Am I My Mother's Daughter?: Part Three

Yes, I was writing another book. A book of poems, although later I would hire an illustrator. Things just kept happening, and I turned them all into poems. Like when I deeded her house to the local school district, who’d wanted the land for years. They wanted to build houses on the land as part of their Building Trades program. I’d assisted Mom with the legal and estate planning for this project several years earlier. She’d been all excited, because they were going to name the housing development after her. When the house and land were dedicated, she found out about it and had a fit because I hadn’t gotten her to the ceremony. Not sure she ever forgave me for that one. And then another Christmas visit, when she shouted at me for two hours straight. I just kept working through my feelings in verse.

Mom was deteriorating, mentally if not physically. Physically, she was in better health than I was the next two winters! Whatever else happened during her years there, they took excellent physical care of her. I raised enough ruckus over the drugs that they backed off on that and Mom seemed to return almost to normal, for a short period. But her mind continued to go and no one could give me any satisfactory answers. She was in her late 90’s, and everyone just assumed a mental decline was normal. They kept telling me she did OK on mental function tests. OK, I guess that meant it was normal for her to accuse me of marital infidelity with a man named Clyde, and to accuse me of stealing all her money, and to accuse people of trying to poison her food, and to tell me that Clara was stealing from her. She “forgot” how to use the phone in her room, and believe me, I wasn’t complaining about that. My visits got less and less frequent. I lived with the constant guilt that it was the move to the nursing facility that had caused her mind to fail. I told myself over and over again that I’d had no choice. I was the only child of a stepfather I hated and a mother I couldn’t bring myself to love any more. She couldn’t walk, she had spent most of her life in a small town with no caregiving resources, in a huge house it became impossible for her to maintain. All she’d ever wanted to do was die in the house she’d lived in. it was the one thing she and my stepfather had ever agreed on. He was gone, at long last, but apparently Mom was going to live forever. She’d already outlived both of her sisters, and she was very proud of that. She started telling everyone she was over 100 when she was still 98. Whatever. I had no doubt that she would achieve her goal. Just not sure I’D survive.

By this time, the book was 15 poems long, with illustrations, and I decided enough already. I’d always thought the book would end with one final poem after she died, but I’d done a lot of healing during these years of caretaking and writing, and I ended the book and self-published. I didn’t care if anyone ever bought it or not. My plan was to have it for sale at the Awakenings Gallery and use it as a fundraiser during our events. We did have a small book debut party there, and people bought and loved the book. I love it myself. I still take it out and stare at it, and I marvel that so much beauty could come out of so much pain.

I’d stopped jumping every time the phone rang with an Indiana caller ID. I’d stopped waiting for Mom to die. And then she did.

I was driving back from a short vacation in Michigan. I remember I was thinking about the poems in the book, and I’d just thought, “If and when Mom dies, maybe I should write another poem called “Fade. Lots of words rhyme with fade.” And then my cell rang.

It rang, and while normally I didn’t answer when driving (this was before Bluetooth and Siri) for some reason this time I did. It was the nursing home. Mom had died quietly, that morning. They’d gotten her up, taken her to breakfast, then left her alone to put on her lipstick. They found her an hour later when they went in to check on her. And that was it. She died quietly, peacefully, in the home that she’d lived in for almost four years but had never accepted.

I headed back to Indiana, and Mom’s service was three days later. I’d known for a long time what it would be. A small gathering at the local funeral home, and I would sing one or two of her favorite songs and read a poem or two.

Funny story: my cousin Jamie, a professional singer, asked my husband where the poems came from. Ernie said, “She wrote them.” Jamie said, “She should put them in a book someday.” Ernie said, “It’s in her purse.”

One of the ways I’d taught myself to feel gently toward my mother was to think about her with my father. My father, Philp Henry Cozier, not my stepfather. My father died in a plane crash along with my brother Stephen Cozier in 1959. My mother never got over it. How could she? I had very few memories of my father, but they were all good ones. He was a man of music, and he played the piano. My mother always told me their courtship song was “Fascination,” which was odd, because when I researched it I found the copyright date was after they’d married. She also loved “Unforgettable” by Nat King Cole. She loved music, although she couldn’t sing, and relatives told me my father couldn’t sing either. So I sang for them both. My father, a man with both love and music in his heart, had loved her madly. I kept that in mind when I wrote “Song,” and I kept it in my heart when I sang at her service.

I read two poems, including “Fade,” and I sang two songs. And told myself I was at peace with my mother, which was true, but the whole, honest truth is that I hadn’t forgiven her. That would come later.