“That’ll be mine when my mom dies”
For a few years as a little boy, that’s what I told visitors to the apartment my mom and I shared after she and my father’s divorce, while pointing at the heavy leaded crystal paperweight she kept on an end table.
I’d been fascinated by the crystal, with its hidden, almost holographic facets that when viewed at the correct angle appeared to project into the space behind it, an optical illusion that never failed to instil wonder in my young mind. Being a young kid, I’d of course asked if I could have it.
Mom’s response was that the crystal, a gift or inheritance from her grandfather, would be mine someday when she was gone. I felt a proud sense of ownership over the paperweight, and loved telling people that mom said I could have it when she died, while being utterly oblivious to both the lack of social grace behind the statement, and to the terrible reality of what coming into possession of the crystal would mean.
Sony A7iii w/Tamron 28-75mm f2.8 @53mm
ISO640, 10s, f7.1
Processed in Capture One 20 Pro & Photoshop 2020
In the few years between mom’s cancer diagnosis and her death, we spent some time going over what would happen to various belongings of hers, from who would get specific items of jewelry, to the disposition of her huge collection of whimsical teapots. And of course, she never failed to point to the crystal and say to me and anyone else present “and obviously that will be yours.”
A few months before her death, mom tried to get me to take the crystal home after a visit. I refused. Mom was still with us, still only a phone call or a visit away, and while I knew that reality was drawing to a close, I wasn’t doing anything to even imply the inevitable outcome of her disease was near.
Before leaving for the hospice they’d chosen, mom and David took a last walk through their home so mom could say goodbye to the house where they raised me, and lived for all but the first few months of their three decades of marriage. As they did, the crystal was sitting on an end table in the living room, just as always. Its bittersweet message: “remembered joys are never past” more appropriate in that moment than perhaps any other.
It’s been a year now (well, a year and a day by the time I’ll have this posted) since mom died. And it’s been as awful as I could have imagined. I miss her every day, though the intense pain that followed her loss isn’t a constant companion anymore. I still reach for the phone to call her, and sometimes unexpected occurrences bring the hole in my heart and life that she left behind rushing back to the forefront of my mind.
When we bought new furniture I sunk into a depression for days, because mom would have loved to see the way we made the living room work. When Owen finally got a new job he had his finger over mom’s contact in his phone before remembering that she wouldn’t answer. Then he called me and I did the exact same thing. Every time I wear her wedding ring, which I had resized to fit me, I hear her saying “isn’t that a bit flamboyant, even for you?” She’d asked me that while we were going through her jewelry a few months before her death, and I said I wanted it after she was gone. Truth is it might be, but I can pull it off.
I’ve been lucky in a way that too many of my friends and family-of-choice weren’t in that I had a fantastic mother. We didn’t agree on plenty of things, but she always made sure I knew I was loved. And mom stuck by me through quite a roller-coaster over the thirty eight years I had her, from the Tourette, to my queerness, my paganism (the thing she struggled with the most), my polyamorous relationships, my work in the kink community, and so much else.
Well before mom’s death, I didn’t know how the hell I’d go on without her in my life. People told me “you just do” and it turns out that they are right. One step in front of the other, through a world grown colder and more lonely for her absence. But as I tell myself on an almost daily basis: remembered joys are never past.
Note: the line “Remembered Joys are Never Past” can be found in James Montgomery’s poem “The Little Cloud,” which you can view here: https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/little-cloud-2