My mother, photographed as a senior at the College of St. Elizabeth in 1966.
Glasses of Graves ...
Tonight, we’ll raise some glasses of Graves to honor my mother. She would have turned 74 today.
My mother loved white Bordeaux — the drier, the better. Graves was her favorite. She was very upset for much of the 1980s and 1990s because waiters and waitresses would repeatedly offer her Chablis when she asked for a dry white wine. Come to think of it, we’ll probably have Martinis, which she also preferred dry as a bone, before the Graves is uncorked.
When her illness took a bad turn in the summer of 2016, she asked me to bring her a Martini as she convalesced. I complied. She had two sips and fell cold asleep — we thought briefly that I might have dispatched her. Happily, I was not a culprit in that caper. Mom hung on — and nearly pulled off the triumph of going home from assisted living — for another 8 months after the Martini. By Christmas, when I served her another one at our house in Mount Kisco, she delighted in it.
The aftermath of my mother’s death last April 19 has made for a long, arduous year.
When she went, Mike Kelly, my able colleague who is a veteran columnist at The Record, offered me a prescient warning.
“Give it a month, and you’ll feel it,” he said.
Mike was right.
A massive wave of grief washed over me on the morning of Saturday, May 20 — a month after my mother expired. I was in Canton. In giving my spring report to the Board of Trustees, I thanked them and the larger St. Lawrence community for the support we’d received in the darkest hours. Afterward, walking to Gunnison Memorial Chapel, I broke down.
In the weeks that followed, as spring gave way to summer, I fell into an ugly numbness of frustration, anger, disillusionment and discontent. With ebbs and flows, these feelings set upon me and clung on heavily through the fall and into the holidays. Christmas, blessedly, bore some relief. Through this winter, with its many bright moments — Caroline learning to ski, Julia learning to walk and talk, the grief began to lift.
Now, as we approach the one-year mark, I’ve reached a new plateau of solace. There’s much to be grateful for — the girls, our very supportive family and friends, my father’s relief and busy schedule. All of these things and more wrap into the legacy my mother left us. Her departure has also left me with newfound self-awareness. Through the darkest hours, I was learning constantly — and for that, I’m now grateful.
Despite my recent evolution in outlook, there are still moments of palpable loss. Any trip to my parents’ house is filled with memories and markers.
The clocks are still stopped at 1:54 — when she drew her final breath. I stopped them when we arrived home from Dover General, probably 20 minutes after she’d gone. Her magnets still cling to the iron ore in the bowl in the family room. Her reading glasses are still near her perch in the kitchen. Good wine — including some bottles of Graves — she’d bought is still stacked in the dining room. I’ve tried to keep up with her custom of changing out her display of old post cards on the music cabinet in the living room, but I noticed last weekend that they hadn’t been changed since Christmas. I missed New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day and Easter. Alas.
Over these next weeks, I expect to be pulled back to the events of a year ago often.
I’ll remember the misty fog that cloaked our iron hills on the morning of her funeral. I’ll remember the piper’s skirl at the cemetery. I’ll remember the fuss mourners made over Julia at Bermingham’s. I’ll remember the tributes I wrote. I’ll remember the camaraderie of the repast — all the St. Lawrence boys together at the bar taking down some Martinis that would have passed my mother’s muster and laughing about misadventures of long ago.
And I’ll remember my mother — her relentless, exacting need for information; the joy she found at our house in Yulan; her laughter.
For now, though, we’ll revel in her love of Martinis and Graves.
Happy Birthday, Elle. We miss you.
—EJF, April 5, 2018