Brace yourself; this is a long one.

Last Tuesday, I was able to say goodbye to Mom.

She had passed away on Friday, and I was out of town, and so I arranged with the mortuary to sit with her for a bit before her cremation.

I was unprepared, to say the least, for the storm of sorrow that hit me. Dad, Interrupted was with me, and thank goodness for that. Otherwise, I’m fairly sure that I might have devolved fairly quicklyinto begging her to wake up, sitting there in the beautiful, cold room with Mom lying under a hand-stitched quilt, dressed in her ubiquitous blue dress.

We decided to say a rosary, because Mom would have liked that. We had just helped my brother and sister and their spouses in cleaning out Mom’s rooms, so of course I had a rosary in my pocket.

We knew the prayers, of course. What we didn’t have at the ready were the mysteries. If you want to know the whole story of the rosary and how the mysteries fit in, click here. But briefly: when you say the rosary you are invited to ponder events in Jesus’ life, grouped into sets (Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious, Luminous). There are five in each set, one for each set of Hail Marys you say in the rosary. Under normal operating circumstances, if it’s say, Tuesday, you say the rosary and think about the Sorrowful mysteries as you progress.

Sitting there, we didn’t know what Tuesday’s mysteries were (I could only say it here because I looked it up later), and worse, we didn’t know a complete set off the top of our heads. I didn’t want to have to haul out my phone to look it up.

We debated for a moment, and finally I proclaimed: “No. Today we say the rosary with the Patricia Mysteries. Mom’s Greatest Hits, as it were.”

And so we did.

1. Mom, Me, And The Priest: It’s 1982, and my first husband and I are going through preparation for a Catholic wedding. We’re working with a very Zealous Young Priest in Flagstaff, where we lived. He’s not the priest who will marry us; we’ve arranged to have Mom and Dad’s pastor in Phoenix do that. But tests have to be taken and counseling has to be given for six months prior, and the Zealous Young Priest is taking issue with the fact that First Husband and I are living together prior to marriage and I, the Catholic in the duo, am totally not repenting on that front. He is displeased. I complain to my mother. Patricia listens to my tale, considers, and says, “Well, of course I don’t approve of you living together outside of marriage. But Bess: we spent how much time, money and effort sending you to Catholic school. Surely you can take on a priest?”
2. Mom And The Tupperware Lady: It’s 1984 or so, and I am a young married woman who knows a Tupperware Lady.  I think I had attended a Tupperware party and wanted to help out the hostess by booking one (more free burping plastic!) and so there I sat in my house with an assortment of married and unmarried friends, and Patricia, who has graciously come down to our house to attend. The Tupperware Lady is completely over the top, and is just gushing about a little kid-sized cake making set, complete with miniature rolling pin, cake taker, and sundry accessories, similar to this. This is being passed around the group, Tupperware Lady says, “Wouldn’t this make a great gift for a little girl?” Patricia turns to the unsuspecting woman next to her and growls, loud enough for all to hear, “I don’t approve of giving this shit to little girls. Gives them ALL the wrong ideas.” Tupperware Lady swallows her tongue.
3. Mom and Weight Watchers: For about six years, I was a Weight Watchers leader and wound up having a meeting on Sunday mornings near Mom and Dad’s home. Mom wanted to lose some weight, and so she joined as a member, and I would pick her up on Sunday morning and take her over to the meeting with me, where she would heckle me throughout the meeting. The other members knew who she was, and thought she was hilarious. One Sunday I was discussing emotional eating and using food to deal with non-hunger issues and mentioned that sometimes we come from environments where our parents required us to clean our plates and that can cause issues later. Mom turns to the woman next to her and, just loud enough for the room to hear, mutters, “I knew she’d get around to blaming it all on me.” Mic Drop.
4. Mom and Her Computer: The Geek Squad guys at Best Buy were amazed that my 80+ year old mother was still using a computer. She absolutely needed a new one, as she had to have a vehicle to forward conservative emails trashing Hilary Clinton and the old computer was ten years old and failing. She was worried, though, about learning a new user interface with a new version of Windows. She was comfortable with XP. So the Geek Squad set her up with a new box where she had the latest version of Windows and ran a virtual machine so it looked like XP. Amazingly (and embarrassingly for me), when Microsoft quit supporting XP, she forwarded me the email and correctly intuited, where I had not, that she was affected by this because she is running a virtual machine. We took the virtual machine off the computer and she happily adjusted to the new OS.
5. Mom and Her Ashes: For years, Mom talked about her funeral and what we should do with her cremains. Not in huge detail, of course, and she and Dad blue-skied ideas about us waiting for them both to go and then taking the cremains, mixing them (how do you even do that? KitchenAid?) and then packing them to a spot in a national forest to be scattered. Those plans changed over time, but Mom was adamant that we not blow money on an urn for her, that we should just keep her in the cardboard box the mortuary would provide. I protested. “Mom, we’re not having a Mass with your remains up there in a cardboard box.” She replied, “So have them gift wrapped.”

We did not, though I was sorely tempted.

More to come…

© E. Stocking Evans 2019