It Will Play Itself Out
by
Dick Prosapio © 2004
I've wondered for years what it would feel like
when I became an orphan. Now that my mother has died. I'm there, in
orphan land, just as my wife Elizabeth has been since I met her.
It's early in this process of course, my "orphan"
status began just short of a month ago, and I'm not sure of what I'm
missing. My mother went at a good time, and there's no other way to
say that. She was sufficiently enfeebled to be on the verge of not
being able to take responsibility for her self, and she certainly
didn't want to be taken care of by anyone else.
Do I miss her? Well, I certainly still look at the
temperatures in Chicago whenever the TV weather is on, but now I
consciously stop the habitual feelings of concern for her living
there alone in sub-freezing cold.
I don't make my usual two calls a week to her
phone number. I'm not sure how to fill that blank, but the other day
I noticed I was calling my middle daughter to see how she and the
family were doing on about the same schedule, and tried a call to my
oldest but she was out. This taking-care-of stuff dies hard. But do
I miss her? to re-visit the original question; no.
Last night, however, I finally realized that I am
going through a state of mourning. Not the weepy and pain-filled
kind, I experienced some of that with the sudden and totally
unexpected death of my father, this is a low-level sadness
kind of thing. The kind that up and bites when you're not looking.
It will show up when a piece of music plays for example. Last night
it was, "Shenandoah." This piece can get to me on any given day
depending on how well defended I am at the time. Generally I react
to its haunting beauty, last night I found my self caught up in
how-things-were ruminations. Not the classic "I wish things could
have been different" thoughts, this was more like romanticizing
about what it was like looking at the snapshots in an album and
forgetting that they were posed for the instant and most of what
went on in between was not all that wonderful.
I know that after awhile all I will really
remember about her, and about the "family", will be the frozen
moments evoked by the tangible pictures I've collected and the
memories I have stored. And I suppose that's enough. More than five
or six words chiseled into a stone marker at least.
I'm not a big fan of personal nostalgia, too much
pain in most of it as far as I'm concerned. Not because the present
suffers by comparison, but because I really do wish I had done a lot
of the past better. Done it with more consciousness and compassion.
So I don't like re-visiting what's done. But it's pretty hard to
avoid it under the circumstances and now comes the selling of the
house and the dispersion of what's left. I've got a pile of
"artifacts" to go through sitting on a chair in our hallway. It'll
have to wait until all the "ghosts" have wandered away before I dig
through it all. I guess when that day comes this personal mourning
period will be at and end and that gravestone prayer "Rest in Peace"
will be applied, more appropriately, to me and to all of those who
knew her well.
Dick Prosapio ©2004, All Rights
Reserved
