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.

Mom's Disease - Humor

Mom had this disease, a speech impediment which caused her to say hysterical, dumb, or embarrassing things. She explained it this way: "My tongue gets wrapped around my eye teeth, and I can't see what I'm saying."

A lot of things she said cracked us up, worried us, or embarrassed us. Sometimes all at once. I doubt most of them were original, but the way she used them, they were hers. Even during my teenage years, after I'd heard them all a thousand times, they would still crack me up. Even in front of my friends.

My brother, Bill, recalls, (you'll have to ask him how fondly) her saying, "I brought you into this world and I can take you out." I don't recall her saying that to me. Draw from this what you will.

Most double mastectomy breast cancer survivors don't tend to make a lot of jokes about it. Bill reminded me that Mom did.

"I was standing in a group (at Publix) showing off some new meatballs and my boob dropped onto the floor."
("Who else could say that with a straight face?" -Bill)
He forgot to mention the second part. "As I bent over to pick it up, apologizing to the embarrassed man in front of me, the other one fell out!"

The one that always made me nervous was the one she used if she owed me something, such as if she were a couple of bucks short at the grocery store and borrowed it from me.

"Mom, may I have my two dollars?"
"What two dollars?"
"You borrowed it from me a couple of days ago at Safeway, remember?"
"Don't worry. I'll owe you til I die before I'll cheat you out of it." "..."

Even when it made me nervous, the way she said it, so innocently, so sincerely, so tauntingly (all at once), usually made me smile.

She would have done well on stage.

Dad has a great sense of humor as well, but Mom articulated hers a lot more. We kids all ended up with it. When our self described "Evil stepmother" (who I lovingly call Mom now that Mom #1 is gone)-- a wonderful counselor and hospice manager-- called us together to help us prepare for Mom's death (her 412th (whatever) bout with cancer was finally claiming her physical life), it rapidly degenerated into a joke fest, discussing things such as bronzing Mom and standing her up over her grave, and what her pose should be (picking up her rubber boob after it fell out?). Wink just stared at us at first, then relaxed. We might not cope normally, but we'd cope.

And we have.

As I finished writing this, I realized that Mom kept her promise. Over my childhood and teenage years she probably borrowed $20 - $30 ($50 to $100 in today's money) from me. She owed me til she died, but she never cheated me out of it.