A wake
Wrapped up in the covers I close my eyes to fall asleep. Just as I am about to drift off, my heart starts to beat fast and I wake up with a start. Something guards me from letting go, as if falling asleep is really a fall; off a cliff into a deep ravine. I don’t want the day to end, the night brings with it loneliness and unwanted thoughts. I turn on the podcast, The History of Philospophy Without Any Gaps and listen to Peter Adamson’s episode on Zeno’s paradoxes one more time.
I’ve been doing acupuncture to see if it will help. Today lying on the table with the lights dim and the pleasant smell of smoldering mugwort, each needle was placed with a soft tap. I completely relaxed my face for a moment with my jaw dropped and my mouth slightly agape. In that instant, a terrifying memory surfaced of seeing my mom in her open coffin when I was a child. As I lay on the table, in my mind’s eye I was looking down on my own face, but seeing her lifeless sunken jaw and hollow cheeks. My acupuncturist noticed the tears streaming down my face and she stood by my side drying my cheeks and temples as I lay there in silence. I resisted the urge to tense back up and allowed myself to drift deep into the memory of the day of her wake.
…
It was late May when my mom died, right around Memorial Day in 1987. I was 13 and it was almost the end of the 7th grade. At the time my two sisters, Trinity, Leah, and I were living in a small town in Wisconsin with my dad and step-mom, Kathy. When my mom got sick, she had been living in Colorado for five years with her husband, Tim, and their two small children. She already felt so very far away and not just because of the miles and infrequent, uncomfortable visits. Many of our letters went unanswered. My older sister, Trinity, spent all night on her 13th birthday waiting for a call from her that never came. In the first years after she left we hoped that she would come back to us. That hope grew fainter with each passing year.
Our mom’s graduation picture from nursing school was taped to Trinity’s vanity mirror. In it she had a crisp white nurse’s hat pinned to the shiny sculptural curls of her dark hair. She smiles proudly looking directly into the camera. We often studied that picture with intense longing. When my grandma called to tell us that she had passed, we had already cried so many tears for her that what was left now was a cold emptiness. It was a Thursday, and not knowing what else to do we went to school the next day. With our emotions temporarily suspended in disbelief it seemed like the right thing to do to carry on with our normal life
Still numb, my sisters and I arrived in my mom’s hometown in Iowa for the wake a few days later. We entered the dark, cold room and my aunt April rushed to meet us with tears streaming down her face. She is a petite woman, barely five feet tall, yet her embrace was firm and warm as she folded us one by one in her tiny arms. We were the last to arrive for the private family viewing and our whole family was there weeping openly. Even my grandfather, a tall, broad shouldered stoic man of few words and a chiseled but gentle Nordic face had tears in his eyes. When he wrapped his one arm around us in his usual stiff embrace, a heavy sigh escaped his lips as he looked down at us. Our grandma reached out her hand to squeeze mine from her seat next to him. She had on a dark pants suit and was patting her eyes with her embroidered handkerchief. We were used to greeting her in her kitchen where it always smelled of fresh bread and roast. She’d stop her bustling to greet us with a bright twinkle in her eyes, and a quick peck on the cheek when we arrived. Today she looked like she was lost deep in thought. Her tearful eyes met mine with a searching gaze, as if she was trying to see inside of me to make sure I was ok. My uncle Johnny, my mom’s baby brother, who could find the joke in anything was sitting in a corner with his head in his hands, only lifting it to quickly wipe back the tears. My mom’s older brother, Mark, stepped forward from where he was standing by the wall. His usual way of greeting us was to bend down and draw his shoulders up slightly, put his finger to his lips and with raised eyebrows wink and chuckle as if we were all in on a private joke. Now his voice trembled as he whispered, “Oh, girls, I am so sorry,” and hugged us close.
Then we saw Grace, my mom’s identical twin sister, standing alone by the casket. Her hands were folded elegantly in front of her at her slim waist. Her head was tilted to one side as she bent forward slightly looking down at her sister with a slightly furrowed brow. She and our mom had a kind of bond that few people ever get to experience, or can even imagine. She seemed to be studying her sister’s face with a worried and searching gaze and then I noticed her lips moving in what must have been prayer. Grace was like a second mother to us. She loved to organize activities for us and her two girls when we came over to play, pulling out games, or filling the baby pool on hot days. She let us put on her lipstick and try on her high heels. One winter she saved bread bags full of snow in the freezer and on a hot day in July surprised us with it. Along with our cousins we made tiny snowmen and had a snowball fight in a giddy dash before it melted away.
It took time before we were ready to walk up close to the casket and stand next to Grace. She put her hands on our shoulders without looking up or saying a word. We looked at our mother in disbelief. The woman laying there was not the mother I had loved to snuggle and touch, and whose smiling gaze and soothing voice I missed. She was only 36 when she died, but her cancer had already robbed her so completely of her former glowing beauty. Her skin was waxy and sallow. Her eyes were sunken deep in their sockets behind glasses perched awkwardly on her nose. Her lips were glued tightly closed and seemed to wrap in a strange frown over hollow cheeks. She used to have long chestnut hair that fell in loose curls around her neck. What was left of it was lacquered and molded unnaturally around her face. She had on an old-fashioned white blouse with a high lace collar and a lilac blazer. Our mom would have never worn anything like that. She had a 1970s boho-chic style sand wore fitted tops with ballerina necklines and wrap-around skirts with subtle prints that she sewed for herself. This was not our mother.
We looked for a long time before we gathered the courage to ask if we could touch her. Grace smiled kindly and nodded yes. Only her hands looked like they belonged to our mom. Folded casually at her waist, they almost looked like they would move. Taking turns we cautiously grazed them with our fingers. We wished beyond hope that they would respond to our touch, but they were stiff and cold.
Overwhelmed, my sisters and I decided to go outside. The moment we stepped out onto the street, the bright afternoon sun hurt our eyes still stinging from tears. We immediately felt hot in our new black dresses from K-mart. Stiff and itchy polyester began to cling uncomfortably to our sticky skin. On the quiet small town street other kids were riding their bikes and playing two-square on the sidewalk. We stuck out because of our clothes, but also because we were not from town. We looked down at our feet as we walked by. Each of us was beginning to understand how alone we were now.
…
As I lay on the acupuncture table drifting through these memories, I was grateful for the safe place and gentle support to be able to lift what felt like a heavy garage door and enter that dark room in my memories. Afterwards I woke up feeling peaceful. It was like I had a new core of gravity that was my own. I got dressed slowly and walked back home. Stepping into bright spring sun and the busy city streets I didn’t feel uncomfortable, vulnerable, or alone. I looked up at the trees and the sky with wonder, the way I did as a little girl, and felt like I was home.
