MJC Day

My mom died on March 6, 2007, a few months shy of her 50th birthday, and she had a thing about numbers so the 3/6 thing sometimes makes me smile just as much as it doesn't. This Saturday it will have been 3 years since I lost her. My sister and I get as close as we can to some body of water on that day and deem it MJC Day. The first year after her passing, I was in San Destin, and da sis was in Galvaston, both on opposite sides of the Gulf, but we took mom to the water. Last year we drove 14 hours (each way) to meet in the middle, along the gulf coast of Alabama, so that we could get her into the water again, we stayed up most of the night together and then we drove back to our respected homes. This year, da sis is headed back to Galveston, and I have a new idea. Readers, I will let you know how it goes.

I know this is a long post, and that it is not too much about my NYR, but there is mention of a Greek cookbook and I will probably be posting about comfort food really soon! It's just that I don't want to forget her, and there are so many people I love now that never got to meet her, and I think this helps.

Happy Weekend everyone, & maybe you can hug or call your moms just for me.

Written 3/17/07

So, I returned to the real world after 7 days in New Hampshire for my mom's funeral service, I can’t tell you which one felt like the “other world,” being there or returning home. I am slowly getting over the shock of what’s happened, though not completely. Attempting to avoid the little things, songs that are not of super-fast tempo, movies that do not have video games made after them, and in general people named Mary. The first thing to get over: How do I not talk on the phone to her everyday?

Tess told me she heard the Hawaiian version of “Somewhere over the Rainbow”, which is what we wanted to play at her funeral service (but alas were not able to) at a Sonic when she returned home and had to send her server away. You know how I like lists, so I think I’ll just bullet out the rest of these:

• Tuesday, in the service, I sat like an angry bear, cutting eyes at the poor guy doing the service, who did not know my mom or our family, and so his words fell on deaf ears for me. If he had known her, he would have said something brash, and off the cuff just to put everyone off-tilt, yet in remembrance of my mom. Sarcasm would have been openly allowed and anecdotes about Waffle House, bed urination, and pen-top tracheotomies would have been as kind as the words of Mother Teresa. He would not have mentioned her depression and might have received more than just my furrowed brow at the mention of such. If he had known her, he might have gone outside the box and quoted Kahlil Gibran, Margaret Mead, Silver Ravenclaw, Her father, Lewis Grizzard, or even herself. He would have played music that might make you blush in church, or at least have made you cry. If he really knew her, we would have had a Roast instead of a funeral service, where we would have poked fun at her imperfections but only because they were also our own, or because we were not aggressive or strong enough to have those traits ourselves. If it was done right, we would have laughed. At least once, so that we could remember what it felt like to laugh with her, her unabashed cackle, her watered eyes, and have that one more time before the church doors opened, never to be had again.
• The service was not as hard as going to her apartment the next day. I had never been to that apartment before, I had not seen her in that environment, not seen her sit in her recliner or use her big orange snow shovel to clear off her 4 little steps. Her bed was inviting and full of pillows and smells and blankets and impressions. She had coconut milk in her refrigerator for making Doc Chey’s Chicken Coconut Soup. She had pink Dove soap, which I took and 20 nail clippers, which I did not. Tess grabbed her stethoscope, and I her grandmother’s blanket with an authority over the other where no words of compromise where going to tread for these items. I found glass miniature eggs, Indian beads, shells of turquoise and an old deck of cards in a small wooden box, and in true tribute, I hid the eggs throughout my aunt’s house and in my friend’s belongings, for them to randomly find and while they may not know they were her’s, maybe they will think that someone is thinking of them. I took her Greek cookbook, which just this morning I found a note from her mom and gram about Greek recipes, it is one of the few items that I hold as elusive “mom” items, in which I don’t know whether to cook from it, display it, or hide it under my pillow to feel it’s comfort. And with that, we both took a pillow. A token from the place were we learned, shared, cried, and loved. A pillow so big that I can not rest my head upon it, but have to hold it like a loved one, nestled like another person in my bed. The last thing we took was a look at the brook that ran in her back yard, bigger than I had imagined when she would tell me about it’s quaintness and more rapid that the “babble” she described it as. People admire things, but my mom let the water into her character, her love of the ocean or personification of a river was as much a part of her as her wavy hair or muddy eyes. It was only fitting that she herself was sent out that next day into the ocean.
• By Thursday my mom was contraband. In N.H. it is illegal to dispose of remains in the ocean without a permit, and in the 3 days that Tess had been there with me, we did not obtain one. So, we went renegade. We cautiously opened her remains and poured about 5 pounds of her into a Ziploc baggie and headed for the ocean off the small New Hampshire coastline. On Thursday, it was 27 degrees outside, and so the greatest gift Tess and I could give our mom was kicking off our shoes, hiking up our pants and wading up to our knees in the cold water. I pilfered my mom out of my coat, took a view glances around and then undid that green and blue seal. The waves and the wind took her away in only a few moments, and it was the most beautiful thing I have ever experienced with my sister. Our feet were cold but we did not feel it, our hearts were heavy, but they did not ache, and our smiles were true as we thought of our mom laughing her laugh at us, but with pride for her girls.