Birthday for Two

This entry is a recap of an e-mail a good friend sent to me after mom had died.  She interviewed me, in a way, about my experience and I have captured our correspondence as follows. 
 
INTERVIEWER:  Ashes. Where are they going?  
ME: We have them!  Mom is sitting in three different places.  The mantle, where she can adequately preside over the doings of the family, my sister's dining room shelf and my bedroom dresser.  My sister and I will spread her ashes out into the ocean at St. George's Island this August and my dad is probably going to bury his in AZ....he is purchasing a memorial bench for her in the White Tank Mts.

INTERVIEWER:  What was your memorial/wake experience? 
ME:  A complete blur.  A celebration.  Emotional, exhausting, moving.  Around 400 people came.......old teachers of mine......friends I haven't seen in almost 10 years.  It was beautiful.
 
INTERVIEWER:  Good on you for taking this time. You will never ever ever regret it. 
ME:  I agree.  It is where I need to be.  I feel blessed to be able to share this experience in such an intimate way with my family.  My sister and I have become closer and I feel a deeper connection with my dad as well.  It is also fantastic to watch Auggie bond with his extended family.
 
Going through mom's things is hard but cathartic as well.  I find myself breaking down over old shopping lists, crusty lip gloss applicators,  and  cheesy holiday towels.  Things.  Things that before March 18th seemed so inconsequential but are now so important to me.  Things that bear intimate details like the poofy "P" in peppers or the DNA still clinging to that lip gloss brush.  Throwing literal scraps of her life into giant garbage bags seems cruel, incompassionate, and just down right disrespectful.  But then what do you do with half used mascara from the seventies?  YOU THROW IT THE BLEEP AWAY!  
(........and then I toss it into my purse).
 
INTERVIEWER:  How is August doing?  
ME:  He is eating nothing again.  Unless nibbles of this and throwing that constitutes eating.  He drinks milk at the all night bar called Mama's Kitchen.  Yep.  He has set a record for the youngest person to have an eating disorder or a milk addiction or a sleeping disorder or all three ....three cheers...hip hip hooray.  We are so proud.


INTERVIEWER: The hospital/ the goodbye....what was it like? 
ME:  Hospital seems like a dream.  A hazy, exhausting,  love-filled dream.  Everyone there was amazing and came to know us well.  They were all so friendly either because they liked us or because we are kooks.  Probably both.  We spent everyday by her side.  Laughing, crying, playing cards, doing crosswords, eating, not eating, sleeping, not sleeping, stroking her forehead, holding her hand, kissing her, talking to her, crying some more......   My family was fantastic.   My aunt hosted everyone in her home, my cousins flew out to help my gma, another cousin flew to AZ and cooked for us.  Everyone pulled together to fulfill a much needed role.  We had hard, meaningful talks about mom, our family, death, and life without her. 

She opened her eyes, miraculously as the nurse pointed out, to see us one last time.  She knew we were there and she told us so with her eyes. I believe they were saying, "I love you."  We thought she would go on her own inspite of the machines so we stayed with her throughout the night of the 17th but on the 18th it was clear the machines were not prolonging life but prolonging death.  We turned them off around 8:30 am and it only took a few minutes for her energy to be released.

I thought that specific moment would be climactic but, in truth, I didn't even know it happened until the nurse informed us she had "passed".  I draped my body over her like a human quilt and told her I loved her.  I told her she was "brave, courageous and that I was so proud of her".  I brag about being adventurous, but she embarked on the most mysterious and important of all journeys.  I feel SO SO blessed to have been there to see her off and to bid her safe travels.  I feel even more blessed that on the same day she birthed me into this world I got to help birth her into the next one.  What a miraculous gift.  It really was a beautiful death for a beautiful woman and a very, very memorable birthday.  Now, in a way, it is her birthday too.