Together We Go

My mother has died. And like thousands of others, because of Covid, she is gone without ceremony.

And even though I’m shattered by the suddenness, my pain is alleviated because she escaped an otherwise long and painful death. Identifying her body at the funeral home cocooned in PPE was traumatic. Leaving her 77 year old dead body in a frigid, sterile white basement, alone on a steel slab other deceased bodies had no doubt visited, felt unforgivable. My sorrow took me to bed for days.

Days have passed and I’m still distraught. How can I ever live in this turbulent world without her?

If asked if we were close, I would say instead we were fused. And I’ve resented, wrestled, and reconciled the fierceness of our life-long similarities and differences for decades. She was my barometer, for everything.

In my forties I conceded our bond was an irrevocable contract without an escape clause. So I forgave her the rough spots, and stopped blaming her for my shortcomings and relationship failures. I settled into a reserved but autonomous place of respect for her, that in hard times was punctuated with the dependable depth of her love.

I have, like her, married and divorced; and unlike her, childless, I seized an education that’s earned me security. My art degree, coupled with a Masters in business, has brought me now to a crossroads, and I am examining all road signs for direction.

The day after she passed I found her obituary.

“Cleo Louise Macabee, 77, passed from this world on ———— She was an artist, writer, and a force of wit, charm, and relentless ambition. Never a complainer, she took life on the chin and whatever it handed her she molded into a creative opportunity of epic proportions. Nothing she did went unnoticed. Daughter, sister, wife, mother, ex-wife, feminist, actress, wife again, she finally completed her resume with artist and writer.”

She married young instead of going to art school which she really wanted to do. And that one self-betrayal would shape and reshape every decision she made. It was “Art” first with her. Always.

I was her first born, arriving in the early sixties when she was barely 21. So my younger brother and I became the daily witnesses to her burgeoning and unsatisfied creativity. I observed a restlessness in her that I thought I had to fix. Her dissatisfactions became my compass. Don’t daughters after all carry every mother forward into the world, one by one, like wounded soldiers to help cast out demons unresolved?

Our father couldn’t compete. Her energy, insatiable curiosity, and untapped imagination wore him out, so he left when I was 10 to find someone more stable and less demanding. He broke my heart.

But after he left, she closed the gap as provider and advisor, and even though there were days I wondered if I could get down another fishstick, or put up with my brother’s shenanigans a minute longer without calling the cops, I knew we were safe.

When I became an adult I understood she had always been the constant, and however much she had to detach from the endless chores of raising us alone, she never let on that she regretted us. She loved us more than life itself. Even art.

She was reliable, hard working, inventive and took on obstacles with glee. She fed and clothed and organized our world to fit changing realities and it was an adventurous if not unpredictable dance, one minute a slow waltz and the next flat out heavy metal. She worked 50 hours a week as a customer service rep, joined a local theater group, and gave every bit of her angst and anger to the stage.

Meanwhile, without our knowledge, she was cultivating husband number two to help advance us to the next plateau of security, status, and stability. And had she not remarried someone committed to money first, I would never have gone to college, or worked in a business along side a strategist who inspired in me a confidence to love numbers and excel in such a way that’s helped many others since pursue their dreams.

But here I am now, looking back with enormous gratitude for the woman who brought me into the world and who’s now left me alone to go forward without her lead.

“Cleo was known by many for her sensitivity and compassion, while her creativity explored dark themes of hardship. Her North Carolina roots ran deep in tobacco, and her lifelong struggle with nicotine addiction and the loss of her voice from cancer has shaped a legacy of hope for those still imprisoned by its grip. Her art and writing will continue to serve a growing community of cancer survivors and recovering addicts. Surviving are her daughter, Glennis Caruthers, her son, Forest Macabee, and her grandson Sinclair Macabee. In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made to The American Cancer Society.” Due to Covid’s current status, there will be no formal service. A Celebration of Life will be announced soon.”

Weeks have passed and I’m still undone in this grief. Fifty six years of the deepest connection I’ve known is tragically lost. I am exhausted, yet unashamed in my content that her suffering was short. Covid took her quickly. It was days later after she failed to return our calls that I found her.

Gratefully, her affairs were in order and as much as I dreaded the disposal of her things, her apartment was comforting. Small, efficient, and spatially compartmentalized, there was a workable area in her kitchen for making art, two large living room desks for writing, a bedroom for leisure, music, and television.

Her beloved cat, Curry, was by her side. And considering the coroner’s diagnosis of testing positive for Covid, she was strangely at peace. Surrounded by her books, journals, pens and newspapers, all still a humming periphery of entertainment and creative stimulus, she died as she had lived. Engaged.

My brother is stoically coping. But any words of comfort or trying to share in his pain is rejected, so silently we reviewed the task at hand. Her will was specific. Her directions of cremation and disposal were clear. All clothes, household items and incidentals were to go to women’s sober houses. Furniture and decorative art was equally divided between us to prevent any postmortem arguing, and the “rest” which was in her “storage unit”, was to be utilized to support and promote a foundation she wanted us to establish in her name.

But how? There was little to no money left after a small insurance policy to do such a thing, we ruefully agreed. Her Social Security and divorce settlement had carried her over the last 20 years, but not without personal sacrifices. After she divorced our step-father she was finally able to make art and writing her priority. My brother and I married and moved on the same year. Three years later she was diagnosed with throat cancer, and lost her voice. But as always, her resilience was her strength. She adapted to electronic speaking and over years of healing I watched her transform herself from wife and mother into an artist, writer, and activist, with respectable credits for making visionary contributions.

But her life had become increasingly smaller in the last few years. Arthritis, chronic pain, and COPD made its advance, and although her art and writing had provided sputters of income from time to time, it was never enough to begin a foundation. She asked in a bedside letter addressed to me specifically that I go to her storage unit immediately for further instructions. Inside the letter was the entry code and key.

Further instructions? It took days to disinfect and prepare to empty her apartment. Every item was a memory. Every memory was another tear or two or two hundred. So after a brief time I caught a breath and went.

The unit’s roll top door was stiff from ice and snow and hard to raise, but when open a surge of adrenalin coursed through my veins. She had prepared her gravesite. No engraved granite memorials, but a 10’x10’ storage unit with three walls holding two 8’ steel bookcases stacked with shelf after shelf of art, with 30 years of writing; published and unpublished, carefully dated, catalogued, and stored.

There were suitcases and multiple boxes, painted white and labeled for easy reference. There were favorite books, family scrapbooks, and journals. A hundred or more at least. I was stunned at her attention to detail, in archiving what she’d been so freely given the time to do. To live, to be free to make art, and write.

On a long empty folding table sat an envelope with my name. It was dated three months earlier. She did all this in the last few months I thought? My mind was a collision of hows and whats and what ifs. I opened it to find a small black journal detailing the last few months of her life. Each page included a prayer, a poem of gratitude, and a drawing. Then midway through there was an entry with my name. She had written to me directly. A lottery ticket was tucked in between the two pages, dated in the same week.

In her hand, I read.

“My darling Glennis,

Yes, my beloved. I will be gone when you read this. But as you look around you can tell I’m not completely out of your hair. Nor will I ever be. You are overwhelmed, I know. I’m sorry for that.

But some things are always left to future generations to complete, and we are, it seems, links in an ancient chain of women who hunger for creative freedom. Show others how I did it my dearest and what it cost me to reclaim it, to hold on to it, and to make it possible through you to help others.

I’ve played these same lottery numbers for 20 years, tempting fate and justice to reveal their hands in their own timing. Never could I have imagined actually seeing them win!!!!

Yes, this is a divine gift my love.

And I have no doubt that your skills and moral integrity will equip you in knowing exactly how to create a foundation for women who need funds to pursue their art.

I love you to the moon and back. “I carry you in my heart.” And believe me when I say that I left in peace.

“Mom”

My knees lost all support as I tried to stand up. I googled the lottery ticket and when I saw that it was a 20 thousand dollar win after taxes I nearly lost control of my bladder.

I looked around the very small space that now holds all her words and brush strokes, all the hours and days of her creative longings fulfilled upon one surface or another, and I cried.

Together we go.