I decided to start writing my mom letters after hearing how she is showing signs of further decline. You probably know that she is in California and I am in Nebraska and I haven’t gone out to see her since the fall. Thanks be to God she doesn’t know I haven’t been out to see her, but I do.
The long goodbye is a very long goodbye and longer than anyone really knows what to do with. I call my dad and he tells me about his visits with her. I love hearing how she’s not scared or nervous like she had been for that last year before she moved to Memory Care. I love hearing how she’s glad to see visitors and glad to be in her new home and even likes going home for the afternoon with Dad every once in a while so they can sit together in their own backyard and get a little normal into this not normal present season of life.
Twenty-so years ago, after I had moved out of the house and gotten married, my mom started sending me things she thought I’d want from around my old bedroom. She mailed me packets of old pictures, she mailed me keepsakes from high school musical productions and ticket stubs I had saved from concerts and plays. She mailed me tshirts I still had in my drawers and old school IDs, Prom photos and newspaper clippings from back when everyone thought I might really be somebody.
And then she mailed me a manila envelope full of letters I had sent to her and Dad when I was in Paraguay and then later in Spain. All on that thin airmail paper nobody uses anymore. All inside those airmail envelopes in my high school scrawl for pages and pages of whatever I was thinking at the time.
I came across that packet of old letters in a box last night while looking for immunization records so I could try to come up with my kids blood type (he needs it for some medical form in college). I still have no idea what his blood type is but I do know there’s a stack of old thoughts on old paper from a young girl trying to make sense of life for the price of an international stamp and an empty afternoon.
Paraguay was my Beta test around emptiness, loneliness, creativity, imagination, freedom, resilience, gross stupidity and strength. My mom gave me that. She was the one who got me on that plane, she was the one who put that Valentine’s card in my bag so I’d find it on the 13 hour trip. She packed the first pack of paper and airmail envelopes so I would get writing. She believed I could do it and so I did.
And I didn’t do it great. And I mostly made lots of 15 year old mistakes and I wasn’t the poster child for foreign exchange, but that’s how it goes when you have no idea what you’re doing. And the doing sets you up for better knowing.
And better knowing continues to shape us as the years go by and for some better know it takes 25 years to circle back to what was good and had been forgotten. So I decided to start writing my mom letters again like the ones I wrote before. The distance between us is much wider now and harder to bridge but I thought I’d do it anyway. I still have things I need to tell her. I still have time yet to write.
Dear Mom,
I know one might read this and think it’s all too little too late, but I suppose I’m a sucker for hopelessness and folly. I wish you could see the boys. You would be so proud and delighted by all three of them. They could use a grandma like you, you know. You would’ve helped them with their homework and cleaned their rooms for them while they were at school even though I’d tell you not to because they should do it on their own. You would’ve taken them to the movies and sat through all the Spider’s Men and had fun watching them have fun bowling and camping and sitting around the fire ring. I know that’s what you would have done. Anyway, we weren’t close but I miss you all the same. I’m sorry for all that fighting for all those years. Turns out, none of it really meant anything. I love you. God loves you. Please, Mom, I know it’s hard but can you try and stay awake during the day? And, when you walk, can you make an extra effort to take good steps instead of shuffle? I know it’s hard. I’ll see you soon. We’ll work on it together when I get there. Love,
Hopie Noel