The last time I saw my Barbara Mary, she was crying. That was four months after I said to her "Nothing worse will ever happen to you," as I tried to comfort her loss of her 29-day-old firstborn, Christian. Last week I visited their graves and was upset that the flowers I placed there on my last visit were gone. It was raining, and I had to go to the bathroom, and the flowers were gone. I stuck the new ones I had brought in the permanent vase and left. In the grand scheme of loss and misery, missing artificial flowers is bearable, maybe even a gift to distract from the actual reason for being in a cemetery.
Today is the 17
th anniversary of my
firstborn's death at 31 years old, just seven months after her firstborn died. I'm having a hard time, harder than usual. As I type this, I am soaking wet from working in my garden in an effort to soothe myself with planting flowers, and I have given in to the pain and disappointment. My first child was beautiful and smart, as are the three still living. The promise of a future was there in her bassinet, at her First Communion, at the spelling bees she won, at her high school graduation, but along the way her dreams for herself faded.
Not all of the memories I have of her are as adorable as the one where she said "
delissa pie, Mommy" or as sweet as the note she left me on my washer the night her baby brother was born: "I hope you go to the hospital soon and you bring home a boy baby." There was also the time she screamed "Bitch!" at me in the street when I tried to stop the drug activity that was taking place where she was then living. Had she lived longer, she would probably have learned that mothering is a mixed bag.
We didn't always like each other, but we always loved, and I am so sad for everything she missed and is missing. She should be here to watch her son become a man, and to compare notes about life and parents with her sisters and brother. She should have the
satisfaction of overcoming mistakes and rising above bad decisions. She should not be lying in the ground, sharing a plot with her own baby son, nearly forgotten by the world and mostly forgotten by those who said they loved her when they were really loving how she made them feel temporarily.
In the end, though, I am grateful to the child who first made me a mother, one of the things I love most about my life. I remember the feeling of running down the subway steps, knowing that I was no longer alone in my body. I hope Barbara had some moments like that too, and I hope she and Christian are somewhere at peace, maybe with my mother and father and brother and all the rest of the family who have passed on and are waiting for me.
