Birthday Reminiscence

It’s fitting that the sky grew dark and furious on the day my mother’s ashes arrived. The torrential downpour flooded the backroads… Some poor soul called me at work to apologize for not calling sooner because his brother had been shot and murdered the night before. He was worried the factory would let him go. He apologized to me… Confounded, I repeated what he told me. He acknowledged what I repeated to be true. His brother had been shot and murdered. He was worried he was going to lose his job because he had been so distraught he hadn’t thought to call before his shift began. When I tried to apologize to him for the terribleness of everything, we both choked on the equal indifference and kindness of strangers.

After I hung up the work phone, my cell phone rang. It was Compassion Care. They were calling to check in on me, to see how I was handling the grief. Tears started falling on my desk.

Later, out shopping for a suitable urn, I couldn’t decide. None were beautiful enough to hold my mother for the rest of time. I was horrified that she had arrived inside a cardboard box. My husband said, “It’s o.k., you brought her home.” I said, “Yes, I finally brought her home,” as I melted into a puddle on the steering wheel.

Today is my mother’s birthday. My mother was a May baby, full of wonder and joy and silliness. She was a gentle girl who aged but who never grew up. She was bull-headed and obsessive. She was kind to a fault. She loved flowers.

Her favorite color was pink. As a child, I had an aversion to the color. Mostly because I was expected to like it because of my gender. I grew up hating floral patterns and big goofy bows.

When I learned my mother’s favorite color, I was thoroughly disappointed. But then, as time went on, I began to notice how she lit up when she received pink roses, soft pink sweaters, and pink nail polish.

During my last visit, my mother’s feet were in terrible shape. The skin on her feet resembled cottage cheese. Her feet were covered with layers of clumpy scales. I ran out to the local CVS and gathered foot creams, scrubs and a pedicure set. I picked out a bottle of nail polish.

My mother was embarrassed by her feet, but eventually I convinced her to allow me to make her feet pretty. I told her I wanted to do this more than anything and she surrendered.

I painstakingly soaked and washed her feet, softening the skin, buffing away layer after layer, careful not to hurt her. I placed a white towel across my lap and gently placed her foot upon it.

I was humbled and grateful that she was allowing me to do this. Normally, I am a germaphobe pumping hand sanitizer into my hands several times when visiting the nursing home; but in this instance, I found I had no aversion to the task.

My mother laid back into her pillows and closed her eyes and smiled from the inside. I held my mother’s feet in my hands knowing this was perhaps a parting gift. I removed towel after towel covered in skin. I rubbed her feet with scented lotion. Until, at the end, her feet shown, soft and new for the journey.

My mother’s mind was calm. There was no evidence of the demons that had plagued her all of her life. I painted each nail with All Rose. My mother exclaimed, “They’re so beautiful!” All day long, she kept looking at her feet. I placed the sparkly slippers, adorned with lemon and bubblegum sequins, over her pretty toes and I thought about Dorothy’s ruby slippers and how they were the portal to another world.

If my mother was going over the rainbow, she was going to wear the color that made her soul soar.