“Hi Sweetie! I was just thinking about…” is how every single saved voicemail from my mother opens. I decided last week, on the morning of what would have been her 80th birthday, to replay them, which was a wonderful idea in terms of remembering her and a horrible thing to do after applying mascara. Saving those messages was one of my smartest moves even though they are predominantly artifacts of the banal instead of life lessons I wish I’d copied down on parchment.
Most were left on the go, from an airport, packing up to leave some place, or getting ready to head out the door. Every single one, without fail, includes a callback to whatever I was doing in my life: a trip we were taking, Middle’s college visits, my own graduate coursework. Always with specificity and care: “I checked the calendar and I think Jeff and the kids got back from Colorado yesterday, I’d love to hear all about it.” Calling my mother to rehash a trip I didn’t even go on, likely for an hour, sums up a top-tier Kari-Mom conversation agenda.
There were occasional updates on her treatments, delivered before or after visits to “barcalounger beach,” her affectionate name for Abramson Cancer Center. One was her asking me about something that she mumbled in another language. Then she said “Where’s my Portuguese when you need it?”
To my knowledge I was not engaging in anything in 2017-2018 that necessitated the use of Portuguese (a language neither she, nor I, spoke).
Eight years ago, when I first lost her, I was desperate to save the really monumental stuff: the letter she wrote me for my confirmation with her reflections on love and religion or meaningful books with personal inscriptions. I thought about those stories of people who lose loved ones and get collections of videos made in advance for certain moments in time and wondered… why couldn’t my mother have bought some stationery and planned ahead a little bit? She had nearly a decade of stage IV cancer to do it.
Despite being so great with words, she more often modeled her love and advice and approach in actions. At the time, I completely forgot about the importance of the little “just checking” messages because I took them for granted — especially when I was lucky enough to receive so many. Now, for the minutes I do play them, I get to hear her voice, hear her call me “sweetie” and tell me she loves me, and am reminded just how thoughtful she was about me, my life, and whatever was happening in it.
Next week will mark eight years without her, and I’ve always made that the day I allocate for sadness. This year, however, I’ve been less focused on that anniversary than on this huge milestone birthday that we’re not celebrating (or certainly not doing so as we would have with her). She was a birthday person, but claimed to hate attention — an affliction about which I know very little. I’m confident she would have somehow had multiple parties while still making sure we were all talking about my father turning 80 several weeks later. My father, meanwhile, has been calling himself 80 since he was 78, so his birthday seems less eventful than the one she’s not here to celebrate.
I’ve watched my own grief transition from wishing and wondering what she might say or what she might think, to just accepting and appreciating signs wherever they appear. Earlier stressful moments with the kids made me wish I could call her and ask her how to handle moody teenagers: do you ignore them and let them be moody or try and talk it through, and if you opt to talk, what do you say, especially when they say they don’t know why they’re moody? She would have had great answers for this and would have reminded me what a pleasant teenager I was, especially when hormones took over but I hadn’t started antidepressants. At some point, I realized I had internalized as much as I possibly could and simply put on my Mom-colored glasses through which to view the world. When experiencing “la vie en Mom,” I know that there are no accidents, only experiences open to interpretation.
A few months ago, at a dinner party, a friend introduced me to someone and asked her to share the story of her engagement, which included actual fireworks sent from her dead mom. In response, I felt compelled to tell her about the time my mom came to me in the form of a fox that I saw outside the window. We only spoke for a few minutes, but in that time we found our moms had almost the same name, both lived in Mexico City at the same time, and her mother’s birthday was the day that my mother died. Both of our mothers told us we wouldn’t forget them and found ways to reappear (although arguably fireworks are more fun and flashy than a potentially rabid animal in the backyard, but beggars, choosers… maybe my mom heard the story and will step up her game in the future?)
I’ve always known there was a Dead Moms Club (thanks to both Kate Spencer’s book and my amazing friend who sent me an autographed copy right after my mom passed), but the club has so many different subsets. Mine is made up of those of us who loved our mothers dearly, still get messages from them, and more often than not still make decisions with their approval/verdict in mind. We may find it hard to listen to our friends complain about their moms (even when those moms are being terribly annoying) but do our best to empathize and not say “aren’t you so lucky to have someone alive and doing passive-aggressive things or criticizing your parenting or ruining your holidays?” It’s not the same because our respective mothers, if they did any of those things, did so in a way that we remember as charming.
The anger and resentment are gone. I remember when Queen Elizabeth died and, outside of my continued obsession with the monarchy owning all the swans in the UK, I mainly thought: fuck you, Charles, for still having a mom at 73. But, then again, probably not ideal for Charles to live an extra three or four decades with a mom who liked his creepy brother more.
King Charles is definitely not in my Dead Moms Club sub-club since part of the rule for membership is having a mom who didn’t play favorites even if you joke and say the favorite isn’t you. I still haven’t deleted my mom from my list of favorites in my phone contacts because, even if I can’t call her, she’s still one of my favorites.
In life, she managed to both ground and uplift everyone around her at the same time. Now that she’s gone, her memories and her stories let me connect with strangers in ways I didn’t expect and with a more spiritual side I didn’t know I had. I get little moments with my brothers, nieces, and nephews where I see bits of her in them — if not always in appearance then in intense chess matches, one claiming to have “the gift of gab,” and a love of baths after a bad day. And her memory has helped me see myself differently when I realize that part of my constant desire to give advice and help comes from her, even if she brought warmth where I bring sarcasm.
When I spoke with my brothers on her birthday, after my voicemail message replay, one of them said “we hear so often about people who fill your cup and people who drain your cup and Mom was a cup filler.”
When she was alive, her own cup was full of coffee in the morning and Chardonnay after 5 PM, and while she never spilled either of those valuable beverages, she often told us “my cup runneth over.” It did.
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Sorry for your loss. I'm glad to hear that you have your voicemail collection ready to hand.
Oh gosh. Man, did this make the tears flow! As a not-at- all happy “ member” of the Dead Mom Club, your words resonated deeply. My own mom died two and a half years ago, and I was so fortunate to have her for all of the major milestones in my life. But damn I miss her. I have two voice messages saved-both are so hard to listen to because the ache becomes almost unbearable. But I tell myself ALL the time how lucky I am and was to have a great mom. Thank you for sharing and for giving me a moment to remember and thank my own mom. Sending you a huge hug.