Anniversary

Tomorrow is the second anniversary of my mother Kathleen's death. She died alone in the same hospital in which she had been born, Massachusetts General; I remember there was a full moon that night. I also remember being grateful, in the midst of my tears, that she was released from the considerable torments of her life. There was no time to say goodbye to her before she slipped away. Seven months later, my sister Maryanne died alone in an Oakland hospital, completely unexpectedly. So enmeshed and embattled were those two in life that it is no wonder to me on some karmic level that they slipped into the afterlife so close to one another. My first year of losing my mother passed in a hyper-bright, energetic haze which I realize was utter shock, compounded by my sister's death. The shock, I realize now, was like a wing keeping me shielded from a reality which would take time to incorporate. This year, it's gotten very real.

I realize now that losing a parent is another step in the long process of growing up. I used to think my mother did not really know me, but now I think she did know me, perhaps better than anyone, if only on an intuitive level. As time goes on without her, I realize more and more the enduring gifts she gave me, of cooking--my mother was beyond the shadow of a doubt the best cook I have ever known and could have been a professional baker, her pastries and cakes were that amazing (our family had been bakers in Italy). She spoke fluent and beautiful Italian; I used to love when she would break into it in the middle of a conversation, like tossing a silk banner into the air suddenly. She taught me the gift of story and the importance of telling it so as to enthrall an audience. Some of her lessons were cautionary.

What I take from her most these days is the simple gratitude for having been given the gift of life. For all my mother's flaws, for all she did not know how to protect me from, she was the sacred vessel I chose to come to this earth. And for that, and for many other things, I feel a good and simple, and very much abiding love for her, and for her spirit: wild and sometimes misguided, flamboyant and unreliable, but at the end, still a phoenix to me, with a legacy that transcends death.