Mom lost her best friend last week, on Good Friday of all days. She was the most anti-Catholic yet church and cathedral loving woman I knew and I don’t know if that was fitting, ironic, or just plain funny. She was a pistol and never once allowed “that fat white man” (aka Santa Claus) to take credit for all her hard work at the holidays. No sir. She made sure her kids knew exactly where that magic came from and that is something I have always admired as I myself perform Broadway level theatrics in order to entertain my kids. The magic has gotten a little too magicky, don’t we agree? Simmer down people.
Auntie Pat was the one who invited Mom to live with her when all hell broke loose in Mom’s home. Through Auntie Pat, Mom found a stable home and loving parent figures—something she had been denied for far too long. Over the years, Mom and Auntie Pat grew as close as sisters, her kids are our “cousins”. We love them. The female flame that burns bright in this world is a little dimmer without Pat adding to it. When she came to Dad’s 90th birthday party, her profanity laced rants were like a warm hug. No one was more worried about the current state of the Supreme Court than Auntie Pat. She and RBG are plotting their revenge right now, can you feel it? She had been worried about the fate of that all too powerful branch for over 3 decades, maybe longer. If you think that means you should be worried too, you’re right. Worry and worry a lot.
With all the sadness and upheaval of the last week, I have learned the limits of Mom’s coping mechanisms in the face of enormous grief and have also learned to breathe deeply and frequently. Her attention turned toward her car (her grandson has it), her inability to just pop down to CVS or Dollar Tree, a missing tape dispenser, and finding a way to have Chardonnay delivered with Drizzly no longer in service (Uber to the rescue!). I didn’t realize the last thing was an issue until I found her watching a car in front of our house like a hawk. Why? It was Uber with a wine delivery. I know that last bit may come off as unfeeling or cold but I assure you I am neither of those things. If anything, I now carry a greater appreciation of the agony it is to lose one’s independence set upon the backdrop of constant loss. Of course she’s hurting and looking for any way to make it stop. I will keep breathing and hugging, listening and praying. She is a force of nature as was her “sister” Pat. Whatever coping mechanisms these ladies developed over the years were born out of necessity no doubt. We kids, though often bewildered/befuddled, have had to learn to shrug and accept, accept and shrug. They simply don’t make them like these women anymore. We’re losing something with Auntie Pat’s passing and Mary’s entrance into elder ladyhood. I only pray that my Maire carries a shred of who these women are in her blood.
Although the week has been filled with chaos and failed attempts at a meditative writing practice, I managed to meet up with three of my best friends from college in the city where it all began—Worcester. We snagged tickets to see Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill and reveled in the nostalgia of being in the city where we stumbled and picked one another back up when her music was still fueling our female teenage angst. Hearing that music again brought me back to car rides with all my high school friends, belting out the lyrics to “Hand in my Pocket” and “You Oughta Know” even though most of us didn’t yet know the treachery it was to really be a woman in this world. Something about that somewhat offkey, screachy, female power rock ballad music was exactly what I needed at that time and now 30 years later. That album represents the primal scream that I have yet to release but now can at least identify a few key directions for it. My throat hurts from singing every song on the way home from Worcester and later with Maire in the car on the way to her soccer game. “What ARE these lyrics?” she asked as Alanis sang about the benefits of walking around naked in your living roOOoooooooOOOOOOOOOM. I just sang “FEEL FREE!!!!” to her. (if you know the song, you get it).
As you all know from reading over the years (or months, or days), I try to find a thread in each of my weeks that feels like something to tug at, something that might unravel another way of thinking about things. Sometimes, I succeed. Other times, I fail. This week, I am bombarded with memories of Auntie Pat saying things that made me laugh yet fear the future, a high school classmate who is now a full-fledged lesbian belting out Hand in my Pocket song in the front seat of my friend’s Nissan, my college friends and I navigating the streets of Worcester without cell phones, and my own sordid past as a broken down woman who found her feet again with the help of the women in her life. My ears hurt after listening to Jagged Little Pill all day today, trying to suss out why it meant so much to so many of us. I love you but…small doses, Alanis, small doses. My take is that somehow that music represents the birth of the females of this generation from women like Mom and Auntie Pat. We inherited a strange world and were told we could have it all. And here we are now wondering if having it “all” is what life is about. I don’t think it is. When we are confronted with the weight of the past, we have a choice—stagnate in the present, design a new future, or use the past as a bridge between the two. I’m choosing the latter and I don’t yet know what that means. And all I really want…