Eulogies for My Mother

By Windy Booher Taylor

At the age of 35, I suddenly became my mother's caregiver after she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. We traveled the road of her cancer journey together, from diagnosis to devastating end. Along the way, I learned much about the woman who raised me - and about myself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9780359112975

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Eulogies for My Mother

Eulogies for My Mother

Copyright © 2018 by Windy Taylor

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing: September 2018

ISBN 978-0-359-11297-5

Marsupial Press

[e-mail]

houseblendfamily.wordpress.com

Introduction

Let me be perfectly clear from the start - I am not a hero, and my mother was not a saint.

This is important. Remember it.

The short version of the following story is this: my mother was diagnosed with a brain tumor in May of 2015 and died from it on September 24, 2017. She was 70. I was 37. For the last two and a half years of her life, I was her primary caregiver. And her accountant. And her chauffeur. And her wardrobe consultant. And her phone operator. And her medication manager. During that time I learned more about her than I had in the previous 35 years. I learned things she simply neglected to tell me, and I learned things she actively kept from me.

But, most important, I learned that she loved me. That she trusted me to do the right thing and take good care of her. And I also learned that I am as tough as she thought I was; as tough as she wanted me to be.

As much as I wish she'd told me all that before she got sick, maybe learning it the hard way has its merits.

Her name was Winifred, but she went by Winkie. As in, Wee Willie Winkie. My name is also Winifred, but I go by Windy. She was married to David, and they named my little brother (wait for it) David. I am married to Jason, and between us we have four children – Hollyn (his), Tyler (mine), Jensen (his), and Hazel (ours). When I was pregnant with Tyler, I asked mom what she wanted her grandmother name to be. She was not ready to be a grandmother, so she sniffed, he can call me Winkie. Naturally, I decided that her grandmother name would be Moo-Moo, which was frequently shortened to just Moo.

Growing Up

My mother loomed large over the first three-quarters of my life. She seemed gigantic and immensely strong to my kid-self. Mom was emphatic about never being my buddy. She was an intimidating figure of absolute authority, quick to anger and insanely pragmatic. We never did anything just us girls, because mom didn't consider herself a girl and didn't consider me a social companion. She had friends for socializing, and me and my brother for parenting. In her mind, this was the proper order of things. I can kind of see her point, now that most of my own children are almost grown. I have occasionally fallen into the trap of taking a young child out alone, and HOLY COW is it painful. Like my mom, I prefer family outings. I need another adult, otherwise it feels like the inmates are running the asylum. Mom had parenting books with titles like, Raising Self-Reliant Children in a Self-Indulgent World.

My grandmother used to tell me a story about the time shortly after my brother was born. We’re only 14 months apart, and at the time we lived in a two-story house. My grandmother recalled watching me teach myself to climb and descend the stairs, because no one was available to help. Besides, I probably would have pitched a fit if anyone offered. 

When I was three, we moved to a house on Sherwood Road in Jacksonville, and that will probably always be home for me. Our house was a strange place to be a child - a museum where everything was fragile and valuable and not to be touched. There were whole rooms of our suburban ranch house that were off-limits to me and my brother. Our playing was to be done outside - and for the most part, we complied. We had a big yard with trees for climbing and shrubs for building imaginary kingdoms.   

I spent the better part of the 1990s being sullen and embarrassed at everything having to do with my mother. But I was also terrified of her - she was a one-woman panopticon. I felt her eyes, her influence, everywhere. She seemed to know everyone in Jacksonville - certainly everyone within my sphere of experience. She also possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of trivia - random facts about the world around her. She was always, always down for a documentary.

I would say we had a good relationship, but not a great one. She cared for me the best way she knew how, but I think she frequently felt lost as a parent. She believed her own mother had been a cold perfectionist, but then she told stories of a childhood filled with adventure - waterskiing and horseback riding and a gang of neighborhood kids who played until dinnertime. She felt her mother was overly critical - and she was critical of the superficial things. But my grandmother was approving of mom's big choices - she loved my father, and loved my brother and me. I had more just us girls outings with my grandmother than I ever did with my mother. Nena would have me over to spend the night sometimes. We'd play cards and watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! and in the morning she'd make us breakfast.

When I would tell my mom about these outings, she would shake her head and mutter, "You don't understand. She wasn't like that when I was growing up. I didn't understand what she meant until I sent Tyler to spend a week with mom one summer. She fixed him whatever he wanted to eat, took him to the pool every day, and bought him a giant Lego set, just because it tickled her to watch him put it together. That is not the woman who raised me," I said, teeth gritted. I don't know who that woman is.

I'm not sure mom had much of a plan for parenting beyond not like my own mother. And then life kept throwing monkey wrenches into her plans. My parents had been married for six years before I came along, and mom told me the delay was not a planned one. Letters from my uncle to my parents indicate that they desperately wanted children, it was just not happening for them. Then, they suffered a miscarriage. I was (finally) born late in 1979, and was an only child for all of five months before they got pregnant with my brother. That non-delay was also not planned. I think all those unexpected happenings - the long wait, followed by two babies in rapid succession - made parenting feel especially difficult for her.

She told me once that she went to the grocery store and the checkout person said, Whoops! Looks like you got two different size diapers! Do you want me to go get you two of the right size? My mom said, LOOK AT MY FACE. Do you see the dark circles? It's not a mistake. The cashier threw in a pack of cigarettes and a handle of vodka. Just kidding - but wouldn't that have been awesome?

Because mom was a twin, and because my brother and I were so close in age, sometimes she simply pretended we were twins. We went through a phase where we had matching bowl cuts - mine blond, his brown - and matching outfits (lots of gender-neutral striped tees, polo shirts, and corduroy pants). I guess she thought it would make us closer, to be forced together like that. It did not. Despite looking like twins as children, my brother and I have always been very different people. And now we don't even look alike. My mom's pastor once remarked that it pained my mother that her children didn't get along; she worried that after she died we would never see each other again.

We were raised by parents who defied gender roles, although they would never admit to so progressive an idea. My mother loved screaming at the television during sporting events, wore basically the same thing every day, and treated all boo-boos with Bactine just to watch us scream. My dad loved shopping - nothing made him happier than being up to his elbows in the clearance section of Stein Mart, or checking out the newest offerings at his favorite antique shop. He also loved decorating the house, especially for Christmas, and dressing up for any occasion. He was constantly editing the mantels, moving things from room to room, re-hanging pictures and re-arranging shelves.

My parents met on a blind date in 1972. They went to Patty's, an Italian restaurant in Jacksonville, and mom said she'd never laughed so much in her life. I didn't marry him for his looks, she said, and I didn't marry him for his money. I married him because I wanted to laugh every day. She got her wish - and then some. My parents were a team, if an unlikely one. My mother had all the status that my father craved, and my father had all the sparkle and personality that mom felt she lacked.

My dad, David, was a lawyer who did real estate, wills, trusts, and probate work, and my mom was his office manager. I don't know if she started right after they were married, or after I was born - and it just occurred to me that there's no one I can ask about it.

This is what sucks the most about losing both parents and all four grandparents - you are suddenly the repository for all family stories. You are responsible for holding all their details, all their memorable quotes and traits, everything that made them a three-dimensional person. It's an overwhelming task.

Without someone to fill in those details, the deceased are quickly flattened to images in photographs or on video. They fade, they lose texture and color and substance.

Taking care of my mother for two and a half years was a daunting task. Writing the story of it has been no less daunting. There are details I cannot bring myself to put down, the worst of it, because I want my mother's story to have some dignity.

But it is the story of a death. It's the story of a life that was extinguished by a terrible disease. It is a story of pain, and decay, and suffering. It is also a story about love, and hope, and peace. It is my mother's story. It is my story. It's my family's story.

In sharing it, I hope to speak to others my age - a paltry 38 right now! - who are facing their own parents' demise and feel too young, too immature, and too inexperienced to deal with it.

Because I'm not going to blow sunshine up your buns - it's a lot to deal with.

When my mother was diagnosed, I had been married for 5 years and my youngest child was less than a year old. I felt like I was just getting the hang of being an adult. I still called my mom every day, to ask for advice or share some story about the kids. I still needed her to be my mom, to say the right things when I was upset or tired, or when the kids were getting on my last nerve. Not that she ever said much more than, Suck it up, but at least she was consistent.

My mom also approved of my big life choices (well, after a warm-up round). She loved my second husband, Jason, and loved all our kids. She loved our pets, and our house, and she never, ever, ever talked about my appearance. In that way, she did manage to escape my grandmother's influence - although in many other ways she ended up just like Nena.

She'd punch me in the face if she heard me say that.

You never notice how much people talk about their mothers, and their complicated relationships with their mothers, until you don't have one. As of this writing, I have just celebrated my first Thanksgiving without either of my parents. But all I heard from my friends, all week, was We're going to my mom's.... or Mom will probably pick a fight with me about..... or Mom's going to make her signature dish.... or And then my mom will cause some kind of drama....

Mothers are everywhere, when yours is nowhere.

I am healing. I was relieved and grateful to discover that I got most of the hard, terrible grieving out of the way while mom was still alive. Since she's been gone, it's subsided to a dull ache with occasional flashes of knife-sharp sadness.

Two nights ago, I dreamed about her for the first time in weeks. I dreamt I was sitting in my living room, and mom was striding purposefully across the grass towards her car, keys in hand. She was dressed in a khaki skirt and white short-sleeved button-down, and she looked like 1980s Winkie.

Instead of feeling overjoyed that she was back, or marveling that she wasn't in any pain, I was alarmed. I ran outside to stop her from driving off.

I have to get there on time, she said.

Mom, where are you going? I asked.

I'm not sure, but it's important that I get there one time, she said.

It was then I realized that, while her body appeared to be completely healed, her mind was still gone. I led her back into the house and debated who to call - the crematory? the hospice nurse? Somewhere, someone had made a terrific error. I picked up the phone to call hospice, and then I woke up.

I hope I see her again in my dreams. I hope her mind heals, so that next time I see her I can tell her we're all hanging in there, we're all living our lives, but that we'd give anything for her to be part of it. I want to tell her what Hazel has learned this week, how the other kids continue to impress me by growing up into decent human beings, and how happy I am with Jason.

I want to tell her, one more time, how glad I am that she was my mother.

And how much I miss her.

Here’s My Theory

In 2003, two things happened that changed the shape and trajectory of my life profoundly.

In May, my father died. In August, my son was born.

I was 23 years old.

I felt like a freak - of my graduating class, I was the only one who had a baby (and I would be, for many years). But losing a parent was becoming a terrible trend.

In the first few years after I graduated from Amherst, it felt like my classmates were losing parents - specifically, fathers - at an alarming rate. My own father died one year after graduation. Two friends from intramural soccer (Quantum Gators FTW) lost their fathers. Peter Jennings, who was our commencement speaker and whose daughter was in my class, passed away. A few years later, two close friends lost their father. More recently, a member of my class lost her father, Antonin Scalia. In a graduating class of 400 students, these losses feel significant in number.

It wasn’t supposed to be like that. Our parents had just finished raising us, pushing us out of a very secure nest into the wilds of adult life. Not only were they supposed to be able to relax a little bit, but we needed them around for advice and comfort and to prove to them that their efforts had not been in vain.

Our parents were supposed to be a buffer between emerging adulthood and facing the mortality of our elders. Safe and comfortable in middle age or early retirement, our parents would shepherd their own parents through their twilight years, as well as provide financial and logistical support to us, their children.

Sounds awesome, right? I mean, for us. We’d be the recipients of their knowledge and experience, and