My mother died

On January 15, 2008, my mother died. Not "passed away," not any other euphemism, but DIED. She was 73 years old. She died of lung cancer that had widely metastasized. Having been estranged from her for about 30 years, there was no sharp grief, but I am left with an unceasing, mild current of grief that underlies every thought, every action, every day. She was a religious zealot with magical thinking. She had such a severely self-restricted diet, eating bushels of tofu so that cholesterol wouldn't clog her arteries, and drinking apple cider vinegar to cure everything else. She followed all the long-life rules, bought all the snake-oil cures, made other people miserable, and died anyway. At the end she was so surprised that she, of all people, was not going to be granted an exception to the rule. "Who would have thought?" she asked me.

Strange thing, when she died, my obsession with knowing about the hereafter nearly came to a halt. There is a normal amount of age-appropriate concern about mortality, but not the pervasive questioning there was before. I wonder if I was thinking my mother's thoughts!!! She would be disappointed to know that I rarely visualize her as being in an afterlife, and instead visualize her as having disappeared. I think of her being here at conception, at growing and passing on life and genetic material, and then disappearing, leaving behind a "corruptible" body.

It isn't as hard to think of my mother that way as I thought it might be.