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I had vanished into something better

Mood: Overwhelming sadness.

Nothing is as important in the world as the ones we have loved. Not this work. Not anything.

Patricia Liguori -- - Pat and her brother, Jim - The girls showing some leg -

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.

I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

from Sleeping In The Forest by Mary Oliver

She was stoic yet funny if that makes any sense. When I was six, my mom almost died and my aunt was one of the relatives who took me in. My dad had to travel 24/7 for work. My younger sisters went with another family and I was passed around. In my memories, it seemed like I changed schools every 2-3 weeks...but it was probably less than that. There was no continuity.

I was a pretty confused and angry little six year old. No one would talk to me about what had happened to my mom and all I knew at that moment was that I wanted her back. Now. To tuck me in. To hug me. To tell me everything was alright.

My aunt was a nurse, fifteen years older than my mother. She cleaned and cooked and was one of the people who took in this furious little blond ball of spit and fire. She never flinched when I raged. She understood. I was a little girl whose parents had unexpectedly vanished, whose sisters had disappeared to live with someone else, and who was very, very frightened.

She was quietly compassionate. She was always gorgeous and naturally glamorous. To see photos of her when she was eighteen years old was to be looking at a movie starlet on my grandmother's old couch. She had the best legs in the family ever...even until Christmas Day when she left us (she was 73).

When I grew older, I appreciated her outrageous sense of humor, her orientation to fun and risk, her appreciation for family and its craziness.

I just wish I had known that part sooner. It was confusing to grow up from far away with a six year old's grudge and not have it named. I didn't know why I found it so difficult to feel close to my extended family back East. Did I associate them with my parents' sudden disappearance? Was I still angry that they were grown-ups in denial who were also frightened about possibly losing my twenty-seven year old mom and didn't know how to appear warm & safe to an angry little girl? Perhaps I feared that if I loved any of them and they disappeared, I might not be able to bear such pain again?

It was probably all of this, tucked behind the confusion of my mother's recovery, our family's reunion and then silence about it, moving far from all of them, and becoming a sensitive teenager. Something never quite healed. Never quite righted itself.

I talked with my aunt recently. I picked up the lotion on her bedside table and lightly ran my fingers over the palms of her hands in small, gentle circles. It was something I had done for sick friends or during my days as a "candy striper". Somehow, I don't think she would have let me do this under normal circumstances. Those hands were always cleaning. Always making meals and writing out birthday cards for the 80+ members of "her clan" (and that number doesn't include lifelong friends). We were quiet. She slept for awhile. She woke up. We chatted. We talked about memories. Something she said awakened a particularly painful memory I had of talking back to her when I was age six. She was holding a laundry basket and we were standing on the stairs. I was mad. I wanted my mother. "You are not MY MOTHER!" I shrieked at her. I don't remember what she said to me. I was finally able to pinpoint something to apologize for.

She became brusque and impassive again, sitting up straighter in her hospital bed, taking charge. "It was nothing. You were little. You wanted your mother. And all of the grown-ups around you were keeping secrets. Don't apologize." She was living out her last two months, though we didn't know that at the time. I could finally give a voice to my feelings. She gave a voice to hers. We moved past it. She asked for more lotion.

I gave it to her and kept warming her hands. How could I refuse her? Who could refuse any direct request from her? She asked for very little. She gave so much. When she left, she left on her terms...her favorite day--Christmas. Her favorite hour--happy hour.

God probably couldn't have refused her either, I imagine.

The Costello kids: Jim, Pat, Jack, Honey, Tom

Posted by aaron on December 26, 2003 at 10:57 PM (4)

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