ninanevermore

Today on my drive into work, I wasn't thinking about much except that I needed to hurry up and get to work. I thought about the fact that all the lights I was making on green were helping me make good time, but not giving me a chance to put on my makeup. I thought about what a beautiful day it is, with sunshine and blue skies.

I didn’t think about much until I sat down at my computer and noticed the date. It is my mother's birthday. She is, once again, 51 years old, the same age she has been since 1984 when the clock stopped ticking for her. Some years, this day passes and I hardly notice it. Some years, like this one, it hits me like a ton of bricks. I always thought that the older I got, the less it would affect me. I was wrong.

Every time I talk to my cousin, Leslie, she brings up my mother. My mother, who she talks to every night, even though she avoids talking to her own living mother on the phone unless absolutely necessary. My mother, who she says is kicking asses up in heaven and keeping an eye out for her (though I don't recall my mother as being all that violent when she was alive). Her memories of my mother are stronger and more vivid than my own, since she knew her for more years than I had the chance to. Like my mother, Leslie wears her heart on her sleeve. Like my mother, Leslie doesn't suffer fools easily, but is compassionate to those she thinks deserve it. She is more my mother's daughter than I am.

The last time we spoke, she mentioned the time when I told her that on some days I can barely remember my mother's face or the sound of her voice. Years after I said them, these words make Leslie cry, and I wish I could take them back.

"Nina, that tears me up," Leslie says, "You have no idea how much that tears me up, that you said you can't remember what she looks likes."

I've tried to explain myself to her, to soften the impact of that thoughtless statement and tell her that I really do know what my mother looked like. When I see a picture of her, I know who she is. If I were to hear a recording of her, my ears would know her voice, even after all this time. But I was so young, and it's been so many years, that her face is like that of a ghost that disappears around a corner in my mind when I try to focus on it, unless I have a concrete reminder like a photograph of it in front of me.

"Nina, she loved you kids so much. You don't know how much she loved you kids. And I can still remember her like I it was yesterday. I was one of the first ones she told about the cancer, you know. I was visiting her and we were standing in y'all's backyard underneath that big oak tree. We were feeding pecans to the squirrels. Do you remember she had all those squirrels so tame that they would take the pecans right out of your hand? We were standing out there and she tells me, 'I've found a lump in my breast. I've made an appointment with the doctor to get it checked out.' She said it so casual like, but I could tell she was scared. I'll never forget that day, Nina.

"And then when she was in the hospital that last time, if I'd known how sick she was I would have been with her. That's one thing I've never forgiven Mama and Daddy for. I was scheduled to go in for back surgery that week, and they didn't want to upset me. I asked Mama, 'How's Aunt Ruby doing?' and Mama said she was fine. I gave her a book to give to your mom for me, When Bad Things Happen To Good People, because I'd just read it and I got a lot out of it and I thought she would, too. So I was all excited and I said, 'Give her this book, make sure you give her this book, Mama.' Just a little paperback I'd picked up. I guess she got it, but I know she didn't get a chance to read it, because she died two days after that."

I remember the book. I'd seen it in the attic along with my mother's romance novels, looking pristine and unread. It must have come home with her things from the hospital. I think I sold it in a garage sale a couple of years later. If I'd known where it came from, I'd have held onto it, and perhaps read it. At the time, I figured that bad things happen to good people because they just do, and I could write my own damn book on the topic if I wanted to.

"You know, Nina, I never did have that back surgery. I cancelled it so I could go to her funeral, and I never rescheduled it. My back's been hurting me all these years. I'm still angry that they kept that from me, that I didn't get to tell her goodbye."

I think I told a joke at this point in the conversation to change the subject. I sometimes use jokes as handkerchiefs to dry tears when someone is crying across the phone long distance. I should have mentioned that I did get to tell my mother goodbye, and that goodbyes are overrated.

That last evening when I visited my mother at the hospital, she was so doped up on morphine that she didn't respond to me. I told her goodbye, but I didn't mean it as "goodbye forever." I hoped that when I came back the next day she would be more alert and would recognize me and maybe ask me about school. So I said goodbye, and that I loved her, and I kissed her cheek. I remember that her skin felt strangely cold to my lips. My middle brother then drove my youngest brother and me home. When my father and my oldest brother also came home a couple hours later, they told us she was gone.

Leslie still cries over that goodbye she was denied, and she holds onto the pain in her back to compliment the pain in her heart. I don't dare tell her that I don't cherish that goodbye the way she thinks I should. Leslie can have my goodbye, for all I care. For my part, I would gladly trade it for just one more chance to tell my mother, "Happy birthday."

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