Not a very happy unbirthday...

In a little under seven hours from now, I will be another year older. Thirty-four years ago, the sun rose as I left my mother's womb... to celebrate our birthdays together. Tomorrow will mark the first time we will be physically incapable of sharing that day.

I'll be spending the morning in the cemetery, as long as the sun shines as promised. I am grateful that I will have a place to visit this time round, as it made Mother's Day all the harder knowing my mother's body (and likely her spirit) remained in limbo. Despite a spring that arrived with the calendar for once (five weeks early, weather-wise), the cemetery didn't open until May 1st, and my sister was unavailable until the end of May. So my mother was buried May 31st, two months and ten days after she passed away.

I thought that ritual would provide some closure for us all, bring me back some of the lightening I first felt after her death. But alas, it did not. The inertia that has been dragging me for all the years of her illness - a mistaken idea of my soul that inaction would stop the progress of time - still drowns me, keeps me from properly moving on. The short Anglican graveside ceremony (shared by myself, my sister, my husband and our infant son, her husband, two friends, one of her brothers and one of her sisters) seemed like an non-event to me, almost. My sister and my mother's husband, both, along with my uncle, broke down in tears, but I was almost dry-eyed. As in the viewing room at the funeral home, I could hardly associate this fancy box, and what was surely inside, with what I knew to be my mother. This is a mixed blessing: I could comfort others and be strong for them, but also wonder when I might find the breathing space in my life to properly process this loss, and what it might mean.

The only proper peace I get might be said to be found in church. I left it long ago, around the age of twelve, when I found it easier to believe in Santa Claus than in all the dogma found in the testaments old and new and the many layers added over the millennia. Coming back after all these years (Christmas & Easter visits notwithstanding) is rather odd, but important. I can't say I agree with everything being said (nor can I say I understand all of what's going on), but it may come.

I'll add more later (it's 1:30 am now), of happier times, and gardening.

P.S. The above picture is 30 years old today... My wonderful fire engine cake centre-stage (thanks Dad), with (L-R) myself, my Grandmother Thornton, my Mom, my sister Jane in her lap, and my Grandfather Thornton (who died two years after this was taken).

A Mother's Day

*In Honour of Patricia Elizabeth Pacey AKA Thornton AKA Bird, 1946-2010*

This Mother's Day complex and conflicting emotions fill me. Today marks my fifth as a mother myself, my older son Gabriel having been born a little over four years ago. Today is also my first Mother's Day as a mother of two, my younger son Luke having been born 14 weeks and one day ago. Those are the happy events that I celebrate this Mother's Day. Yet it also marks my first without my own mother to celebrate with, as she passed away after a long battle with cancer 7 weeks ago today. Tomorrow, on his hundredth day of life, she will have been gone for half of Luke's lifetime. Celebration and remembrance, love and loss, gratitude for all the little miracles that we are given in this life: these are what shape my feelings on this momentous Mother's Day.

That first Mother's Day of mine fell on my anniversaries with my husband (going out, marriage, wedding) and we'd taken the opportunity for another mini honeymoon to St. Andrews-by-the-Sea with our little one. It was a day of sunshine and smiles for our happy new little family, but was capping a year of enormous change, heartache, and joy.

My husband and I had already been trying for a few years to conceive, but had discovered after some time that I had a medical condition that was affecting my fertility. It took a year to diagnose properly, nearly a year more trying out treatments, and a couple of years of medication which seemed to alleviate the symptoms, but still not fufilled our dreams of becoming parents. Five years ago now, I had given up hope of becoming a natural mother, and was beginning to look at adoption websites and the process we'd have to undergo. Then the medication-induced nausea I had every day like morning sickness ceased, and I thought it meant that it was no longer working at all. I mentioned that to a friend at work, and she, perhaps only half seriously, suggested I was pregnant. Wishfully and half-hopefully, I took a home test, and was astounded and overjoyed to see it positive.

My brother-in-law's wedding was the next week. I made sure to give my mother-in-law (Marie Rayner, on an extra special and rare trip home from England) an extra big hug to share my happiness as we were not yet ready to share our secret. We'd wanted and waited so long, I wanted to wait for the results of the early ultrasound before announcing our good news.

However, fate stepped in, and I had to break my happy news earlier than planned, in order to counteract devastating news equally monumental. While I had a joyful new secret life growing inside me, my mother had a more sinister secret growing inside her: Cancer. Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Stage 4 (of 4). In July, we'd shared an awkward lunch at a family restaurant, where I couldn't look Mom in the eyes in fear of spilling my secret not realizing she was avoiding my eyes hiding her own.

My happiest news ever caused her to cry "Oh, Anne, that's wonderful!" I am glad I was able to give her that gift, and so very grateful that God (or however you name the Creator) found the perfect timing for that gift. Grandmotherhood was something that gave her great joy, great hope, and great strength to fight the many battles she would face over the next four-and-a-half years. She went through every possible treatment: a dozen different chemotherapy treatments, removal of her spleen (grown to the size of a small infant itself by that point), a bone marrow transplant donated by her elder brother. She even had to battle a secondary cancer in her breasts, undergoing more chemotherapy and radiation for that. She lost her hair more than once, her appetite frequently, seesawed in weight from skeletal to bloated and back again, suffered from graft-versus-host disease which made her eyes itch, her throat and mouth feel like razors, her digestive system go through hell. It looked for a while as though she'd won against the cancers, but it was a false victory, and a new round of battles began.

A year ago, they broke the news to her that there was no longer any possibility of a cure, that any further treatments would merely be palliative. We all prepared ourselves and made our peace, as best as you can in such a situation. You never remember all the questions you want to ask, the answers you seek, the forgiveness and the apologies you need. But it is enough, it has to be, until our spirits are reunited after we all pass from this life. Mom had lived to know and love her first grandchild Gabriel, something we'd all feared would never happen we she was first diagnosed. She lived to see my sister, Jane Rumball, row in the women's eight final at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, if only via television. She lived to see Jane get her PhD and begin medical school. She lived to see me graduate with an even harder-won BA, with first class honours in both Anthropology and Spanish, winning at the same time the Douglas Gold Medal for best undergraduate essay in Arts, an award she herself had won four decades before. She'd lived to enjoy early retirement with her beloved husband, and some of his own retirement freedom.

And then not long after her death sentence was declared, another breath of life and hope was given to us. Another grandchild to hope for, long for, fight for to meet. Another little miracle, itself a celebration of my husband's and my love for each other. Mom fought, and won another victory. She lived to meet Luke, and even regain the strength to hold him in her arms.

Luke was born January 30th, and Mom came to visit us in hospital two days later. Fear of infection, which has kept us apart far too often these past few years, precluded her from seeing much of him. Finally, on Gabriel's fourth birthday, March 7th, Mom had the strength and apparent health to have us all over for his birthday party. She got to hold Luke for the first time in her arms, holding him twice for over half an hour each time. The picture at the top of this post is the last picture there ever will be of the three of them, Gabriel, Mom, and Luke. Three more photos of Mom holding Luke followed, and that is all I have. Her apparent strength held out a week more, and then collapsed. Twelve days later I was brought to her bedside, her last day at home, and she--barely able to talk, unable to leave her bed or even to sit up--held Luke one last time. I'd brought him along (how could I not, being a breastfeeding and child-centred mother) for the visit, and brought him up to her so that they could hold hands like they had in hospital in earlier days. Instead Mom reached for him, and for twenty minutes (and with my support at his back) held him, face outward, like the warmest, softest, cuddliest, loveliest teddy bear you could ever imagine. He loved the hug as much as she did, remaining wide awake but quite still (for a normally active baby, anyway). While I have no picture of it, I will always remember and treasure that moment. Luke was with us -- Mom, her husband Dick, my sister Jane, and me -- when she passed from this Earth on the first full day of spring, March 21st, 2010. His cries, my lullabies, and our expressions of love (verbal and physical), carried her away on waves of love.

I must speak now of gratitude, that overwhelming emotion I felt as first she left us. Gratitude for all the many little miracles that enabled her to enjoy the love and companionship of so many people in her life. I am so grateful that we were blessed with Gabriel when we were, to give us all hope and another focus in such dark times. I am so grateful that Mom made it through to not only meet Gabriel (an event so much in doubt when first diagnosed), but to know him and love him so very well, to celebrate not only his birth but the four following birthdays. I am so grateful that she lived to meet Luke, and hold him in her arms. I am so grateful that she lived for so many milestones, not least of which was she and me coming to peace with each other (a story for another time). I am so grateful to God for so very many things: for my family, for the miracle of my sons, for the joys of motherhood for me and my mother, for grandmotherhood for her. I am also so very grateful that she is finally at peace, and need battle no more. And grateful that I can be grateful for all those things, though it seems the hurt grows as the gaps she left behind become more obvious as life returns to something resembling normal.

What I must ask is that if you are at odds with a parent or a child, that you find a way to appreciate them and to make peace. We are given many chances in this life to make things right, but only the one life, and we never know what path it will take, nor when it will end.

So I wish you all -- have been, being, and becoming mothers -- and their children, a Happy Mother's Day. May peace, love, and joy follow you all the days of your life.