Anyway I had barely gotten started when I encountered the shopping bag at the very back of my closet. It was hidden under a pile of too small jeans and other discards. My heart gave a guilty start as I recognized my mother's final resting place. My mother died five years ago at the age of 93 and per her wishes had been cremated but she had not mentioned what she wanted done with her ashes. So I brought them home and stuffed them in the closet and now it was time to get her out of there.
Well that was the end of my cleaning spree. I sat on the floor and memories of my childhood and my mother tumbled out. I guess my closet wasn't the only thing stuffed with useless clutter. I talked to that cardboard sargophagus spilling out all my resentments, hurts, and regrets. Afterwards, it was as if a weight had been lifted and for first time I was able to begin to think of my mother as the strong, person she really was. A woman who had fought her way up from a hard scrapple Kentucky farm and managed to go to college when most of her family and neighbors never finished high school or even elementary. A woman who married and then was widowed after seven years and left with three young children to raise.
Talking to my mother's ashes led me to think about what I might say to her if she were able to return, and that led to writing the short narrative below. It's 95% invention but there's just enough truth that her personality and foibles would be evident to those who knew her.
Conversation with My Mother
I stare at the picture. A pretty young woman is locked in the arms of a handsome young sailor. It’s yellowed and cracked but the young woman smiling into the camera is definitely my mother.
“What are you doing with that picture?” a familiar voice demands.
I turn slowly to face my mother sitting in the chair behind me. “Mom,” I manage a startled squeak, “where did you come from?”
“Surprise!” she stands and takes a little bow and sits back down.
Truthfully I wasn’t surprised, well not much anyway, because if anyone could sneak out of St. Peter’s Golden Gate, it would be my iron willed mother. I stare at the apparition in front of me. I always thought ghosts wore sheets but my mother was dressed in an expensive black pants suit with an emerald green, silk blouse that emphasized her white hair. She sat primly upright with her legs crossed at the ankles, a model’s pose. “No, I was just startled. I always figured you’d show up somehow or someway.”
She fluffs her hair and leans forward, “Well I’m here now for a short time anyway. Those guys up there can sure get pissed if you defy them,” she confides in a stage whisper.
I look nervously around expecting to see an angry angel of death carrying a quiver of lighting bolts hovering above me. “I just found this, I hold the picture so she can see it, “who is the sailor?”
“I want you to get me out of that closet,” she sobbed. Mom used her favorite diversionary tactic, tears. “Do you know how hurt I felt when my own daughter stuck my ashes in a brown paper bag and hid them away in a dark closet?”
Surprised that she knew about that, I did as I always did when my mother confronted me, I lashed back. “What was I supposed to do with them?” I asked through clenched teeth. “I couldn’t bury you in the family cemetery where five generations of our family are buried because you couldn’t stand any of them. Daddy is buried beside his mother and father and you hadn’t spoken to anyone in his family for over sixty years and your other three husbands are lying peacefully beside their wives.”
“You know I always had a soft spot for Sam,” she got a dreamy faraway look in her eyes thinking of the past.
“Mother, if I showed up at his grave with your ashes his daughters would have me tarred and feathered.” My frustration level was beginning to show as I progressed from the informal Mom to the formal Mother stage.
“Hmmm, you’re probably right. They were a teensy bit upset when they found that he had left me all his money.”
“Teensy bit upset. Hell, they tried to kill you,” I said remembering all the craziness that had always surrounded her.
“Dear, don’t cuss. It’s not ladylike. I know,” her face lit up and I could almost see a light bulb above her head, ”you can put me in one of those lovely vases, maybe a Chinese one with dragons and all that ornate enameling, and then it can sit on that darling fake Chippendale in your foyer.”
The thought of my mother’s ashes sitting in my foyer was so horrifying that I couldn’t even respond to the fake Chippendale jab.
“Or maybe a statue of David holding the urn above his head,” she was on a roll now, ”no, Mabel Petrella’s family put her in one of those.” Her lip curled slightly at the thought.
“Mother, tell me about the picture?” I pleaded and closed my eyes trying to get rid of the vision of Mabel Petrella sitting on David’s head.
“Oh, you are such an annoying child. You always were you know. I sacrificed so much for you. When your father died, oh that awful day, my only thought was of you and how I could ease your pain. Not like my mother who didn’t even wait until my daddy’s grave was covered before she married THAT man and had those brats.” Her voice got an icy edge whenever she mentioned what she always saw as her mother’s betrayal. “I ruined my back from carrying those brats around and spent years in pain.”
“Stop it,” I snapped,” you know that granny had no choice but to remarry after gramps died. She had you, no money and no way to earn a living. Besides, it was a good year after his death before she remarried and those brats are your brothers and sister and your back pain was caused by osteoporosis,” I angrily spit out each word. Even in death she couldn’t forgive my grandmother. I suppose a psychiatrist could write a doctoral thesis about my mother’s almost eighty year obsession but I had lived with the bitterness and self pity all my life and had no patience for it. “And as for easing my pain,” I continued, “you left me with a neighbor the day after he died while you got your hair and nails done and shopped for a new outfit for the funeral and then remarried two months later, eased my pain, HA!” Things were beginning to get nasty now as they inevitably did when my mother and I were together for any length of time.
I got up and started pacing back and forth trying to ease the tension.
“Stop that pacing and sit down this minute!” It was her no nonsense voice that I remembered from childhood and like the obedient child I had always been, I walked back to my chair and sat.
“Look at you,” she pursed her lips and gave a disapproving, tsk, “ you’re still biting your nails, and your hair looks like it was cut with garden shears and,” a look of horror crossed her face, “Oh My Lord, you’re wearing a velveteen sweat suit. I never thought that a child of mine would ever own one of those monstrosities.”
My lack of fashion sense had always been a sore spot with her. When she lay dying, she had motioned me over to her bed and I’d bent down with tears in my eyes to hear her last words.” Sweetie, “she gasped, “you’re too heavy to wear a floral print.”
Now here she was back from the grave and still criticizing my taste. “I happen to like velveteen sweats. They’re warm and cozy.” I cringe as I hear the apologetic tone of my voice. “But let’s get back to the picture. I’ve got a feeling it’s the reason you’re here.”
“What makes you say that? I had boxes of old pictures. Why do you think this one is different?” She stood and walked over to the window and sighed. “What I wouldn’t do for a cigarette.”
“This picture wasn’t in a box. I found it when I was shaking out that ratty fur coat of yours before I gave it to Goodwill. The picture just fell out through a hole in the lining. What was so special about this picture that you went to all the trouble to hide it in your coat?”
“I loved him, she blurted out, he’s probably the only man I ever really loved. I met him when I was working as a waitress and he was in training at the Great Lakes Naval Base,” she took a trembling breath. “He asked me for a date and we were together whenever he could get a pass until he finished his training. That picture was taken on our last date before he shipped out.” She was still standing looking out the window and I could hear her stifle a sob.
“Was he killed in the war?” I asked
“No, he came home but I had married your father and he went back to his home on the west coast and I never heard from him again.” The sadness seemed to have left her and anger had taken its place. “I would have left your father and gone anywhere with him but he didn’t want me. He said that he could never forgive me for not waiting for him.”
I looked at the picture of the handsome young sailor and then at the picture of my father that I always kept on my desk. I was sitting on his knee in my new Brownie uniform. It was taken the day before he died of a heart attack. I was eight years old. It was a picture of a pudgy bald man who was twenty years older than my mother. I loved my father dearly. We did everything together. He took me to Brownie meetings, to see Santa, to baseball games and tucked me in at night. It was always just the two of us as mom was never home. She’d have a meeting or a party to attend. She did love to party. I knew my mother, so why had she chosen to marry that pudgy, dear man.
She must have read my mind because she turned her head slightly and said, “Look at the calendar.” Then she stepped through the window and was gone.
“Wait,” I screamed, “what calendar?” But there was no one there. She had vanished.
I sat for a long time thinking over everything she had said and wondering what she meant. Then I saw it. Hanging on the wall behind my mother and her sailor was a calendar with the famous pinup picture of Betty Gable and under the picture was the month and year, June, 1943. I was born in December 1943, all nine pounds of me.
