1985

When I was thirteen, my mother's sister, Irene, died of cancer.  In the process of the disease wasting her body and crippling her abilities, it fell to me to wash and set her hair once a week. I discovered the seeming knack for cutting, perming and styling hair out of the sheer desperation my sisters and I experienced at the hands of  our mother's innate lack of ability in the hair styling arena.  Our bangs were always too short and perpetually crooked, and Mother rolled our hair on permanent waving rods on Saturday afternoons!  We all went to church looking like we had been electrocuted the evening before!  In fourth grade, I looked in the mirror one morning and declared, " I know I can do better than this!"  I may have been only slightly better; but, in our family, that was good enough!

Aunt Rene's  house smelled of raw liver and carrot juice, a valiant concoction she drank faithfully in the hope of a cure.  Impending death had made the house very quiet, and it caused me to be somewhat uncomfortable speaking out loud.  Despite my reservations about being there, my aunt always seemed genuinely uplifted by my traveling hair salon, and I loved knowing I was making her feel better.  When Aunt Rene died, my uncle asked me if I would do her hair for the funeral, in the morgue, on the slab.  Mother was not sure I should, but my uncle really wanted me to; so, my Aunt Taulee and Mother decided we would all three go to the mortuary and get Irene ready.  It honestly was not maudlin.  To my teenage insensitivities, she seemed merely asleep.  Mother and Aunt Taulee filed Irene's fingernails and in general straightened her up while I fixed her hair just the way I did when she had occupied the body now cold and lifeless.  As the crowd of relatives and friends passed by her casket two days later, I was proud that I had had a part in making her look "so natural."

Twenty-four years later, the circumstances found me having to make the same decision about my mother.  On one of my weekly visits, she asked me if I would help her get things ready for the funeral home.  We were sitting on her back porch watching Will, my son, play in the back yard.  It was June of 1985 and bees were humming, birds were chirping, and flowers were grinning at us from everywhere in the garden.  Mother's thick green grass seemed to enjoy tripping my toddler's fat little feet as he waddled through the emerald blades.  The sun was hot and the air heavy with the crossing scents of roses and lagustrum; jasmine and honeysuckle.  Life was virtually teeming in Mother's yard; winter was left far behind as nature resurrected itself.  But for Mother, there would be not resurrection to joy.  This was her final season.

I was unaware that while I was sitting beside her enjoying the sparkling, lively day, she was speculating about what she would wear in her coffin. "Did you want me to do that today, Mother?"

"Yes, if you would help me.  It's something I think about often and I would just like to have it done," she said, smiling a half-smile and looking at me tentatively.  "Also, would you...do you think you could...fix..my ..hair?  Like you did for Rene?"

Wow!  I was not thirteen any more and this was my mother! The thought made me swallow hard with a certain unnamed trepidation.  My mind was picturing her dead on the slab, and in that imagination all I could do was sob. I could not look objectively into that future circumstance and say with any certainty that I would be capable of the task.  I sat down beside her on the redwood bench on her porch and wrapped my healthy robust arms around her frail jaundiced body.  I held her as tightly as I dared for fear of snapping her in two.  Tears trying to well up in my eyes made my lips quiver and my voice shaky.  "Mother, I will try to do whatever you want me to do."

She cried then; starved for tenderness.  We had not known.  Left now more bereft than ever of the comfort she should have been able to expect after all those years with Daddy.  "I will miss you, Kay.  I will miss you more than you will miss me."

"How can you say that, Mother?"  I was genuinely nonplussed.

"Well, I am going away all alone.  I am a little afraid."  Anxiety registered in her eyes.  I wanted to protect her once more.

"Mother, Jesus will be there.  You'll see your sisters, your brother, grandmother and granddaddy. It is you who will be so complete that you won't have time to miss us.  Besides, I do not think time has much meaning in heaven.  We could all live to be one hundred and still be there with you before you know it."

Almost before these words clambered from my lips, I realized that I was not saying what she needed to hear.  Mother needed me to say how much I would miss her - how deeply I loved her.  She wanted to say good-bye; she did not want my  logical rendition of how life was going to be when her feet touched streets of gold.  Mother wanted to know she had mattered on this planet, to this family.

"Mother, you are a remarkable woman.  You are creative, intuitive, and organized.  You have given me a Christian heritage and all your daughters possess your love of beauty and gift for hospitality.  I will miss the sound of your voice.  You are almost always the first person with whom I want to share the good things in my life. I remember when you took off work early on the day my boyfriend moved away because you knew I would be upset.  You encouraged me and loved me, Mother.  You can never be replaced or forgotten.  I love you.  You deserve to be loved."

Mother took in the words like parched drought-ridden land drinks in water, plumping her spirit, quenching her soul-thirst.  "Thank you, precious," she managed through her tears.  Her body relaxed in my embrace and her eyes brightened. "I still think I'll miss you more," she chuckled through her relief.

"Whatever, Mother," I replied, squeezing her gently.

With my son napping after lunch, Mother and I went into her bedroom and opened her closet.  She had already prepared a box in which to place her funeral clothes. "I know it will be pink...whatever you have chosen is pink, right?" Mother smiled knowingly at me and pulled a pink silk suit out of its place of honor among the few hanging dresses.  She was an excellent seamstress and had sewn this outfit a few years prior.  Next she took her jewelry box down from its place on the dresser and collected the earrings and necklace she wanted to wear.  No shoes - they don't show anyway.  Mother lay down on her bed while I gently folded pink on pink layers of her last earthly apparel, wrapping it in tissue paper; then, I put it to bed in a box that would next be opened when she was not longer there.