.

Tears stung my eyes and blurred her face for a moment. I blinked her back into focus and saw the tired resignation that had in the past few months stolen from her the will to exist. Her whole purpose for living had been in question all that spring and into the summer. Married the wrong man once. Married the wrong man again. Should have married the Catholic man, but he did not come back from the war first. Been taken for granted all these years. My life was not what I thought it was. Didn't even know my own husband. Been a fool. Been rejected in bed. "You just lie there!" "Let's just live as companions." Didn't know what she had done with her life that even mattered. What had she even lived for?

"But, Mother, you have your daughters and grandchildren who love you and whose lives matter! We would not even be without you."

"I know. I know. But I have been so deceived."

"Yes, Mother. You have."

At the other end of the maudlin birthday table sat her deceiver. To say that looking at his face was difficult would be a bitter understatement.  Dying sweetly surrounded by loving husband and devoted children who rejoiced in a life well spent was not an option for my mother because of the stench of death that had accompanied our father home from jail in January. The odor seeped out from under doors and windows and spread its poison to the driveway before we even made our way to the front door. Mother wanted out of the oppressive atmosphere and could no longer walk away on her own two steady legs.

So we all cried together. What else was there to do? Mourning with her became in that moment as important as mourning for her would be in the weeks to come. We loved her and would walk through the valley of the shadow of death with her. She thought it would take three or four days. It took weeks.

Later that evening I opened the gift. Glistening in the box before me were the earrings from Saks NYC that my dad had brought back to her from his recent trip. I know she thought she was giving me something truly valuable. He told her they were amethysts, but they were glass. Wasn't that just like him? A reasonable facsimile.