Anniversary of Mom’s Death

Last weekend was the third anniversary of Mom’s death.

A week before her anniversary, I saw Mom in a dream.  In the dream, I left the sanctuary to look for my kids in the fellowship hall of my church St. Barbara’s.  Mom was shuffling from the side of the fellowship hall with the kitchen over towards the library.  She didn’t stop doing her own thing, but she made eye contact with me and smiled.  I woke up with the dream vision of her more vivid than my waking memories.  Everything so familiar, the curls of her messy hair and her jeans and knitted poncho.  Man do I miss her. I feel like we lived parallel lives and wish there was more time to intersect.  I long to make bread with her or do lace together.  I want another tea party or one more movie with popcorn.  One more loving embrace.

On the trip to the monastery this year I asked the kids to come up with memories of Nanama.  They mentioned silly things.  I miss her support and encouragement, her prayerful presence.  I wonder how my children see me.  I want them to know that I am an intelligent woman.  I want to have a deep faith that inspires them to stay in the Orthodox Church, to seek God, and to desire a faith of their own.  I don’t want to be remembered for baklava and tea parties, for my silly phrases and funny sense of humor although those are a part of me too.  Like Mom, how I am seen and how I will be remembered are both out of my hands.

Basil drove most of the way to the monastery with Mike in the passenger seat.  I was the backseat driver yelling out unhelpful hints and praying for deliverance from death.  I hate driving on I-20.  Basil won’t go freeway driving with me.  That’s for the best for both of us.

My friend Melissa made koliva for us.  We brought it to the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ Monastery and ate it in the grass before Mom’s marble cross.

I asked the kids, “Will you picnic next to my grave someday?”

“Yes!”

“Probably.”

The koliva tasted sweet, wheat berries mixed with raisins, chocolate chips and a hint of orange peel.

Aftewards we said hello to Mother Barbara and Sister Suzanna.  Mike bought some candles.

Sophia found a fried seafood restaurant in Kemp, Texas which we tried.  The fried food was a bit too much for Mike and me, but it was a nice way to extend the outing.  When we came home, I went to bed to read Mom’s copy of Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier.  Sophia took Jonah to the store and bought chocolate cake.

Sometimes when we go to the cemetery, I spend a lot of time telling Mom all about my troubles.  This time I said, “Ellen and Kimmy say hi.  I love you, Mom.”  This time there was the sense that Mom knows everything.

Motherhood is heartbreaking.  Sometimes the things that I value are of little importance to my children.  Every positive pregnancy test gave a start to all my hopes and dreams for each of my children.  Those plans for their future died with two of them in my womb.  The rest of the plans and hopes for my living children are denied over and over again as they grow into their own people.  Watching them live lives that are full of sickness, suffering, and sadness, seeing them make choices that I don’t like, watching the world fall apart with pandemic and war.  Reality is so far from the perfect life I still want for them.  Motherhood is a dying to myself that I had never imagined.

Mom had a quiet presence in my life.  The world is worse off without her prayers and faithfulness.  I didn’t want to take her place.  I didn’t want to be the woman in the back bedroom praying for my family, but that appears to be the role of a mother with grown children.  Sometimes all that can be done is through prayer.  I was going to be the mother who made all the right decisions.  My kids were going to have a two-parent household with parents who could provide for them and who loved God.  That was supposed to make all the difference.  It’s shocking to see my children do as they please.  They are all good kids but so independent.

I think about my mother-in-law often these days.  I once asked her what she thought about arranged marriages.  She told me that she wouldn’t have known who to choose for her sons.  Her boys all chose such different women, and she loved all her daughters-in-law.  We were talking today about when Mike and I converted to Eastern Orthodoxy and how worried she was then and how she couldn’t have imagined the good that would come out of it.  Twenty years feels like a long time to wait to see the fruition of good things to come.  Sometimes it takes a lifetime.  Sometimes it takes generations.

I struggle with believing in God’s will.  When someone tells me that God has a plan, I usually want to punch them.  I can see so many things in my life working out, but even though I like the person I’ve become, I would gladly give up all the suffering, bad decisions, and challenges that made me the strong woman I am now.  The dreams I have for my children are wrapped up in the troubles I want to be spared myself.  On some level, I know that life doesn’t work that way.  Mary had a sword pierce her heart.  Jesus asked, “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless, not My will, but Yours, be done.”

It feels like God is breaking me to bring me to a place of acceptance and prayerfulness.  Lately, my prayers have been for myself.  That God will save my soul.  That I wouldn’t become bitter.  That I would accept that which I cannot change.  I wish that Mom was here to tell me to keep praying and keep loving unconditionally.  I want her to hug me and remind me that neither my life nor the lives of others are in my control.  May God answer my prayers through Mom’s continued intersessions.  May I become the Christian and the mother I long to be.