If this eulogy does not form a coherent whole, please forgive me.
By this point in my life, I’ve had pets, neighbors, mentors, friends, and relatives die; but it’s never been anyone I would consider close. That privilege, that immunity from grief, lasted 49 years, 2 months, and 21 days. It ended on October 6th when I watched Mom die. You don’t come back from that, and to those of you who have seen dying in one form or another, I can now approximate your understanding. Grief is a funny thing. I’ve learned that it really does come in waves: that one moment you can feel reasonably ok, and the next you’re brought to tears. I better understand why compassionate friends and neighbors bring food: grief not only kills your appetite, it effectively renders the act of eating undesirable.
Mom was 21 years, 6 months, and 16 days old when she gave birth to me, her first child. She and I were both born on a Wednesday, by the way. (She was also a breech birth, so it’s safe to assume that she came into this world kicking, and then screaming.)
This seems unimaginably young to me now, especially considering that I work at a university populated by young adults. But when you’re a child, your parents aren’t just your parents, they’re “grown-ups”. Under ideal circumstances they are perfect. Under ideal circumstances you idolize them. What I could not understand as a child was that Mom was still learning her way through the world, just as I would age the age of 21. This is a continuous process for everyone. It never stops, only slows down at some point in our lives.
It thus follows that I loved my mom unconditionally, regardless of the fact that she was still a dynamic, changing person. I was–again–the first child, which meant that I was the prototype. Let me be clear: this is not something I resent or am bitter about. It’s just a fact of life, and I take comfort in believing that it made Child version 2.0–Erica–a bit easier to work with. There was, however, a complication. Maybe it’s because Erica and I are only seventeen months apart in age, but we spent the better part of twenty years driving Mom up the wall with our incessant squabbling. It had such an intensity that it convinced some people to never have children. For what it’s worth, I did apologize to Mom for the hassle. For what it’s worth, I’ll apologize now to Erica, because I love her. We are not twins, but she is the one being on this planet with whom I share the most common ground: we have the same mother and father. We bear the burden of having lost that mother. Even if we’re not the type of siblings to talk every day, we share a similar sense of humor, and I think the world is a better place with her in it. I’m glad you’re in my life, Erica, and I’m glad you enjoy me making fun of myself as much as I do.
As children, Mom sang to us from the first available opportunity, and I hazard to guess that I sang with her in a pidgin of infant babble long before I could talk. She taught me to read, and somehow, thankfully, I inherited her love of reading. I also inherited her love of walking in the woods and climbing rocks; her love of Greek mythology and strong women characters. Dad recently said she didn’t like spiders, which would mean both of my parents didn’t like spiders. I love spiders, so I’m not sure what happened there; but Mom would sooner scoop a spider up and throw it outside than kill it. She once consoled me when I was distraught over accidentally killing a moth. She guided me through other, more difficult circumstances as I grew older.
It’s not easy to explain, but she put into place the fundamental framework for critical thinking and analysis that makes me much of who I am. In addition to reading, Mom taught me the precision of language: that consonance, alliteration, and even connotation carry linguistic power. Thanks to her poet’s razor sharp understanding of words, they have an almost tangible texture for me.
Mom often walked to the beat of a different drummer; and her children, in their way, follow in her metaphorical footsteps. Erica and I both have a critical eye on the world, and I’ll be the first to confess that I can be cynical. But, counter-intuitively, this makes me happy. The danger of cynicism, of course, is that it can turn into nihilism, or–even worse–fatalism. But Mom taught me strategies to prevent that, one of which is an almost boundless sense of humor. The Dean of the library at Elon loves the fact that I sometimes drink coffee from a mug that says, in flowery script:
Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass…
It’s about learning to dance in the rain.
Talk about irony in a cup! If you’ll allow me to stretch the metaphor a bit, Mom loved thunderstorms, and so do I. However, the thought of dancing in the rain seems frivolous and dangerous. And besides, I hate getting wet.
So I tried out a coffee mug with a quote from Samuel Beckett:
You cried for night. It falls. Now cry in darkness.
It’s a great quote, and I love it, but it’s not me. There’s too much nihilism and not enough irony. Better I carry around a mug that Mom, with a wink and a nod, would understand.
Mom loved reading about physics: astrophysics, quantum physics, general and special relativity. She’s the one who taught me that energy is neither created nor destroyed. Mom was a being of both matter and energy. Her matter is the stuff of stars: the molecules that composed her body have existed since the beginning of time. Where, then, is her energy? The answer to that question depends on our individual understandings of the universe. I purposefully wrote in her obituary that she earned a place in Valhalla, the Norse afterworld reserved for warriors who died honorably in battle. You may know that the Rainbow Bridge also comes from Norse mythology, so I personally like to think her energy found its place there.
This is where things get difficult for me, so I ask you forgive a grieving son if I entertain some strong emotions. Mom loathed cruelty, so it broke my heart to see her exactly where she didn’t ever want to be: intubated and patched with wires in a hospital. At one point I told Mom that she was not alone. She rolled her eyes at me. I am both comforted and torn apart by that reaction, because it was a very Mom thing to do; and because I feel like I failed her in that moment. I’ll debate this scenario with myself for the rest of my life, and while I don’t expect I’ll ever find a complete answer (and I feel it’s too late for one), I do believe I’ll find some kind of acceptance. This is in no small part because of what Bowers hospice was able to orchestrate: a peaceful place to die with a minimum of suffering. Getting Mom to hospice was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do. It was likely a defense mechanism, but I honestly held out hope that she’d bounce back from this. She is the toughest, strongest, most tenacious person I’ve ever known. If it hadn’t been for the leukemia and its insufferable treatments she might have comfortably (emphasis on comfort) lived another twenty years. I will confess, and there is no shame in my confession, that just a few hours before Mom died I turned to Dad and asked permission to ask a stupid question. “She’s not coming back from this one, is she?” I already knew the answer, but I had to give that question a voice, and it needed to be heard by someone outside of myself.
My friend and co-worker Greg, who himself died of cancer two years ago, would always shake off complements by saying that he wasn’t special, that there were a million more people just like him. What I said to him in turn was that he was the only Greg that he would ever be. That sounds a bit like a Zen koan, but let me try to explain my reasoning a bit further: if uniqueness can’t be found in our individual existence in this world, then it can be found in the relationships we form and (in the case of a parent) create. There are millions of mothers in the world at this very moment, but Mom was the only mom I’ll ever have. This was a unique and immutable relationship.
Finally, I’ll leave off with a quote from the movie Interstellar, which left me with a profound metaphysical and existential ache:
Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space.
The film is as much or more about the love a parent has for their children as it is about saving the human race. The love Coop has for his children is contrasted with the love that Dr. Brand’s father has for her. Both are different. Both are powerful. And they both transcend space, time, and death. As corny as that line can be perceived, I feel there is more than a kernel of truth to it, as love has no X, Y, or Z axis. Love can last longer than solar flares, gravitational waves, and the distant collision of black holes. It can exist in two places at once, in two different times. It exists in this room in a superposition of joy and sorrow, of memory and hope.
My love for Mom will last until my life itself is finished. Beyond that is the singularity.
Null Entropy 