My mom died one month and three days before her 39th birthday. Today I am one month and three days away from my 39th birthday. I have reached her age of death. It's a bit surreal.
I've been pretty open over the years about how one of the main ways grief has manifested itself for me is that I have a tendency to get neurotic about seeing my life through the lens of her timeline, always knowing how many years and months until I reach the age of her diagnosis and death. I think anticipating hard milestones is often more difficult than the milestones themselves, so I've actually had an easier time with that countdown as I've gotten closer to (or passed, in the case of her diagnosis age) those points in time. It's still a significant milestone for me, though, and I've always wanted to visit her grave site around the time that I reached the age of her death.
A couple months ago I told Tim what I wanted to do and got his support, so I started looking at weekends in May that would work for our schedule. This weekend worked best for our family and it wasn't until after I'd picked the date that I realized I would be there on the
exact day that I would be the same age as she was when she died. The fact that it was Mother's Day was purely coincidental and had nothing to do with the trip.
I only told a few people why I was going before the trip and gave the scoop to people I saw while I was gone if they asked, but I didn't really want to talk about it much before I went because I didn't have any idea how the day was going to be. In talking about it to just those few people I'd experienced hysterical sobbing, tearing up, and being totally fine. Given that I could have been at the cemetery for five minutes or five hours, been totally fine emotionally or spent the whole time bawling my eyes out, I just wanted to let the day play out,
then talk about it.
So, here I am. I had the day and I'm ready to talk.
Here is how I spent this morning.
Cemetery selfies are a little odd and I'm not sure if they count as selfies if your face isn't included, but that's ok. I wanted a visual reminder of my time. The grass was wet with dew, so I used my rolled up sleeping bag as a chair and settled in next to my mom's grave. I'd brought along a binder that's special to me, a project I did my sophomore year of college, which was four years after my mom died. I'd sent letters to people she'd known in all different seasons of her life and asked them to share their memories of her, positive or negative. I read the responses as they came in over the next several months and may have looked at them in the next few years, but I haven't opened that binder in at least 15 years. I saw it a couple weeks ago, knew that reading it would be a great way for me to mark the day, and brought it along. The weather was ideal, rhodies were all in bloom, birds were chirping, and I spent 90 minutes reading letters, smiling through some and tearing up because of others, just pondering the whole thing. It was perfect.
As a sidenote, I think I know who left
the mystery flower on my mom's grave several years ago. While neither I nor the person who it may have been can be entirely sure that the flower I saw was one they put there, they told me how they've put flowers on her grave from time to time over the years. Given the details, we're pretty sure it was them that time. However, even if it wasn't them, and I'm not going to say who they are, then it still meant so much to me to see flowers that day and it was really neat to find out over the weekend that this particular person has put flowers there in the past.
Actually, I had more than a perfect day. I had a perfect weekend. I left home Friday afternoon, spent four hours with the windows down and radio off, then arrived at Dad and Debra's house in Talent. They treated me to delicious Chinese food for dinner, then we took some pictures, ate ice cream, chatted, and hit the sack. The next morning Debra made an awesome breakfast casserole that I'll have to get the recipe for so that I can share it with you and make it myself. I totally forgot about my own camera, so this picture is one that was graciously shared with me by my far-more-competent dad.
On Friday night I discovered this envelope in my sleeping bag. It had been snuck in by a little W who had put money from their giving budget in it so that I could get some of my favorite pizza in the world. So thoughtful!
I left my dad's on Saturday morning and had to kill 45 minutes before the pizza place opened in Ashland. Ashland is definitely one of my happy places, filled with so many good memories, and I'm so thankful that I had to make an unplanned detour there. I walked around, visited one of my favorite stores, and enjoyed the sunshine.
I was at
Great American when the doors opened, told them the story of my generous kid, placed my order, and left with this box of goodness. Dijon chicken. Seriously good stuff. Especially if you eat it cold for breakfast.
My next stop was pretty spontaneous. John and Karey knew my parents in college and they all ended up being really close friends for many years. I hadn't seen them in a very long time, but dropped in on my way to Brookings. It was so neat to be able to spend a little bit of time chatting with them, talking about my mom, meeting their granddaughter, and just catching up on each other's lives! I love having people in my life who knew me before I even existed because they knew my parents. Ok, so that's not
really knowing me ... but whatever.
I arrived in Brookings, ran some errands, took pictures of three of the four houses I lived in there, and then headed to Pizza Deli. Technically it's
Wild River, but no one who lived there before the name change actually calls it that. It's my other favorite pizza place and I happily ordered their taco pizza, which I'd been eagerly anticipating since I scheduled the trip, then sat back to see who would end up responding to my open invitation on Facebook and via e-mail to meet me there.
Nancy and Shawna (plus Shawna's daughter, who took the next picture) were the first to arrive. Nancy was a close friend of my mom's and my siblings and I grew up with her kids. Shawna was a year behind me in school and we've known each other for years. It was fun to spend time chatting with them about life, both in general and specific things. We may or may not have gotten the giggles while taking this picture.
Shawna left, then Andrew, who is one of Nancy's kids, showed up. Andrew and I weren't close growing up because of our age gap, but it was fun to visit with him as an adult and catch up on life. I forgot to get a picture with him, but Nancy took this one.
A few minutes later Linda arrived. She was another friend of my mom's, one of several women in their 30s from our little town who were all diagnosed about the same time. What a treat to be able to see her healthy and happy all these years later!
That time at Pizza Deli was so special for me! My next stop was Tiff's house, where I was going to spend the night. I'd asked for a place to sleep and she arranged a girls' night with snacks and drinks aplenty. She and two other gals I graduated with, Tiffany and Rochelle, were there, none of which I'd seen since our ten year reunion eleven years ago, plus a few of their friends that I hadn't met before. Girl time is always a good thing and I appreciated her going out of her way to do more than just give me a place to lay my head that night. Unfortunately, it didn't occur to me to take a picture until this morning. So bummed I missed that opportunity!
This morning I headed to the cemetery, which I already told you about. I was wrapping up my time there and realized I could make it to the church I attended as a kid in time for the next service. I visited briefly with a couple there who knew I was going to be in town, went to my seat, and then was simultaneously shocked and thrilled to have Shon walk up to me. He was one of my closest friends in high school and we stayed in touch for several years, but our paths eventually ceased to cross. I got to meet two of his kids (one took this picture of us) and see Cindy, his super sweet mom. So proud of this guy! They invited me to join them for lunch and Robby, his younger brother who's another person I failed to get a picture of, met us at the restaurant. Seeing their family was completely unexpected and getting to spend a chunk of time visiting together was awesome. Bonus points for those boys growing up into men who pick up the tab for the women and kids in the mix.
I left for home a different way than I'd arrived and stopped by the last place we lived in Brookings on my way out of town for a quick picture. The home isn't the one we lived in, as someone built a house on the property after we were gone, but I still wanted a picture. As it turns out, the current owner was getting out of his car as I arrived, so I introduced myself and explained what I was doing. He was super friendly and I ended up staying there for almost half an hour! He walked around the property with me a bit and we talked about various things in the yard, then he turned me loose to go walk more by myself and take pictures. Not only that, he gave me something to take home.
The property had been undeveloped when we moved there and my parents put a 12x60 trailer on it with the hope of building a house a few years later. My mom ended up getting sick and that plan got scratched. However, there was still a ton of work done on the property, from bringing in water and electricity to lots of landscaping projects, and my dad had documented all the changes in a photo album. When my dad sold the property he gave the new owner the album. That owner added a few more pages of pictures when they built their home there, then passed the album along to the current owner. The current owner isn't really making any major changes, so he pulled the album out of a cabinet and gave it to me. I don't know if I'll keep it forever or not, but it was so fun to look through! Our family was in a lot of the pictures, which was cool.
I left the property with such a huge grin on my face! I'm so incredibly thankful for the blessing of a weekend that was not only exactly what I needed it to be in regards to my mom's life, but was a total treat for me as I visited places that mattered to me, saw people that I care about, and ate all sorts of good food. Plus I got to drive over and along multiple rivers, pass through farmland and forests, see hills lit up with Scotch broom and roadsides dotted with wild iris (which my mom loved), spot a bald eagle soaring in the sky and watch tiny kittens practice walking, drive through the redwoods and smell the ocean ... and on and on it goes.
I marked the day and I'm glad I did. On a related note, my mom's time of death passed while I was typing up this post. I've officially lived longer than she did.
UPDATE: My dad posted about this milestone on his blog, The House on Oak Valley, and included lots of pictures.
UPDATE #2 - I eventually shared who put the flowers on my mom's grave.
