Thinking.

On the way home: sitting at the airport, I become meditative, and think upon an incident from a week and a half ago, when I was in Boulder, at the annual board meeting of an organization I belong to.

As we were just getting started, it was decided we go around the room and reintroduce ourselves to people we hadn’t seen for a year (or ever, if they were new), and talk about both the personal high point and the low point of the past year.

It was in me to say that my mother’s death was both the low point and the high point for the year. However, not wishing to confuse all the nice people or go under intense psychotherapy in front of everyone for five minutes or so, I simply stated Mom’s death as the low point, and claimed I couldn’t think of a high point. They bought that, too.

I was sad, yes, in spite of all my own fantasies and hopes and expectations, nurtured mostly in secret over the years since I was 13 or so, and imagining her on her deathbed. And I was happy to be free… free of the demands, free from knowing that whatever I did, it either wasn’t good enough, or (if it was good enough) unlikely to be repeated, as well as a surprise. Some people refer to that nagging little voice inside of them as their inner editor. I call it “Mom.”

“Think of all she did for you,” people always say when confronted with such a situation. “Think of how she worked to keep you fed and in clean clothes, the house nice for you and dad.” All very well, but she and dad were rich: clothing was to be had in plenty, as well as live-in housekeepers to keep everything neat and tidy, beds made, and the ice bucket in the bar filled with fresh ice by the time dad came home. As for food… she didn’t manage to piss off every cook in Cincinnati until I was about 12. At that point, of course, she had to learn. I was a skinny girl.

Forget the mental part of it. It took me decades to realize that, had I been like she wanted, she would have been even meaner.

The suddenness of the death is long ago digested, and the lawyers are almost through with their doings. And I think, and write.