In case you were wondering

I have written on this post that I lost my mother in January, and my father in April. I have since, in melancholy moments, gone on and on about Daddy, but have stayed silent regarding my mother.

Nothing weird going on. My two different reactions are based, primarily, on three significant differences: One, although my mother was always a huge part of my life, it was my father who raised me in the day-to-day way since I was seven. Second, although my mother's actual death was quite sudden and surprising, she had been ill for over a year. My father, at the time of his death, was in perfect health. As I remarked to someone at the funeral, "There isn't a damn thing wrong with him except he's dead."

And the third difference is one that only women can possibly understand. The mother/daughter relationship can often be a difficult one, where neither side completely understands the other. This does not indicate a lack of love, but an inability to foster deep intimacy, no matter how much each person might like it. That was, unfortunately, my relationship with my mother, and I am NOWHERE near being able or ready to delve in to it.

That being said, Mummy was truly something else, and I mean that in the good way. When she was 13, she read the Bible, the Qu'ran, the Talmud, and any other religius text she could get her hands on, just because she was curious. Not necessarily curious as it related to her own spiritual journey (although I'm sure they influenced her) but because she had a bright disposition that made her curious and accepting of those around her.

She was also one of the first ballerinas recruited in to the fledgling Royal Canadian Ballet. Mummy was an exceptional dancer, and they were ecstatic to snap her up at the age of eleven, when her skill and her height seemed to promise a wonderful future. It was only two years later that the "horrifying" truth became evident to everyone : she had finished growing by age eleven, and was forever destined to remain 4'10". How many 4'10" ballerinas have YOU seen? So that was the end of her dance career, and she gave up ballet entirely. Her whole life, though, she carried herself like a dancer, airily gliding across the floor, and she had posture like you would not believe. If my mother once, in the last fifty years, sat in anything but a completely upright position, I'll eat this laptop.

The day after her death, when Kenny, my brother, my aunt and I were looking through her things, we came across an old, faded pair of pink toe shoes, the toes worn away to expose the wood inside, the satin laces relaxed and limp. None of us had ever known she had kept her last pair of ballet slippers. Because we found them when we did, we were able to have them cremated with her. I'm glad of that.

She was with my step father Ken for over twenty five years, although they never actually got married. Ken would ask her every so often (probably more frequently in the early years) but she always said no, with a slighly softened version of, "Oh my God, why would we do THAT??"
You should also know that, waaaaaaay back in 1967, she didn't want to marry my father, either; she wanted to live with him, sure, and have babies, of course, but married?? "What do a piece of paper and an archaic ceremony have to do with love?"

Of course, in 1967, it wasn't exactly The Thing for the oldest daughter of a wealthy doctor NOT to have the benefit of the clergy, so she did have her one trip down the aisle, after all.

Towards the end of her life, she was actually musing about marrying Kenny after all these years. Because this was such a radical departure for her, I took this news with mixed emotion. I mean, why would she be changing her mind NOW? They never did make it legal, but what of it? They were as married as anyone could be for almost three decades, no twenty minute ceremony could have made the slightest difference to thier lives.