-Dad’s not her password anymore
-What do you mean?! Where?
-Her Gmail. It’s not working.
My brother Bud had a tendency to talk about stuff as if I knew the entire context of the conversation he had had in his head. He took after Mom that way.
I got why a change of passwords would be upsetting, in this context. Bud and I came from a generation where using your significant other as your password was a true sign of commitment. Thus, Dad’s password had always been MomsName1968, Mom’s password DadsName1968 and that was it. Bud and I would later create other passwords, delegate our devices to create them, but our folks never did.
I vaguely recalled Mom ranting about special characters and what’s so special about them and why can’t I keep this password what’s wrong with it anyway I can’t even find that under line anywhere, but I never followed up, and now here we are.
-OK Bud, that’s fine. We’re going to receive the legacy email with all the passwords in a few weeks anyway. And I can still access her phone when I’m there.
-Right. Forgot you had the fingerprints and stuff.
I did have the fingerprints recorded on Mom’s phone. I also had her location, her instructions for the funeral, her directions on what she wanted to wear for it, all the practical info. Bud was the one who had to arrange all of that, since I was living an ocean away, and yet, I was the one Mom trusted with all the info. I was the one who could carry the mental and emotional load.
An episode comes to mind. I was 9 or 10, at a sports competition. Mom was low-key bragging about how level-headed and quiet I always was, when I lost it. I burst out crying because I had lost the match, Mom was surprised and disappointed that I had proven her wrong in front of people. I just needed to be sad. Bud and Dad would always be scared of my sadness; Mom would mostly be embarrassed. I just needed to be sad. I just need to be sad. But I’m, once again, the one who can take it. The one who can be level-headed and figure out the practical stuff. While Bud is doing all the work, and neither of us is truly seen.
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It wasn’t all about food, but an awful lot of it was about food. Mom was one of the reasons and a fellow victim of my eating disorder and body dysmorphia. But she was also the one who I shared some of the best meals with. Her memory lives in the tea she bought me because I told her I couldn’t find a good one. And in the instant coffee Dad wouldn’t remember was her favorite, so I took it with me on the way home.
Before moving overseas, I savored every last meal with them as if it was going to be the last one ever. Until one eventually was. I made her her last risotto; I bought her her last treats. When we received the instructions for surgery preparation, that’s when it hit me, that she might never have a bunch of food again. I tried sharing that with Bud.
-That’s good, though, you know. Everyone should follow that diet. It’s really good to cleanse from those foods.
He kept talking about PH imbalances, I stopped listening. It wasn’t about the food. At the height of my eating disorder, Mom or I would stop at the best bakery in town to buy a sweet raisin bread roll and share it over the sink before Dad could realize and want one, too. It was the one treat I was always able to enjoy. This went on for over 20 years. Not like Mom wouldn’t try to guilt trip us on how we shouldn’t be eating this stuff, it’s so bad it’s so fat. But we would, nonetheless. When the doctors insisted that Mom needed to gain weight (ah! How the tables turn, I thought), I bought her the raisin bread roll. The day of her surgery I tried buying one for good luck, for me – they had run out. I only had it the day before her funeral, over the sink before Dad came home. It was one of many pieces of her I lost over time.
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I’m not sure when it started, but I know when I noticed. She wasn’t texting me twice a day anymore. Days went by without her initiating a text conversation, a week could go by without calls with her and Dad; even those calls seemed shallow, as if they were trying to cut them short to move on to something more urgent. Nothing was more urgent than talking to me, in regular times. When she eventually shared her diagnosis – no, when Bud pushed her to share it with me, - it all made sense. When I flew back, I had to ring the bell. She hadn’t been waiting by the doorbell to buzz me in like she used to. Another piece lost. She would let me do house chores, she felt too tired to keep up with those. Another piece lost. She barely read the newspaper, until we stopped buying it altogether. She stopped humming / whistling / randomly singing around the house. That was a huge piece, her voice. I was forever grateful to my past self, for deciding to record Mom and Grandma on a random Tuesday a decade ago. I wouldn’t have either of their voices to listen to, otherwise. After surgery, she never fully recovered her natural voice. I realized that thanks to a dream. She was in our childhood backyard hanging clothes, humming. She asked me what we should cook for my aunt, who was coming over for lunch. I knew it was a dream; I started sobbing. She came to comfort me and asked me if I can’t come back the way I used to be, what’s even the point? and I knew she meant it. I woke up sobbing and holding what felt like her hand in mine. That was the last time I heard her voice. Another piece lost.
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There was this short story I read as a child, it was called “Seven Floors.” There was a hospital that treated only one specific disease; mild cases were on the 7th floor, the more severe the case, the lower the floor. The protagonist was first admitted to the top floor, as his was a very mild case. There were multiple reasons and excuses to move him to lower and lower floors (we need the bed, there’s maintenance on this floor, we’ll just move you temporarily…), until he was in the basement floor and died. Sometimes, it felt like that with Mom.
The doctors were initially optimistic on her chances of recovery. They said her symptoms were normal, even the grossest ones. A lot of it didn’t sit right with us, but we weren’t doctors. So, we trusted that she was being admitted to what that short story would consider the 4th or 5th floor, and she would eventually get better. She wanted me and only me to take her to the hospital. I made a point of breathing in the crispy, cold air that morning. She couldn’t be bothered; she was in too much pain. She didn’t know that was going to be the last outdoor air she would ever breathe.
I’m now breathing a little deeper, loving a little harder, hugging a little tighter, because I saw what I could be missing out on.
After surgery there were complications, “only temporary” we were told. Except they kept piling up. It became a rollercoaster of “she’s not gonna make it” to “we weren’t expecting this much improvement”. It felt like she was condemned to the basement, and that’s when she started mentioning death.
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She would gesture “death” to me behind other people’s backs. I don’t know why, but I can speculate. I could talk about that very matter of fact. I could still crack some dark jokes. Just like when we talked about their funerals months before, between talking about what to have for dinner and what happened at work. We had talked about “their” funerals because she was not the one who anybody expected to go first. So, she had started giving me instructions for Dad’s funeral, and since we were at it, she added instructions for her own.
So, I wasn’t worried about her gesturing “death” in the hospital bed. I wasn’t going to dismiss and deny the gesture – like Dad would, - and I wasn’t going to go philosophical or spiritual – like Bud would. I just acknowledged:
-Yes, Mom, I know you think you’re going to die. Not today, though, your body has decided otherwise. And no, it’s not like we can help you in that direction, it’s still illegal.
At that point, she would gesture exasperation. I get it. I was bombarded by texts from people who wished her some sort of recovery. I was exasperated too. Sometimes, it felt like they were wishing her torture. But they were sending their prayers to the Mom they remembered from before. They hadn’t seen her steady decline, they didn’t realize how huge of a miracle they were wishing for, when talking about a full recovery. Both Mom and I wished we could put “dignified death” on the table, as a good alternative to everything else.
______
-We had time, that was a luxury. We had time to tell her everything we needed to.
Bud was right. But I also realized I didn’t have anything to tell her. Tough love had been her love language to me; practical compliance had been mine towards her.
I visited her wearing new clothes I had picked, asking her for her opinion. She would give me a “thumbs up” or a “good enough (a bit too squared)” gesture. Yes, she could be very detailed in her gestures. I would text her my hairstyle and my ironed clothes, she would reply praising my evolution into adulthood, at over 40. She was using the correct emojis right until the end.
It seems only apt, that she would die when I had just bought clothes for her funeral. Because we knew the end was coming, and I didn’t have dark clothes for the heatwave. I was walking home from the mall when Bud called me. I had been listening to emotional songs, while thinking of all the life that Mom wasn’t going to experience. I was embarrassed on her behalf about my crying in the middle of the street but couldn’t help it. I felt like it was too sunny, the breeze too nice, for her to go without taking notice. She would never walk down the beach, she would never smell the ocean, she would never laugh again.
I went home and wrote what I would say at the funeral.
And I just wanted to be sad.
______
Not going out of our way to let everyone know, to shout it from the rooftops, seemed cruel to me. Sure, Mom was beyond discreet, but her life had touched a lot of people, who would barely even learn about her passing. And I felt like I needed a village or two, to get through that. So, I went rogue and told more people than she would have liked me to. Some broke down in tears, some didn’t bat an eye, others offered a hug, a bottle of water, a tissue to dry my tears – every interaction helped.
Someone said that grief is like a spiky rod in the middle of our soul, which is a fluffy cloud; the soul keeps growing, as more love feeds it, but sometimes it will touch a spike. Grief will never disappear, but it will become more bearable. All the rituals of death – the rituals that serve those who stay more than those who go – help share the load of that grief.
Being able to imagine how Mom would have critiqued the details of the funeral also helped. Hearing raucous children playing outside the church – a sign that the world moves on even when it stops for us – also helped. Carrying her urn, as if I was holding her on her last walk, helped tremendously. Swapping the traditional “May the earth be light upon you” with a whispered “May you be light upon the earth, because I don’t think it’s ready” also helped. Breathing in the summer breeze, in the brightest sun, while her ashes spread on the green grass, gave me closure and peace.
But at the end of the day, I still needed to be sad.
______
-Bud, I got the legacy email from Gmail.
-Oh, right. So, what did she change it to?
-Technically, it’s still Dad. But us, too. The password is Rose<3Bud<3Dad_1968
Turns out she found the “under line” after all.
