Yesterday, my cousin Mark sent a very sweet email to our family in remembrance of my mother. Her birthday was January 7th- one day after her mother’s, my Grammie Dow. Because my birthday is also in January, my mother and Grammie told me I was special like them. I believed them and to this day, January is my favorite month.
To celebrate our January birthdays, my mother and I often “split” a gift. We took each other out for lunch to celebrate. In reality, it was just an excuse to sit across a restaurant table and catch up, but it was a nice way to give each other a small gift. Mark’s email reminded me of how much I miss sharing that birthday lunch, and also reminded me of how I have chosen to celebrate my mother’s life on her birthday.
A week or two before my mother passed away, my nephew Jason brought a small bottle of whiskey to her at the hospice house. She liked whiskey, and when I was growing up, she and my father often would enjoy a drink before dinner. My father drank Jim Beam or Jack Daniels on the rocks with soda and my mother drank hers with water. I never understood how they could drink the stuff. To me it tastes like medicine, and the only time I could swallow it was when my father mixed a teaspoon with honey and lemon to quiet my coughs. It was against the rules to have alcohol in the hospice house (I guess they were afraid that dying people might get drunk and rowdy) and the nurses asked me to take the bottle with me when I left for the evening. I took it to my house and stuck it in the cabinet.
After Mom died, I decided to drink a toast to her on her birthday, and on January 7, alone in my kitchen, I poured a shot (more like a half shot) of the whiskey and after toasting her, drank the entire thing down in one swallow. I shuddered for almost fifteen minutes, and while I can’t say I enjoyed it, the warmth that followed the shudder made it tolerable.
Last year on Mom’s birthday, I did the same thing, with the same reaction of shuddering for a good fifteen minutes. Maybe it was the whiskey, but I imagined that I could hear her chuckle at me. I have to admit that I imagined the warmth that spread from my stomach to my toes was more a hug from my mother than a blast of alcohol.
You would think that after two years, I would be used missing my mother, but I am not. Not a day goes by that I do not think of her- miss her soft gray eyes and warm embrace. I see her in my children. I see her in myself. But when I feel my eyes become hot with tears and my heart wrings with loneliness, I remember her last hours. As she hovered between this life and the next, I saw her exert great effort to raise her arms toward Heaven. Again and again, she would raise her hands to the sky and then, not strong enough to hold them up, she allowed them to drop to her bed. I knew that she was transitioning- that her eyes were no longer set on earth and her loved ones here, but instead on the God who had steadfastly guided her through the past eighty-two years. And as much as I wanted to call her back and beg her to stay a few more hours, I could not. She had taught me well. Part of loving is letting go.
The bottle of whiskey still remains in my cupboard, untouched since January 7, 2012. Tonight I will again pour a half shot (guess I will never be much of a drinker) and toast my mother, and her mother. Heck- I’ll toast all our mothers, since they are more alike than different. Perhaps you will join me. Pour a shot- whiskey, wine, rum…even milk. It doesn’t matter. Raise your glass, think of your mother and thank God for the time you had with her. If you shudder like I will, and listen very carefully, you might hear a tinkle of laughter from on high. That’s Grammie and Mom, waiting for the rest of us.
