Oct. 30th, 2005

My Mother's Handwriting

This morning I was going through some old bills I had found bundled up by a blue rubber band - mail still being delivered to my parents house though I had lived in a new place by then. I have since moved again but had yet to open these bills, not a good practice; though I had already paid them I should still LOOK at the bills in careful detail (though it was later instead of sooner - hey but it's better than NEVER! this was obviously not a trait passed down to me by my parents!).
I turned over the brown envelope that had my bank statement enclosed and noticed my mum had written herself a note on there to drop off some medical information at the doctor's office - it was a note written in pencil, slanted and almost running off the paper in haste, but it was my mum's penmanship no doubt, a thing of beauty I always thought and tried to imitate; I was never able to convincingly forge my mum's signature.

I worry sometimes that I will forget about her, the smallest details but I am painfully reminded still how fresh everything is about her when all the memories and feelings and smells come flooding back. I have a photo I took of her last Christmas, she was sitting on the couch by the window with the sun upon her, watching my youngest sister decorate the Christmas tree. This was always Mum's job to decorate, ours was to take it down. This year though she was too ill, unable to stand for too long and in too much pain to move around. She gave up this position easily and watched with a smile on her face, no criticism whatsoever, only pride. She knew after all this would be her last tree and she wanted to enjoy it.

Whenever I look at this photo, it takes me right back to that moment as I sat beside her and held her hand and kissed her cheek. Her skin was dry and paper-thin, her cheek still soft and fuzzy but cooler and her smell is one that hurts me to remember, of sweet perfume but illness close behind. I can feel her tiny frame as I hugged her, ironically as if careful not to squeeze the life out of her instead letting her hug me back with all the strength she could muster. The last time she hugged me that way was the last time she was able to 'mother' me the way she always had, consoling me as I cried and speaking softly in my ear " I know, I know..."; this was the day the doctor told her the chemo treatments would stop and it would only be a matter of weeks left for her to live. I think back now and I am in awe of a woman who after being told she was down to her last days on earth still had it in her to look after her grown adult daughter who was facing the inevitable loss of her mother. When someone should have been consoling her, mothering her, she thought of nothing else but to dry her eldest child's tears. I hope that I continue to find little scraps of her handwriting. The chances are becoming smaller and smaller as my dad and younger sisters move on with their lives and make changes in the home that they once shared with Mum, giving away her belongings and packing away her own old, forgotten bundled up bills and letters with notes jotted in scribbled pencil on the back.