For seven years, my mom cried when the time came for me to leave Pennsylvania. After I moved to North Carolina in 2014, our visits wouldn’t be so regular, and she hated parting. Well, so did I. She was getting older, so I think there was some fear in her tears, in a way that said, “What if I don’t see you again?” That’s how I read the tears, at least, and she cried every time the girls and I headed south. Every time.
We last saw her on the night of July 5th, and it seemed like she would cry again that evening. We’d just spent four days with her—four great days—but it was time to return to Greensboro. Macey is my middle daughter, thirteen and geared for silly. On this night, she wouldn’t allow Grandma to cry—she just wouldn’t have it.
The four of us hugged my mom and said our goodbyes, and Macey began a litany: “Grandma, I’m gonna call you every hour. I’m gonna call at 2AM and 3AM. I’ll just keep calling you.” There was some stuffed animal action involved, in the way that a puppeteer might work. Macey always travels with a stuffed animal.
She engaged in a good-natured, in-your-face kind of interaction with her grandmother, and you can say what you want about kids and stuffed animals and all things silly, but there was a certain maturity in my daughter’s choices that night. She acted on perception and instinct. Maybe it speaks to something she got from her grandma, a thing she recognized and reflected: unconditional love, unconditional caring, an urge to make moments better.
Grandma walked us to the elevator, and Macey remained in comedy mode—hand movement, crazy waves, a little dance, her cute look, and the chatter: “Don’t worry, Grandma, I’m gonna call you.” We watched the elevator door close, and my mom’s smile disappeared behind the brushed metal after one final wave.
It was the last glimpse we would get of her face, and I’m grateful that there was a smile on it, grateful that Macey had the forethought, or empathy, to shift that goodbye into something more positive or, at least, lighthearted. Maybe my mom cried when we were out of sight. If so, we would not see her tears.
Vicky Stanek died sometime on the morning of July 7th, so we’d turn around and drive back to Pennsylvania a day later.
People lose their mothers every day, and some aren’t as lucky as me, to have their mom around for fifty-eight years. But the idea of loss and how we handle it is a lonely endeavor, a journey that’s complex and littered with countless types of emotion and memory. Pain is relative, I always say, and each of us has different tools to help us endure the emotional kind.
I was struck by a boyhood memory this morning:
It’s morning, and my mom is calling my brother Lee. We’re still in bed. She’s calling him, and it almost sounds like she’s laughing. We hurry down the stairs and to the living room, where she’s seated on a couch. She’s wearing a blue cardigan.
She’s distressed, and it’s clear that she doesn’t feel well. Maybe she’s having a heart attack or something.
I don’t know how old I am in this memory, but the look of the living room tells me that I’m still in single digits. Maybe I’m five or six.
Why did I remember this now? My mom was fine that day, of course—there was no heart attack, nothing major, and I’m not sure how the rest of that long-ago morning played out. She called Lee, she said, because she knew he would hear her. That’s what I remember.
That day might be the first time I recognized my mom’s mortality. I saw that she was not infinite at all, as much as I wanted her to be. So, with that memory, I return to the fear I felt then, a feeling that’s visceral and unshakable. I was afraid she’d die, right there in the living room. I was just a little boy, and that couldn’t happen.
My mom was afraid to die. I know that, and she was hospitalized several times in the last ten years. Within the last year, we had one of those conversations, where she questioned if she’d ever leave the hospital. But she did.
As it turned out, she died in her home, seated in a chair. In a way, her death on July 7th echoes my boyhood memory. Maybe that’s why I remembered it today.
I like to think she wasn’t afraid, though. Not this time. I like to think there was no distress at all, and that she didn’t have time to think about who she’d call, or who would hear her.
Her phone was close by, so I choose to believe her death was easy and painless.
Three weeks after the fact, I get the urge to call her several time a day. I have to call her, is what my mind says. And then, I quickly realize that I can’t.
But I move forward with the idea that everything I need from her lives within me. And I suppose it lives in my daughters, too. We’ll laugh and cry as we remember her, but she’s here. Macey proved it to me on the night of July 5th. All the things we were supposed to get from Grandma are right here.
She was mortal, of course, but things like unconditional love can’t die.
There’s nothing empirical to back up that idea, no data, no peer-reviewed studies, but certain matters of the heart don’t require anything more than empathy, the kind my mother practiced regularly.
I’ve never been more sure of anything.
Great perspective Gerry - carry on her legacy! Beautifully written - unconditional love is everlasting!