One Good Death
My mom died on December 20th. It was a Sunday like this and snowy like today. She died at her own birthday party in my living room.It was a long time ago I guess. in 1987 I was a baby practically, a mere 38 with my dark-haired husband and our babies sleeping sweetly in their beds. I was still letting her do all the worrying a mile away in her little room at The Mt Vernon House where she radicalized all the old ladies with talk about how they should have been given SOCIAL SECURITY for the years of homemaking! (I loved how she could be really steamed up about something, yet funny about it at the same time; mad and yet comical.)She died wearing a bright-blue top I had bought for her for the big occasion. The EMT’s ripped it open to get at her heart and the nurses in the ER cut her bra right in two. It did no good of course. I'm pretty sure she was dead before my cousin and my sister-in-law even got her onto the floor for the CPR.This at the top is how she looked at age 39, newly married and six months pregnant with the baby she thought she'd never have. This picture down below I took when she was in her casket and that baby - my big sister Nan - was praying beside her.Every year on December 2oth I wear the bright-blue top with its three new buttons over the heart. I’m wearing it now and thinking Mom, oh Mom, oh mother of ours, that was one good death.
