Surprised by Memory
This post is different from the usual Geekerati Newsletter post and is my annual memorial to my mom.
I just realized last night that my mom has been dead for more years of my life than she was alive. She died twenty-seven years ago when I was an undergraduate.
I am not an orphan, I still have a dad and chat with him and share pictures. Yet a part of me is still very much missing, a large part.
October 7th, 1998.
10…7…98 those numbers loom large and ominous in my heart and it is only recently that I am no longer completely overwhelmed by them. I still think about my mom daily and I still feel sad around this time of year, it is no longer a date that I need to take off from work because of overwhelming sadness. The sorrow of the loss still surrounds me like a fog every year. Each year the fog is a little less dense, but it is always there and brings a sorrowful chill to my productivity and mood.
My wife and I have intimate conversations often, it is one of the joys of marriage, and during one of these conversations a a few years ago she and I discussed the death of her grandmother. My wife explained her feelings this way, “When someone dies, the world feels a little less complete. Bird songs aren’t as joyful, and sunrises are slightly less beautiful.” Displaying, as she often does, her magnificent talent for unedited, awkward, and spontaneous verbal poetry. She was also correct.
She recently shared similar sentiments when we were talking about her dad this weekend. He died in 2020 and though he did not die of Covid-19, my wife was unable to see him due to lockdowns and the difficulty of getting time to drive to the Bay Area for what would be a very brief visit. She had already stopped by once during lockdowns and the process of doing it made it very emotional. She wondered then, and still wonders, how we could have done more to make him feel less alone in his final months. Our response to that situation was to try to make the world feel a little more complete and to add more love to our lives.
This meant that in July of 2020 my wife turned to me one day and said, “Christian, would it be okay if we went out and got a dog?”
I responded with a quick, “Sure. That sound’s like a good idea.”
“Great!” She said. “I found one. Let’s drive to San Diego to get her.”
We did and Snowball has been a wonderful addition to our family.
Then at the beginning of November of 2020, my wife asked me another question.
“Honey, do you think we could move to Idaho to be close to my mom?”
My response was, once again, “Sure. That sounds like a good idea. Judi and Bud don’t have any other family in the area and I am working remotely.”
“Great!” She said. “I found a place and we can move in two weeks from now!”
We did and I have fallen in love with Idaho, but Idaho reminds me a lot of Reno which is where I grew up and where my mom died.
C.S. Lewis opens his book A Grief Observed with the following observation about death:
No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.
I still feel this way. Not everyday, but on random days and certainly yesterday and today. Historically there had been two things that were remarkably difficult for me to do even years after my mom died.
The first was that I sometimes had a hard time remembering truly happy moments with her...on command. Happy moments enter my consciousness at random moments and seldom on the anniversary of her death. Glimpses of her nymph-like smile...brief auditory illusions of her laughter enter my mind. But the majority of my memories are neither happy nor sad, they are the memories of everyday activities, evening dinners and the question which ever looms over the head of a teenager, “Have you finished your homework?”
Now, when I think of my mom the moments that most come to mind revolve around her sense of humor. For example, though I watched many movies with my mom, none as awkward as the time we watched The Hunger. I think it was a Friday night, around this time of year, but I could be adding to the memory. I do remember that it was just the two of us and an erotic vampire film. I remember feeling both uncomfortable being aroused by the film, in my mom’s presence, while at the same time finding the situation hilarious. I mean, what mom picks a highly erotic vampire film to watch with their kid?
Okay, she probably picked it because it has David Bowie in it and he was one of my favorite musicians (those of us with January 8th birthdays have to stick together). Still, it was odd to be sitting there watching it with her and comedic troll that she was, she waited until a very specific moment in the film to ask me from where she was sitting on the other side of the room, “You like that?” Not in a judgmental way, rather in a “Ha! I caught my fairly straight edge son in an awkward moment” way. Makes me laugh every time and it makes watching The Hunger an ever awkward experience because even though she’s dead, she’s always watching it with me.
Speaking of her being a troll, there is one moment that really stands out for me. It comes to mind all the time and it is from when I was very young, maybe 6th grade or middle school. I came home to see my mom eating some scooped white substance from a bowl. I asked her what she was eating and she said, “A new vanilla ice cream…want to try it?” Naturally, I did. She told me to close my eyes and open my mouth and then she gave me a bite. It was cottage cheese and it was a horrible shock when I was expecting vanilla ice cream.
These memories just come to mind when I think of her. I used to not be able to remember them on demand, but more and more I can remember these and other moments. I do wish I could remember more of them though. In all honesty, I remember my mom as a happy person, a person who added joy to the world. Every time I watch a romantic comedy starring Meg Ryan, the character Meg portrays typically echoes how I remember my mom. This is especially true of Sleepless in Seattle. My memories of my mom as a generally happy person are why I experience significant cognitive dissonance when I think about her death.
I can’t understand my mom’s addiction, and eventual death due to how it ravaged her body, to heroin. I try, by reading/watching/listening to and about other addicts. I know the narrative of my mom’s addictive cycle, I can see each step of her hopeless journey. That’s not what I can’t understand. I know the things that led to her addiction. I watched them happen step by step and the progress is as logical as it is common among addicts. What I can’t understand is the overwhelming power of her addiction and how that addiction stole my mom from me...day by day.
Oddly, some really shallow things help. They are a poor substitute for true knowledge, and seem trite when I think hard on them, but they help. These things include the music of the Velvet Underground (in particular, you guessed it, Heroin) and Iggy Pop, the films Permanent Midnight (which I saw just after her death) and Trainspotting, television shows like Breaking Bad, the book and film versions of Razor’s Edge, and the writings of C.S. Lewis among other things.
I am the only member of my immediate family I know of who attends church regularly. I was raised secularly. Strange as it sounds my mom found comfort in, though she was baffled by, my faith. She once asked if I believed, expecting me (the first college student in my family) to laugh at the absurdity of the question. I told her I did and her response lingers with me to this day, “Really?” Her eyes looked at me...proud, confused, unbelieving, yet hopeful. I never was able to tell her that hope was what faith was all about (”Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen” Hebrews 11:1). It isn’t about “knowledge,” little of life is about actual knowledge. This is why Socrates asked us to know ourselves. That is a difficult enough task. Let alone the ability to acquire actual knowledge of something else.
I was notified of my mom’s death by answering machine. I was in classes and at work all day and even though it was the late 90s I didn’t have a cell phone. A series of messages of an ever-worsening condition. My father and sister were trying desperately to contact me so I could be there, but without a cell phone it was impossible. The calls were informative and dire. Seizures... followed by emergency medical action.
My wife and I later read the medical records to piece together a timeline, to see if there was an heroic effort to save my mom. There was. It is not the best way to be notified of death, answering machine, I think it is the worst. I can only imagine how hard it was for those trying to contact me. Until I received the messages, I was living a normal day while they were experiencing desperation and sorrow.
In retrospect I wish that my mom had been buried not cremated. I would have liked to have had the chance to speak, to say my own words. At the time, I hadn’t been to many funerals, but I have been to more than I’d like since that time. Now that I’ve attended funerals of friends taken too soon or who killed themselves, I have found that there is comfort and closure in them. There is also the knowledge that you can go to a quiet place to reflect and honor the memory of your loved one at another time. For example, when I used to drive by Mount Sinai Memorial Park across the freeway from Disney Studios, I was able remember my friend Cathy and shout “Twins Cathy!” It was something I said almost every time I drove by the site. When I drove to class at Cal Poly Pomona for my MBA, I knew my great uncle was buried at the Covina Hills cemetery near the exit and I’d think about him and our family visits to his home…visits that always included a trip to Disneyland.
It is different when you have a portion of someone’s ashes. It’s not bad, but it’s different. One of the interesting, and neat things about it, is that I am constantly looking for ways to honor her. One of the ways I do this is by leaving ashes at random places I visit so that my mom is also visiting them. Any time I am going somewhere my mom didn’t have the chance to visit, I think about leaving a little bit of her there to share a new memory. The total amount of ashes is limited though, so there is also the desire to keep some to keep the memories close.
This blog post is my annual eulogy, but I never feel that my own words are quite capable of fully capturing my grief so I also like to share the two poems I think best capture the way I feel. I first encountered one in a movie and the other, I read in an English literature class focusing on Romantic Literature. Both moved me deeply for their understanding of sorrow. Later, when I was reading a science fiction novel a friend recommended to me, I was deeply moved by some comments made in Philip K. Dick’s author’s note from A Scanner Darkly. I am going to quote these works below because fiction and poetry can play a vital healing role because they let us know that we are not alone in our grief. Grief is timeless.
The first poem is by W.H. Auden. Like many, I first heard the poem when I watched Four Weddings and a Funeral. It’s a lovely movie, and that is in large part due to the power of this particular scene.
The poem, which is available in its entirety at the Poetry Foundation, begins as follows:
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.The second poem is one of my favorite poems. It resonated with me before I had learned of loss. I read it in a class I took on the Romantics as an undergraduate, a year before my mom died. It’s by my favorite Romantic poet, William Wordsworth. There is something in his sentimental writings that connect with me more than the work of any other Romantic poet. While Coleridge and Blake capture my imagination, Wordsworth captures my heart. When I was an angst-ridden teen Shelley’s Ozymandias was my anthem, but from the first time I read Surprised by Joy I finally knew how powerful the medium of poetry could really be.
SURPRISED by joy--impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport--Oh! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind--
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss?--That thought’s return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.Wordsworth wrote Surprised by Joy (C.S. Lewis titled one of his autobiographies after this poem), for his daughter Catherine who died at the age of four. This poem masterfully captures the grief I feel over the loss of my mom. I am “Surprised by Joy” often and every time I have wonderful event in my life, I want to call her and share the news. That can never happen and it brings the event of her death immediately to mind and my sorrow and feeling of loss are renewed. Every time...without fail. My mom missed my graduation, my wife’s master’s, my acceptance to graduate school, my wife completing her MFA in film at USC. She was not there to see her twin grandchildren born, and she did not experience any of the joy that the twins bring into the world.
The twins are a blessing in so many ways, but there is one particular way that amazes me. I get to see my mom in them every day. They are the Joy in my own personal Surprised by Joy. One of them will often do something that reminds me of my mom and I’ll want to share it with her, but have to settle for reminiscence.
As I stated before, I have continually looked to fiction and biographical narrative to understand my mom’s addiction and that is why I am including the following by Philip K. Dick. I think it captures a lot of how I feel about my mom’s addiction. Unlike Dick, I do think addiction is a disease, but like him I think it is a decision too.
This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did. They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one another of them being killed --run over, maimed, destroyed -- but they continued to play anyhow...
Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgement. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a life-style. In this particular life-style the motto is “Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying,” but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory...”Take the cash and let the credit go,” as Villon said in 1460. But that is a mistake if the cash is a penny and the credit is a whole lifetime...
If there was any “sin” t was that these people wanted to keep on having a good time forever, and were punished for that, but, as I say, I feel that, if so, the punishment was far to great...
When my mom first told me of her addiction to heroin she expected me to be angry. A lot of my family was, I think the thought of my mother using heroin was too alien to my grandparents for them to even imagine it as a possibility. I think they viewed her use as somehow a failure on their part. I didn’t, I only wanted to know if she was okay. By which I meant was she okay at the time she told me. My mom thought that heroin could make life more bearable, for her it wasn’t a selfish desire to have fun, because she felt empty and sad on a regular basis. Heroin made her feel distant from the world and that distance let her forget her sadness for a moment. It made her feel like she could endure life by giving her moments of “nothing.” But in making her think she could endure life, heroin took life from her.
I don’t “forgive” my mom for dying, I have never thought there was anything to forgive. I miss my mom and wish she were here. I love her and knowing that makes the missing part not so bad, because (as C.S. Lewis stated long before WandaVision) “The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That’s the deal.”
Wow... this one hit me pretty hard this morning. I guess part of it is, my mom actually passed about two weeks and change before yours -- September 22, 1998. That... and I found out by answering machine as well... and her death came from the results of her own addiction (my mother was a very heavy smoker). She was a manic-depressive, and I suppose in part she was self-medicating -- who could really say, though, since she's not here to ask. In any case, I understand how the grief can be. God bless.
😢