Mother’s Day
Only a few weeks ago I lost my mother-in-law, someone I had known for 27 years. I processed those feelings privately. It didn’t feel like my story to tell publicly, even though I have so many memories with her and will miss her terribly. I wrote about impermanence then, not knowing I was about to live it again. I got the call that same day. I flew to Madison and have been there ever since. I’m writing this from a hotel room the night before Mother’s Day.
My mother, Nancy Ann Schmelzer, passed away on May 8th at 12:40PM. She had driven herself to the hospital with double pneumonia and things went downhill over 17 days.
My mother felt like a universe floating in a snow globe. If someone handed you that globe for even a minute, you would never forget it. I’ve met people who spent just a few minutes with her and were still asking about her twenty years later.
She was a radical leftist with a heart that tolerated little filtering. Sitting in her car, I once gave her $40 for gasoline and within five minutes she had pulled over to hand it to a homeless man selling stick-dolls on the street. She did the same with grocery money. If you looked hungry or sad and my mom was nearby, you walked away with more than you came in with.
A few times in grade school I got called to the principal’s office to “meet mom for a doctor’s appointment.” I’d jump in the car and realize there was a tent in the back. We’d find the right spot, gather sticks, make s’mores, watch the stars, tell stories. Then pack up around 3AM because Mom was having an asthma attack or we’d both spooked ourselves with animal noises in the woods.
Mom wanted to LIVE, LIVE, LIVE. She embraced freedom and repelled any form of control, even when that meant avoiding things that would have kept her safer. When dementia arrived, we aimed to maintain a Madison landscape with little intervention but lots of checking. I tracked her cell phone. My sister, who lives in town, talked to her multiple times a day and visited often each week. There were other safeguards, but ultimately Mom wanted freedom over safety and control.
I am definitely glossing over the other side of this, and I’m perfectly comfortable doing so. While Mom could often be reckless, she never operated with malice in my experience.
The last 17 days were in the hospital. The final 7, I knew we would lose her. Each night leaving meant a deeply painful goodbye, each one fainter than the last. She was nonverbal the final two days, mostly asleep. One night she gripped my hand and said “you will always be in my heart.”
What stayed with me was her nature. Kind, charming, engaged, right to the end, even as the dementia meant she’d forgotten where she was thirty seconds after being told. She kept asking me in a conspiratorial whisper if I had a cigarette, if we could sneak out to the back porch. Her true self came through cleanly in the hardest moments.
I worry I won’t be so gracious. The times I’ve been seriously ill, my instinct has been to pull inward, close the door, want to be alone. The ultimate introvert response. She did the opposite. She stayed present and warm for everyone around her even in a terribly confused state.
Cleaning out her car, I found monarch butterfly wings and interesting rocks tucked into the cup holder. Things she had decided, for her own reasons, were worth keeping close. I found more butterfly wings on the bookshelf by her front door. Also receipts from the Laurel Tavern, where she had tipped the staff enormously and dropped off big yarn hats she’d spend all winter making too many of.
At her house a white chicken comes to the back door for what was evidently a daily food ration. There’s a rabbit with zero fear of humans, a chipmunk, a cardinal that visits the front window. We’ll need the new owners of the house to sign a nature-feeding clause.
Ahead is the winding down of a force of nature. Grim funeral home discussions Monday, visitation planning, and the other things everyone has to do but nobody talks about much.
I love you Mom. You will always be in my heart.
