“These are the days,” Van Morrison sang,
“by the sparkling river
And His timely grace and our treasured find
This is the love of the one great magician
Turned the water into wine”
Timely grace. Treasured find. Magic love. These are the days of all that…in a face. These are the days of that episodically quiet and undulating grief. Yesterday, as even my short memory recalls, was Mothers Day – the first of those to come around since mine died last September. And now today, one wave following fast upon the last, is her birthday – what would have been her 91st. I remember well her 90th celebration. We didn’t know it would be her last, but the real possibility that it could be joined us as a guest. Lori baked pies, Merryl brought decorations and a crown. We lit candles and Mother blew them out. We took pictures, which always was her favorite joy. We sat around while we ate and told stories, laughed and reminisced.
“These are the days now that we must savor
And we must enjoy as we can
These are the days that will last forever
You've got to hold them in your heart.”
And so today I do. I savor the sound of her voice singing solos in church, and the scent of supper on the stove. I savor the sweetness of after school cookies, the “earthquake cake” that was simply a strawberry cake that fell apart just out of the oven, which she simply repurposed and renamed and served in a brown paper bag; the occasional “7-Up Cake” and the frozen fruit salad cup at Thanksgiving. I savor the warmth of staying up late on a December night to watch “White Christmas” – her in her chair, me by the fire. There might have been popcorn involved. I savor the giddy joy of picking out, along with my brother and Dad, the Mothers Day birthstone ring – a sapphire for me, an opal for Daddy, topaz for Craig, and emerald for Mother – all lined up on the setting like the family we were. I savor her fierce uprightness, and the vocabulary of her face that routinely spoke more plainly and bluntly than her voice. I savor the sheet music she routinely indulged me to encourage and bait my practice time at the piano. I savor the humor of her sweet tooth – an indulgence she rarely permitted herself earlier in life, but which in later years galloped unbridled. Chocolate and flowers. Flowers and chocolate. And the smile that accompanied them both.
But of course I savor most the blanketing, anchoring, elevating, ennobling tenacity of her love. A lioness to the end, we never ceased to be her cubs – us, and ours. I am elevated by it, still.
Mothers Day. Birthday. Grieving days. Grateful days. Savoring days.
These are the days.
