Published: May 02, 2008 02:38 pm            

DELUCA: To the universe and Beyond

My mom and I went on a road trip two weekends ago to see my youngest son’s spring football game at his college in Pennsylvania.

We travel well together, she and I. We both seem to like to be on the move, happy just to watch the road moving past in the sunshine.

It’s been like that since the first time we traveled together, just the two of us, when she took me to Europe as a college graduation present. She had $2,000 in her purse and I had a book called “Europe on $10 a Day.”

It was a defining time for our relationship. She was amazing, afraid of nothing. I have an abiding image of her, plucking her suitcases up off the ground, forging ahead no matter where we were, even though we were often not quite sure where we were headed.

What an adventure we had. England, Paris, Venice, Rome. And everywhere we went, fellow travelers would be drawn to us and she would fold them into our little group and look after them, as well.

I will never forget the young Israeli we met on the boat going across the English Channel. When we landed in Paris, we hit the streets together and the first thing that young man wanted to do was get a cheeseburger at the McDonald’s on the Avenue des Champs-…lysées. When I complained, she flashed me a look that demanded I not be rude, and off we went down the most elegant street in the world, seeking golden arches and French fries.

My mother is a little older now, in her late 70s, but still full of energy. Our relationship has had many evolutions since the day I was born when she told me she cried because she always wanted a little girl.

I was never the frilly, ruffly kind of child I suspect she had dreamed of. I hated shopping for clothes, partly because she loved it so much and spent so much time touching everything, feeling the textures of a fabric or holding shirts and dresses up to my face to see how the color went with my skin tone. She won’t admit it, but I know I was a bit of a pain in the neck — mostly, as I remember, pretty quiet, introspective, dreamy.

“How was school?” she would ask each day when I got home. “Fine,” I would say, offering none of the details I know now she would have liked to hear.

And still, she did what she could. When I had to make a bug collection for school, she was the one in the backyard catching flies and beetles as I watched squeamishly. And when my family was forced to move from our home in Milwaukee back to Buffalo in the beginning of my senior year in high school, she let me stay behind and live with the family of my best friend, even though I know she really needed me at the time.

Typical of my mother, when it came time to go to my senior prom, she sewed two dresses and mailed them so I could have my pick. I don’t think I was ever grateful enough.

It was partly my love for my mom that sent me off on my search for the meaning of life. One day, when I was in my early 20s, I realized that I would eventually have to face losing her. Sounds a little silly now as I write it, but that’s how it happened. I simply couldn’t imagine how people survive the loss of their loved ones.

So I figured I would wrestle for a time with this thing called death and see if I could grab a couple of fistfuls of its darkness and smooth out its folds. Maybe make some tidy sense of it all.

In the years that followed, I read hundreds of books on whole health, human nature, spirituality, and dying. I volunteered for Hospice, attended seminars and sat at bedsides. And while I carry a certain hope that our spirits leaving life experience the same joy and glory as when we enter life, I still don’t feel like I’m much closer to preparing for death and truly accepting it.

And then there’s my mom. Once again, she’s ahead of me, picking up her baggage ready to forge forward, seemingly unafraid of the path. I think one of the greatest gifts my mom has given me is her acceptance of her own mortality.

And while — given her energy and her strength of will — I expect she’s going to be around for a good, long time, she has already taken care of every aspect of her passing, from where the service will be to what kind of music will be played, to where the reception will be and where she’ll be buried.

Her only concern is that I will forget where her instructions are. “Where are my important papers?” she regularly quizzes me.

It isn’t just the planning that comforts me, it’s her emotional preparation. She has told me she is unafraid. Rather, she’s fascinated to ultimately learn what comes after this life. I cannot put a value on how that comforts me.

It also sets the tone for me in my relationship with my two children, and I have already begun to prepare them in a straightforward way for the losses they will also have to one day endure.

I want a big party when I die, a real celebration. “You can mourn for me for about a week,” I have told them, joking only a little. “Then, go off and live the very best life you can.”

As you can see, I get that from my mother. And for that, I will be eternally grateful.

***

Wishing an early Happy Mother’s Day (May 11)to my mom and to mothers everywhere.

Contact editor Michele Delucaat 693-1000, ext. 157.

        

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