They smell like she did before she died. Kind of like a diaper, with pharmaceutical overtones.
My mom was always very neat. VERY neat. That's one of the many standards of hers I never could live up to. But at the end of her life, the last couple of years, she wasn't getting things clean anymore. Clutter was starting to appear in her apartment. Weeks of dust settled on her precious stuff. Spots on her shirts became common.
She had multiple problems with her health. Many from diet alone. Diabetes for one. Type II. My mom always bragged about how she "never sweat." Mostly because she never moved. Taking care of her in these last years, was like a looking glass into my own possible future.
I gained 70 pounds 6 years ago when I had a baby at 43. Then a series of twisted ankles and knee problems stopped me from getting out there right away and losing it. I have a really bad problem with the Achilles bursa on my right heel and for a year while I tried to repair it I didn't do any exercise. But winter brought record snowfall and I just HAD to go out cross country skiing. It was painful at first, but it also felt so good to move again. I decided I would just start exercising again come what may. So now I am running and biking. I have lost 30 pounds since January. I feel much better, but have a long way to go. I can't worry about what might happen to my heel, because in my view losing that much weight has got to help it heal. (I have it wrapped up today though, it really hurts.) All I can say about this is that my mom indirectly gave me the gift of this fear of ending up like she did, unable to move, unable to walk, unable to think.
So I cleaned her clothes out yesterday. And for me the process involved a lot of hugging of dresses that I remember her wearing, coats, shirts, and scarves. Many had such bad stains I just had to throw them out. But some I hope to make use of in one or two of my homemade bags. They just smelled so weird, not like I remember her smelling at all. She always wore some weird but nice department store fragrances, or something from AVON.
Now there is a stack of boxes next to the front door, filled with clothes all washed and ready for deliverance into some thrift store inventory. The things I kept — jackets and scarves mostly. I don't really ever wear scarves, but I'm going to try to start. Such is the picking over and assessment of things to take and leave from our relationship. Material informing the metaphysical I guess. I'm learning that whether she was trying to be or not, she is a flaming warning signal to me and also a tender kiss on the ear. My broken heart sees it all, and dumbly romanticizes it. My child's heart yearns to have a mother again, someone who truly loves me unconditionally, and untethered.
I went on another lonely run last night. It was hard. The humidity was high and I was tired. It was dark, and as I ran I passed the street lights and they cast my shadow onto the pavement. The shadow kind of revolved around me as I ran past in and out of the little pools of light. First short and squatting under my feet, and then long and stretched out ahead of me. I looked at my contours. I have her body. I am taller, but the shape is the same. So there she was, running along side me, something I could never get her to do in life. I realized she is still with me along the way, sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller, but there, like a shadow, forming the depth of my perceptions of- and into- the world at large.
Those boxes out there cannot contain the demons that reside among the fabric that lies inside. Long after the clothes are clinging to someone else, that smell will permeate the room where I sit, writing and rewriting my past into the future. The presence is like a cat. Sometimes sleeping over in the corner out of sight and mind, and then sometimes it wants something, and crawls up onto the keyboard, typing in its own story.
good-bye mommy. I love you, whatever that means.
November 8, 1927 – June 29, 2008
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