Jennifer<\/p>\n
Loyal readers of the blog may think I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve forgotten that I already wrote about calling the young man who killed my grandmother in a car accident, but this is a different grandmother and different phone call.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
***************<\/p>\n
My mother should have realized by December \u00e2\u20ac\u212287 that there was an important reason she had been losing weight for a year or so and had begun to have difficulty in keeping food down, but she refused various medical tests which she had previously vowed never to have again. By March \u00e2\u20ac\u212289 she was diagnosed with untreatable stomach cancer. In April, May, and June pagan spirituality became increasingly important to her. The Goddess was going to save her. Also in that period of time she talked for hours on the phone with all kinds of people about the exciting connections she was making between things she heard on the radio about physics, observed about birds, saw in art shows, remembered learning about the native people of ___, etc. When I overheard snippets of those phone calls, I wondered: What would my experience be on the other end of the phone? Clearly, I would listen because she was (my sister \/ my daughter \/ my best friend from college from whom I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t heard in 10 years), but would I be excited by the connections she was making or would I think she was crazy? Would I have any idea, on the other end of the phone, that this 5\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 7\u00e2\u20ac\u009d tall woman now weighed 85 pounds?<\/p>\n
My mother had read, and had asked us all to read, Bernie Siegel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Love, Medicine, and Miracles. We weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t supposed to think that she was going to die. This from a woman who had considered euphemisms to be way worse than many people consider swears \u00e2\u20ac\u201c she never could respect people who said \u00e2\u20ac\u0153make love\u00e2\u20ac\u009d instead of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153have sex\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pass away\u00e2\u20ac\u009d instead of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153die\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. (I know, I know, Bernie Siegel wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t suggesting we use euphemisms, but that we all live love and hope. Screw that.) Despite that, it was not too hard for us to tell those who asked how she really was. But my grandmother (her mother) didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ask any of us. <\/p>\n
My mother asked for and we planned a big solstice celebration. Just as the sun would turn, would travel the other way, at the summer solstice; the Goddess was going to begin healing her then. We double-checked with the hospice worker who came to the house, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153How long?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really need to double-check. I was gaining 20, 30, 40 pounds and making a new life inside me, due to be born just after the solstice, she was losing 20, 30 pounds and \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 (no euphemisms, now). Her favorite creation myth had been the Wintu Indians\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 story about how birth and death came to be, because the gods had first planned humans to experience neither one, but ended up with both: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They will know the gladness of birth. They will know the sorrow of death. And through these two things together people will come to know love.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Take that, Bernie Siegel.) So I knew. But we really weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sure her mother knew. <\/p>\n
So I called my grandmother. I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been able to reconstruct the words I chose, but I suspect I thought that by focusing on the cycles my mother so appreciated, I could pretend I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t using euphemisms. The conversation wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite as hard to have as it had been to anticipate \u00e2\u20ac\u201c my grandmother did know. I learned then that there is no age after which it becomes easier to lose a child. (Or if there is, it isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t age 88.) <\/p>\n
We had the solstice celebration. My mother died four days later. Three days after that I had a terrifyingly brief labor and m\u00e2\u20ac\u2122hija, La Chica, was born. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jennifer Loyal readers of the blog may think I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve forgotten that I already wrote about calling the young man who killed my grandmother in a car accident, but this is a different grandmother and different phone call.\u00c2\u00a0 *************** My mother … Continue reading