Yesterday was Mom's wake. I was touched by the volume of those who came to celebrate her life, and moved by the warmth they inspired on such a barren day. As many I spoke with mentioned lauralore.com, I wanted to take the opportunity to thank you all for being a part of my mother's life...I know she loved you all. I also wanted to thank those of you in cyberspace who sent flowers and cards...your generosity touched me, and I deeply inhaled the fragrance of life at your request.

Today, we have the funeral. Tomorrow, we get back to the business of living. I don't know which will be more difficult. But for now, I leave you with this, the words that I will have read to Mom during the service today:

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Oh, Mom…

I debated whether or not I wanted to formally write something to you for this day…we’ve exchanged so many words over the years, and I still left our conversations feeling that there was a little more to say. I guess there will always be a little more to say, won’t there?

You taught me love, Mom. You taught me nurturing, and I was honored to have the opportunity to care for you during your illness. I didn’t know real love until our roles were reversed, and I was your guardian, your caretaker, and your protector. I didn’t know that love could hurt so sharply, and then reverse on you, cradling you in plushy warmth.

You’ve been my best friend. My husband left me last year…you know; you were there that day. We had just returned from the hospital to find a note. I was stunned, taciturn, and numb. You moved around me restlessly, organizing cupboards, folding laundry. “You have to tell me what you want me to do,” you directed. “I don’t know how to help. I don’t know what to do.” You felt just as destroyed as I felt. I think our hearts must be linked.

My sentiments were echoed in the last month. I didn’t know how to help you; I didn’t know what to do. You were stern on the subject of my witnessing your death. You didn’t want me to see you like that. You wanted me shielded until the very end; you wanted even your last breath to be spent protecting me. It was difficult, the forcing myself away, but I did it…for you, always for you. My memories of you are of joyful laughter and tearful affection, and they are vivid in the murky dark of your absence. One day they will illuminate my days and I will always have the sun at my side, blanketing my life with your warm light.

You called us “kindred spirits”…and I believe we were—are: spirits never die. I learned from your feelings, and you professed to learn from my philosophies. We were caught in a continual mutual admiration, and words were simply unnecessary. Yes, there was always a little more to say…but our hearts spoke the words. Few people can grasp our connection, for few are so blessed. My life was made golden with yours…precious and invaluable. Strength was something we learned together, built together, and wielded together. I still feel you. You are holding my hand, and you are not letting go. My strength will not fail with yours so near. I love you, and I am keeping you alive in me. Have peace, and know no pain.

On the morning of January 26, Mom left the barren landscape of our world to walk the gardens of Heaven. She's in a better place...but, selfishly, I wish her back to this place.

I am in desperate need of it.

The weightiness of the situation cloaks my every waking moment, and I need distraction. I find myself staying out later at night, not wanting to return to life as I know it. I spend less than three hours on the internet all day. THREE HOURS! What is there to do on the internet but read about liver failure and how the end will come? I've heard whispers that I'm being too cold, too withdrawn from the goings-on. Upon telling her this, my mother cried bullshit. Mom understands "guarded". She carried my limp body through the early weeks of my separation. She saw the erratic jump from extreme to extreme. She saw my near-collapse. She understands my overlarge capacity to feel, and she understands the necessity to temper my emotion. There will be plenty of time to cry.

She was not happy to hear my coping abilities called into question. The word "livid" comes to mind.

Who is to determine the proper way to react? Who is to say how soon one should come to peace with an unchangeable end? Maybe my last two years, two of the most rotten years in my life, have paid me mercy in these. I know that bad things happen, I know that people die, that people get sick, and that people just up and leave your life...and I know that you can't let it too be your end. Perhaps my mother understands more because I let my philosophy run unchained in her audience. She knows my head, and I'd like to believe that she has garnered a little peace of her own from my musings.

There's only so much gamut you can run before you welcome the battery. I'm just not ready to stop running yet. My grandmother is coming to stay for awhile, to spend her days with Mom. I am not looking forward to it. I am at peace around my immediate family...it is like we're all looking it this from the same angle...the further out I wander in the branches of my family tree, the more skewed and ugly it becomes. I am exhausted.

Friday evening, we had an intimate family gathering of euchre-playing. I'm a relative "newbie" in the ranks of the team-choosing, possessing youth as I do, but I fair alright. As Aunt Brenda said to my Uncle Rick after I brought in the points to win the first game, "You have to remember, she has her father's strategy and her grandmother's skill." I don't know that this was all that complimentary...as my father will call trump on a nine and ten, and most of my family would rather slurp mud than play with my mother's mother. However, it ought be noted that my father and grandmother are both superbly gifted at euchre.

I won't apologize for my tangent because you ought to expect them from me by now:



An anecdote I've heard countless times recounts one game involving the two of them. My father sat at my grandmother's right, and raised a fuss after she finished dealing and realized she hadn't offered him a chance to cut the deck. She gave him the evil eye that exists altogether separately from the rosy-cheeked sweet gramma who used to send me fifty-dollar-bills a couple times a month during school just for some spending money—"for candy or stickers" she suggested. I'm a letter-writer, and so wrote her many notes in those days, before the arthritis in her hands made correspondence painful. Not many people write letters any longer. My practice obviously pleased her.

But EUCHRE-GRANDMA, she blossomed black smoke from her nostrils and shiny metal points poked through at her temples as she reshuffled the 24-card deck. She thudded the pile heavy-handedly in the space before my father. I should note here that my father is a smart ass. I take after him in more ways than I care to admit, but I'm rather proud of my smart ass-ness. After all, as Brenda tells me, "It's better to be a smart ass than a dumb ass."

Dad tapped the top of the deck delicately with a shit-eating grin and replied cheerily, "Pass!"

My grandmother half-raised from her seat, her palms flat against the table and supporting a good bit of her weight, and growled, "Cut the GOD. DAMN. CARDS."

And there you have it, a little insight for you on my euchre exposure—with a little "I don't care if I lose" prowess thrown in from my mother. It's special.



So anyway, I was Uncle Rick's partner. This unnerved me greatly, as he was laying into the mixed drinks heavily, and could see him being abrasive with a loose cannon such as myself for a running mate. But, before the cards were even sorted, we had a kind of bonding at the table. Three of us—Brenda, Rick, and me—wore braces. Rick thinks he's got tiny fractures along his wrist. Brenda suffers from arthritis in hers. I'm a study of tendonitis with ever-emerging carpal tunnel tendencies on my dominant side. We oohed an ahhed over our collective orthopedic aids, and nearly passed them around for each other to stroke. Starry-eyed and drooling, we asked questions on the origins of our support systems, their effectiveness, their relief.

My cousin, Jean, snorted from behind our share-time, having decided that she valued her life too much to play euchre with her inebriated father, "You three are gonna be fun to watch." She proceeded to mimic a sort of pathetic motion wherein she rolled her shoulders up and inward, tucked her elbows to the sides of her chest an tossed imaginary cards as though the limbs of her upper body began at her forearms. The laughter was rolling and deafening because, well, she looked like an idiot...and because we probably all looked like idiots too. I find it sad that I can laugh at myself looking like an idiot while sober, and the rest of the lot need a couple hours of alcohol-consumption in their system first.

Our game of one-handed euchre held many joys, however. We looked like idiots, no doubt...we probably even sounded like idiots—what, with my learning Rick's strategy that the team who played parallel to the bathtub ran with the better luck—but it seemed to work. Rick and I played parallel to the tub all night...

...and we won every game. One-handed and all. Maybe the drunken-maimed get a leg up...or maybe the bathtub is a force to be reckoned with after all.