Mama Died

I type this listening to songs from It's a Beautiful Day by the band of the same name. I played "White Bird " for Mom and she loved it as much as I did. I don't recall what she thought of the rest, but several of the other songs are strangely apropo as well.

It's been several years since Mom died. To this day, though, for some unfathomable reason, when I say or type "Mom died", I hear the Grateful dead singing Merle Haggard's "Mama Tried" as "Mama died, mama died."

We had seen her for the first time in a while at Esther's boot camp graduation. Kathleen said she had finally convinced Mom to go to the doctor about her severe stomach pain (IIRC). We headed home a few days later, not too concerned. But we soon got The Call.

"The doctor says Mom's skin is a big bag full of cancer and she has very little time to live." We were on a plane back east within a week. We watched Mom go downhill over the week, but we had so much fun! We relived all sorts of fun, weird, sand, and scary times. I'd brought my guitar; we sang her a song. We laughed, we cried, we ate...

We had been at Dad's 80th birthday that spring and I had promised Mom we would go to her 80th birthday. Since it was now clear she wouldn't be here for that we celebrated early. We went to her favorite restaurant. She was occasionally confused about the occasion and didn't eat much, but we still had fun. It was wonderful how much she remembered, and how interesting our life with her had been, and her life had been before us.

Somewhere in there Dad asked me if I would ask Mom if he could talk to her (their divorce had been, and had remained, less than amicable). Mom agreed, Dad came over, and the rest of us disappeared for a while. They somehow came to terms with each other, with themselves, with life, and reconciled. I find myself in tears just typing this. Obviously I wasn't happy that Mom was dying, but under the circumstances I don't think any of us could have been happier.

One day Wink (who calls herself Mean Old Stepmom but has been a Godsend for Dad and us), a counselor and hospice director, called the kids together to prepare us for what we would be going through. But we had been through enough to know, and shortly in she lost control of the conversation as we joked about Mom, her funeral, the grave, whatever. Her eyes were pretty big as we laughed til we cried, talking about bronzing Mom as a tombstone. But she realized we were coping in the O'Neal way, and she relaxed.

we flew home and Mom was dead within a week. She went downhill much faster that week; I think she had quit fighting after she got her time with all her kids and grandkids. Reconciling with Dad probably helped as well.

The morning of the funeral Bill got a call that we couldn't put Mom in the remaining family plot. Despite the lack of a gravestone, despite the cemetery records saying the space was empty, a relative who shall remain Nameless insisted there was a baby buried there, and that she (Aunt Nameless, not the Dead Baby) would go to court if necessary to prevent Mom being buried with her family. Bill, normally very calm, was nearly apoplectic.

I was pretty skeptical. Even if there was a baby buried there, why was it a big deal to Aunt Nameless who had never bothered to put any sort of marker up, and couldn't really explain who the baby was? (I have since wondered if this wasn't a baby born out of wedlock or out of a "shameful union" and best forgotten from times when such things were scandalous at best.)

Eventually the cemetery found something indicating there was, after all, a baby buried there. They found an alternate location and dug it up. Fast. May I suggest that a cemetery should perhaps be more careful and have accessible records? But we appreciated their speed once they found the mistake.

The funeral occurred, as they are wont to do. Mom was interred. We all went to eat, caught up with cousins, aunts and uncles (Aunt Nameless was absent), nieces and nephews, and assorted relations. We all went home.

Mom's tombstone was delayed as well. Given the cemetery fiasco, it surprised no one. It eventually showed up.

The following Valentine's Day I heard a commercial for PajamaGram. I was inspired. I decided to order a negligee and have it delivered to the cemetery, where it would be draped over the tombstone with a note, "I miss you, Mom! Your loving son." Mom would have loved it, but this was Selma, AL, and I figured the next time one of my siblings showed up at the grave they might get arrested, so I didn't do it.

Yet.

I keep thinking how hysterical Mom would find that.