It’s strange, getting so many kind condolence notes on my mother’s passing, because she and I had a complicated relationship. It was fine when I was little, then rough for quite a while; it improved when I had children, and was just starting to properly mend, not long before Amma became ill and mentally confused, many years ago.
We’re still not sure what the illness was; the diagnoses have been tentative and varied over time. Somewhere in the realm of schizophrenia and early-onset dementia. We’ve been losing her slowly for a long time.
Amma and I had one really nice conversation, around the time Anand was about nine or ten; that’s the one that keeps coming back to me now, almost a decade later.
***
We’d gone out to visit, and we were at a relatives’ house, probably for Christmas. Anand came to tell me, very upset, that he’d lost his iPad, and he thought he’d left it on the plane. I had a moment of massive frustration, but then I managed to sigh, and let it go. It was an accident, after all. I told Anand it’d be okay, and sent him off to play with his cousins, hoping I could call the airport in the morning and get the iPad back. If not, we’d save up for another.
My aunties seemed surprised that I hadn’t gotten angrier, and Amma said to me quietly, a little later, that I was doing a good job as a mother, and she wished she could go back and do some things differently. It was a really nice moment.
All of which makes me sad for the relationship we could have had, if Amma hadn’t gotten sick. If she could have known me better, and I could have known her better. If we would have realized more of what we had in common, and been able to share that and spend more time and take pleasure in each other’s company.
Instead, we were pretty distant the last decade. So when people offer such lovely condolences, a part of me wants to say, “Oh, there were people who knew her so much better than I did, who did so much more to care for her, who loved her so much more — they’re the ones you should be offering such kind wishes to.”
But I suppose the condolences can stand for what was lost over the last decade of illness too, the better possibilities that were taken from us.
***
Amma would have loved wandering the garden and picking flowers and arranging them, I think. She would have been so good at it — she’d probably have taken courses and become an expert, and then critiqued my arrangements, and made them better.
We could have shared more of that, if things had gone differently.
When anyone you love dies, it may be impossible not to experience some regrets. Things you wish you’d done, wish you’d said. I think both Amma and I mostly did our best at the time, which will have to be consolation enough.
*****
Pictured here: Rosa “The Fairy,” ageratum, Russian sage, Canadian goldenrod (aggressive native), calamintha nepeta, allium (“Millennium,” I think).
