Today is our mother Betty’s birthday. It changed from a celebration to become the anniversary of her absence after she died six years ago. But gradually this feeling is being replaced with a sense of gratitude.
Living overseas has shifted my experience of death and mourning for friends and loved ones. In a weird dichotomy, their deaths are just a continuation of the existing separation and physical distance only now with poorer communication.
It doesn’t take much effort for me to imagine our mother living in a parallel universe where she is now attending some prestigious writers’ colony in Maine or living in an upscale apartment near the Chicago Arts Institute. I have no idea why I see her in Chicago but she is having a wonderful time attending exhibition openings in designer clothes and eating deep-dish pizza. She just doesn’t feel the need to speak to me.
Despite returning frequently to the States to visit, I still always felt a sense of guilt for my decision to live overseas. This meant that I couldn’t participate in the ordinary daily routines and small acts of care which intimacy thrives upon. We communicated regularly by phone and email but it wasn’t the same and we both knew it. And as she grew older and frail, physical distance became a harsher emotional distance. It was very hard to see her alone but she never complained. And Covid was another complication where I could not even travel back to the States to bury her ashes until the epidemic was over.
After her death, I was freed from the shadow of guilt and sadness at the challenges in her final years and my inability to support her more. Those things that were unfulfilled and disappointing have receded and I am left with loving memories of our mother and a gratitude for all she did for my sister and me. She was a wonderful cook, gifted seamstress and had a lovely singing voice. She enjoyed antiques, interior design and encouraged our interest in the theatre and the arts. And she ensured that my sister and I could both attend college by working as a substitute teacher and later full-time to pay for our tuition. Without her, we would not have had the support to go to college.
My mother is alive and well living somewhere in my imagination and with gratitude, I know the distance between us has vanished.
