Nobody Wants to Help Mom Do the Dishes

I kited today's title from P. J. O'Rourke whose humor and unflinching worldview I very much enjoy even if I'm too afraid to do much more than admire him except from a safe distance and in solitude. There are many things I forget and many other things I wish I could forget but my Mom's death four years ago today is neither of those things. 

Every holiday and birthday since her passing I keep waiting for the phone to ring and my mother to ask "Bill? This is Mom..." before, in less than a minute, wishing me and mine all the best for whatever the day was. Mom grew up when long-distance phone calls were expensive rarities rationed out for special occasions. I just smiled at that memory until I remembered again, there will never be any more of those calls ever. 

I wrote this the day after she died and called it: 

Unbowed, Unbroken

I knew my mother, Joan Marie (Kelly) Kenny, every day of my life. She died yesterday afternoon after being briefly hospitalized for an infection in an artificial heart valve that slowly overwhelmed her body.

Through the miracle of technology, I was able to speak to her on a phone held to her ear while I said goodbye if by goodbye I'm allowed to include sobbing uncontrollably while apologizing for crying and being comforted by the woman who gave birth to me and my brothers and sisters.  

On her wedding day, 1951

Mom died very much as she lived, with quiet determination on her own terms and with her eyes wide open, rarely blinking because she knew losing sight of where the bastards of this planet are, even for a moment, could be catastrophic. There was nothing she would and could not do for her children as I know all too well.   

There was, in the end, too little, I, as her oldest could do for her. Kara, my sister who was with her in the hospital, told me Mom's heart was slowing down and she was sleeping more than she was awake so I was grateful she was awake when I called so she could hear me tell her how much I loved her one last time in this life.

Mom's forever beach chair, bag, and hat

Mom believes in heaven and I have no doubt that after her sometimes hellish almost nine decades here on earth that is where she is. Mitch Albom wrote, "when death takes your mother, it steals that word forever." The only solace I possibly take from that thought is that forever is only as long as my life and no longer.
-bill kenny