An Adjustment I Don't Want to Make

I hate this, not having a mother. Although she died more than a month ago (on March 10, at age 98), I am not adjusting well. Everything reminds me of her. And my weekly routines seem somehow trivial now.

She was part of my weekly routines, you see. I'll explain. She was living in a stages-of-care place in Lenox, Mass., not far from Becket, Mass., where my brothers share an old farmhouse they use for weekends, vacations, visits to Mom (they both live in the Boston area, 2-3 hours away). As long as Mom was in the Independent Living area and then in the Assisted-Living area, we were in pretty close touch. She had an AOL account, and we corresponded often by email. We exchanged phone calls.

Later, when she could no longer handle a computer (late in 2010), I began calling her a few times a week. She was reaching the point at which she mostly just listened and reacted; she could not initiate much of a conversation any longer. But she remembered. And she loved to laugh about old family stories.

When she moved into the skilled nursing area--not all that long ago--phone calls were over. She couldn't answer it. Once, standing in her room, I called her phone from my cell; she didn't react at all to the ringing.

Back when her email days had ended (late 2010), I'd begun writing snail-mail to her, twice a week. Wednesday and Sunday. I would usually paste into the letter some newspaper cartoon that I knew she'd enjoy; I'd write some stupid doggerel to accompany it. Sometimes I would enclose things I thought she'd like--clippings about goings-on around here, a photo, a book review I'd written for the Plain Dealer.

It was strange, writing letters, getting no answer. But I didn't care. Don't misunderstand: I did care that she could no longer initiate or respond to letters or calls. But I kept writing anyway. I knew that when my brothers were there, they read my letters to Mom; when they weren't there, her caretakers would. I'm not sure how much of it she understood, but, again, I didn't care. I just wanted to write to her.

I last mailed her a semi-weekly letter on March 7, three days before she died. By the time it got there, she was gone. My younger brother gave it to me, unopened, when we were out there last week for her memorial service. I have not opened that envelope; I will not open it. I will put it in one of the sleeves of the notebook where I keep printed copies of my journal. Someone else can open it. Later ...

I do have a digital copy of it, so I know what I wrote . I just looked. Here's the cartoon I'd pasted in it. And here's the bit of doggerel I included, too.

Poor Adam was so lonely—and

He wasn’t feeling well.

He needed a companion, but

He simply got a cell.

And here are the final words I wrote to my mother, the words she never got to read or hear:

We hope you’re doing okay, Mom—and that you are surrounded by people who love you (and who wouldn’t?) and lots of chocolate. We love you so much!

Mom loved chocolate; it was the last of her personal pleasures she could enjoy. Just about all the others were gone.

Yesterday was Sunday, one of my letter-writing days. But ... no letter to write. No mother to receive it. All day I felt a desperate loneliness, and I know it is a feeling that will never leave me.