Looking Back

I’ve sat at the computer for several hours this evening. I worked on my mom’s obituary. I hunted through photos. looking for just the right one or ones to include. That led me to the folders where I have old family photos. That led me to the slide show I had put together for my mom’s 90th birthday. We really wanted to give her a big party. We made arrangements for a venue. We invited lots of her old friends. We fretted over catering. Her birthday is in April, but before she could reach 90, the world shut down. It was the spring of 2020.

We’ll just postpone it, we thought. Nancy spent a lot of time negotiating with the caterer. “Yes, we still want to have the event, but we just need this pesky pandemic to pass.”

We never had that party. By the time the pandemic “passed,” so had the opportunity to get some of those old friends together. Health problems and contagion concerns, and my mom moving into independent living all got in the way. Now I guess I’ll use that slide show at her memorial. I really wish I’d showed it to her. I held it back for a while thinking I didn’t want to spoil it if we were going to show it at a party. Regret.

Now that I look back on my evening, I know that I wasn’t just procrastinating about my writing assignment. I was trying to work my way back in time through those photos. I don’t feel the regret of things unsaid. I do feel the sadness of time flowing faster than I’d like. Of not doing more the preserve some of the fleeting things…like her memories.

As my mom was slipping away, little bits of information slipped away, too. In the room where she lay, silently drifting off, we kept having conversations and those conversations kept raising questions, questions that only she could answer. “That person who worked at camp with Sarah. Her mom was one of my mom’s classmates in school. What was her name again?” We all looked toward my mom. Silence.

“Oh, the story about the two old ladies who sat down next to each other at a wedding and figured out how our two families were actually related…yeah, how did that go again?” We all looked toward my mom, and sighed.

Ninety-four years of knowledge, stories, and memories lived inside her. I’m glad we talked a lot. I’m glad I have pictures. I’m glad I can remember some of what she said. I wish she wrote more. I wish I’d written more.

• Uncategorized