Not quite a year
It has been almost a year since my mother died (11-30-09) and we held a small memorial for her to dedicate her headstone yesterday. Since I started thinking about these things when mom went into the hospital, it’s been an unconventional tying together of different faiths, cultures and traditions and along the way making tradition as we went along. But that is fitting for a woman who embodied an unconventional life. My mom wanted to be buried in her family cemetery but in the Jewish faith and so yesterday, at the almost one year mark when Jews traditionally hold an unveiling of the headstone, we drove across the lake to honor my mother. My friend and artist Kim Frohsin sketched the angel and dog that guard my mother’s grave. Near the headstone is place the angel my grandpa’s wife left on her unmarked grave a month after she was buried.
We asked Deacon John to come sing a few songs in memory of my mom. He sang a heart rending rendition of Any Day Now to start our ceremony on an afternoon where the leaves were turning amber, crimson and ochre. A day that reminded me of my mom and my travels to see my grandmother over the many years, over the many Thanksgivings, over the many autumns when the camellia tree in front of Mama’s house would be burgeoning with pink flowers and the air would be crisp just like it was yesterday.
Across the Causeway, Deacon John had been reminiscing about his own mother who passed at 74 years of age and though she died in 1984, you’d have thought by the way he spoke that it was just yesterday. I was thinking of the times I have cross that bridge, to see my family, for my grandmother’s funeral, when I learned my father had died, to bury my mother, and now not quite a year later, to mark the first year anniversary of her death. The bridge of sighs.
As I said yesterday, I don’t know how many women at 50 years of age lose their mother and become a mother all in the same week, but for me the journey has been profound.
To my mother, who was as beautiful, ephemeral and memorable as a lovely song.
October 26th, 2013 at 9:43 pm
[…] Yeah for Mimi, but instead I put on Deacon John singing Many Rivers To Cross, which is what he sang at the graveside when we had my mom’s memorial in 2010. I sat there on the warm granite, Tin in my lap, […]