Ione

My mom died in January.

The past two and half months have been marked by family coming together to ease her passing, many friends and community members showing remembrances and appreciation, and a newfound discovery of her life before I even came along (in fact, she lived a longer part of her life without me than with me). I thumbed through baby mementos, childhood schoolwork, photos of epic road trips with friends, and cards and notes with glimpses into her esteemed social work career, which was only one aspect of her wide and rich life.

In the past weeks I emerged from a long period of sadness and gradually began to understand how this affected me in unexpected ways. In brief, I owe her many more tears than what people saw me shed at the funeral and other gatherings (to paraphrase a famous passage).

My thoughts are with my dad, who is very open and emotional (a crier, as he put it), and with my siblings. Each had the particularities of their bond with her stripped away in certain ways as grim dementia took hold over the past 12 years. My dad has a thousand friends and even more warm acquaintances, along with a large family, yet he speaks openly of his loneliness and the long evenings and the void where Ione was. My siblings are raising children of their own who will not have Grandma around anymore, and some of their memories of my mom will be spotty or absent. I used to wish I had known my maternal grandpa, because people tell me I would have liked him. Now, another elder in the chain has dropped away.

I sense more than ever the natural affinities she imparted to me – for flowers, plants, natural settings, birds, and all living things. She was capable of great peace and quietness even while ordering the swirling world around her of kids, career, a spouse with a demanding job, and her endless personal pursuits of gardening, piano, baking, reading, and putting on our family gatherings without fail.

When I cozy up with a book with Rachmaninoff playing, I think of her. When I take an extra moment to take in birdsong or sunshine, especially in a grassy setting, I think of her. I marvel at how she passed her sense of awe to me but not a trace of religious faith, which was huge for her but mostly empty for me. I marvel at how she took the time to care for herself and for gaggles of demanding children at home and at work. I wonder where she got her curious affection for hippos.

At Seward Park, my old-forest core in Seattle, I sat on a bench at the top of the Seqsebad trail dedicated to someone else’s departed loved one, also a nature lover. I leaned my head  back and let the gentle January rain stream down my cheek and do the crying for me. When I want to revisit the mood of these dark months I put on Chopin’s 14th Nocturne because it seems to capture the emotional journey, and Mom would have liked it. She loved Barber’s adagio also, but this is terribly maudlin.

At the funeral, which 400 people attended, visitors heard the amazing singing voice of my sister-in-law and her band, and had a chance to take home some of the many purple flowers present. Some clippings adorned windows and tabletops in the same way my mom kept fresh cut flowers around the house. One flower clipping was turned by a crafty friend into an enduring form under glass.

The ceremony was Lutheran in accordance with my parents’ deep and lifelong faith, work, and community. I sometimes discount the effect of ceremony until I see its impact for myself, and this ceremony got the emotions flowing. It was held in a grand church and some words in the service stood out: “Holy Spirit, author and give of life, the comforter of all who sorrow, our sure confidence and everlasting hope, we worship you.” And: “We thank you for giving her to us to know and to live as a companion in our pilgrimage on earth. In your boundless compassion, console us who mourn.” I yearn for a comforter of all who sorrow and a source of boundless compassion, but I believe we have to comfort each other and show compassion for ourselves. My mom was the author of my life and my first and best comforter. She was my example, along with my dad, of how to practice these much-needed virtues in everyday life.

My mom’s life is now in the past. The future holds a burial of her ashes, which are now in a hallowed corner of my dad’s living room, surrounded by sweetly glowing purple, Ione’s favorite color. As a family, we are planning a road trip to the prairies of North Dakota that she so loved. My mom had a deep recognition of herself as a woman of the Dakota prairies. We will scatter a few of her ashes there, among the pale green sage. She used to break the leaves of the prairie sage for me to bring out its evocative scent.