I wish she knew it is her birthday

The first alarm went off on Friday, a full week before her birthday.

My mom didn’t ask for much on her birthdays. She wasn’t so forgiving for mother’s day or most holidays, but her birthday could have easily been a whisper on the wind, diluted and disappearing into every day life.

Maybe that’s why I liked to make a big deal about it. She asked for nothing for her birthday, so I naturally wanted to offer her everything.

Of course I navigated these feeling with the guilt of any grown adult who could rarely, if ever, be in the same place at the same time as my mother on her birthday.

I bought and sent her gifts that cost too much money. I indulged her weird cravings for odd possessions. I showered her in books. I bought gifts of survival and aging preparedness in a futile battle against her irrational fear of ending up homeless and crippled. I spent what I could, with it never being enough to break the guilt of not providing the one thing she would have loved. A day with me.

So I added in extra reminders to my phone. I would call her specifically to wish her a happy birthday countdown. One week until birthday lift off. Hoping this would help her feel her birthday was even more special.

And when the alarm went off on that Friday. I thought about calling her, but I paused and I remembered the time I called her six or seven years before.

While my mother never made a big deal about her birthday, that was the first time she had ever forgotten her birthday. She was living in the house I grew up in. But my father had left over a year ago. My brother and I had been gone for more than a decade. And yet she had stayed with only memories for roommates until she eventually realized memories can’t help pay a mortgage.

That year I called her and as soon as she answered I yelled, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY WEEK!!!!!”

Her response was paused and confused, “Are you sure? Is it really that time already?”

The worry I felt then, was not so large I couldn’t push it into the part of me where I put all worries small enough to be ignored. So that’s what I did. I pushed it down. I chatted excitedly on the phone. And I was the only one who would have known I paused after hanging up the call to consider my mother living in that house all alone while the days slipped by.

I remembered her forgetting and I did not call my mom when the alarm went off. I put my phone down and went back to bed.

The next alarm didn’t come until Wednesday. Two whole days before her birthday.

This time I did call.

I got the ever infuriating message of, “I’m sorry. The person you are trying to reach has a voicemail box that has not been set up yet. Please try your call again later. Goodbye.”

Hadn’t she asked me to set up her voicemail? My mom had a new phone every six months to a year because she would lose it or drop it, but not once had she figured out how to set up a voicemail.

I should have done that for my mom when she asked so I wouldn’t be sitting here now listening to the recording of a woman’s voice telling me to call back later. But that’s the way it goes. You visit. You get busy catching up. You can’t get to it all.

The third alarm went off on Thursday. Birthday Eve, if you will. I looked down at my phone on my desk at work and I thought about calling her again, but my break wouldn’t be for another three hours.

I thought about her last birthday. It was by far the biggest gesture I had ever made. I was planning to move to Ohio, and I wanted my mother to be closer. I wanted to share this time of being close to family with her. So her birthday present last year was that I would pay for all of her moving expenses to get from North Carolina to Ohio. I wanted her to move without worry or burden or excuse. She was blown away by the gesture. She was thrilled and absolutely terrified. But she agreed.

She understood, of course, that I couldn’t be there to physically move her. I had to work, after all, but the gift of paying for it was grand and we excitedly talked about all of the things we would do once she moved here.

It was a good birthday, in the way of a mother’s birthday. It was the first time I didn’t feel guilt for not being there. I still wasn’t there, but I gave the gift of being closer in the near future. I have the gift of more time soon.

And with that memory I put my phone back in my bag and turned back to work.

I worked through my lunch break. I didn’t call my mom.

The final alarm went off on the Friday of her actual birthday. The big day had arrived. And this time when it went off I opened it to the edit screen. I scrolled down to the bottom where it says “Delete Event” and I held my thumb in space hovering over it.

I thought of how my mother moved here after her birthday. I thought of how busy it was those first two months. I thought of how she told me she would be up to seeing me more once she got settled. I thought of how I said I could visit more after the busy holiday season at work.

I thought of how she died in December.

Suddenly and unexpectedly. Only a few months after moving to Ohio.

And I thought about how I wasn’t sure which pain was worse. Allowing this alarm to continue to go off every year after her death or allowing my thumb to drop and forever silence an alarm meant to celebrate her life.

I didn’t call my mom. But I also didn’t delete the alarm.

As usual, I don't feel it is enough, but it’s all I am able to give. Happy birthday, Mama.

I wish she knew life keeps happening

I wish she knew life keeps happening.

I wish she knew I've met people, I've seen places, and I've done things.  I'm even changing careers in less than two weeks.

And with each, I am excited, because it is life and variety.  But also with each, I have a fear of growing further and further away from the person she last knew me as.

To no longer be known by the only person who witnessed your entire life, can sometimes feel dangerously close to not being known at all.

I wish she knew life keeps happening, and she isn't here to see it, but somehow she is a part of it all.

I wish she knew I miss being exhausted

I wish she knew I miss being exhausted.

I travel frequently for work, and she proved to be absolutely incapable of understanding time differences.  Combine this with a fear I would be eaten by mountain lions while out hiking alone or even in the safety of my hotel room, and you get a mother who calls you most mornings and nights at the worst times when you are far from home.

And when I say she didn't understand time zones, I don't mean she would forget about them.  She often remembered I was in a different zone, but her range of time spanned a six-hour window in either direction from reality.  So when I was two hours behind her, she would call and wake me at one in the morning assuming it was only ten in the evening.  Then she would call me at four in the morning assuming it was now seven in the morning.  I had to explain to her on several occasions the passing of time remains the same.  If three hours have passed for her, then only three hours have passed for me.

The explanation was often provided while sleep deprived, and thus carried tones of heightened frustration.  She would say, 'If you are going to get this upset about it, then turn your damn phone on silent!"

Which always resulted in an exasperated retort of, "When I turn my damn phone on silent you get mad you can't reach me when you are sick!!"

You see my mother was often sick.  My mother often thrived on guilt.  My mother was often confused easily, and her mind was often muddled.  But my mother was also often lonely, and only wished I would want to talk to her as badly as she wanted to talk to me.

I wish she knew I would give up many more hours of sleep to argue time zones and the relation of her clock to my clock.  I wish she knew when I am out on the road, and I wake up rested in the morning, that feeling of relief is washed away when I remember why my phone no longer rings in the middle of the night.

I wish she knew I found the comic strips

I wish she knew I found the comic strips.

It started with her reading me the antics of a dog and cat in a newspaper cartoon over the phone every day.  The dog reminded her of my basset-beagle mix who was one of the sweetest souls that have walked this planet, and the cat reminded her of my cat, Sammy, who was one of the angriest.

She would describe each pane in great detail so I could picture their movements and facial expressions to match the words.  She was oddly talented at describing comic strips.  I cared marginally for the story but found her excitement to be the real entertainment.

Eventually, she stopped reading them, because she wanted me to see them instead.  She spent the next year cutting each one out of the newspaper and giving them to me in small batches.

It drove me crazy.

I kept telling her to just read them to me.  I told her I don't have time to sit down and read fifty comics strips at once.  I told her I didn't know what to do with all these scraps of paper that were finding their way into all of my drawers and books and bags.  I even found one in a kleenex box.  

I pleaded, but she didn't stop, and she said she wanted me to have them.  She asked continuously if I had read the most recent batch, and I would say no, until eventually, I would say yes, just to make her happy.  

Either that or I said it to make her stop asking.

Until recently, when I was cleaning out the drawers in my office, and I found a Ziploc bag, smelling faintly of patchouli, which was always her scent and a story of its own.  In the bag was a whole collection of comic strips.

Suddenly the scraps of paper didn't feel like they were in my way.  They did not feel inconvenient.  They felt like a quirky mother who wanted to share something that made her laugh.  They felt like love.  Still strange.  But love.  And I put them on my bookshelf to one day be read as she intended.

I wish she knew I would wear her ring

I wish she knew I would wear her ring. 

The one she gave me of discolored turquoise and dented silver.  Her hands had become too swollen to wear treasures from her younger days, and I simply smiled, said, 'Thank you," and put the ring in my jewelry box. 

The day after she died I put it on, and I wished I had worn it every day she was alive.  So maybe she could have known it really did mean something to me.  That something she found to be beautiful and a part of her youth didn't live the rest of its life locked in a dusty box.  That I thought it was beautiful too.

Not because it is.  But because it was to her.