Almost?

 The idea that my mother could be celebrating her ninetieth birthday if not for the inconvenient fact that she passed away some two years ago is aggravating to me. The idea that she was "almost ninety" when she died suggests that she just couldn't quite make it to that next place, some new level of age and wisdom that is afforded only to people who live a certain life and ring a certain bell. 

My mother rang that bell and many others over the course of her, yes I will say it, all too brief time on this planet and I struggle sometimes with the suggestion that she didn't. 

Perhaps at the top of the list of my frustrations with this bit of accounting is the tenacity that I learned by spending time under her care. The woman had Multiple Sclerosis for heaven's sake and she kept walking around the globe as if her life depended on it. Because it did. She was like a shark in the most benevolent way. She kept moving forward and rejected the suggestions from others that she couldn't. She played piano with love and care well past the cruel introduction of arthritis twisted her hands and made her continued attempts painful and frustrating. She maintained a group of clients for her bookkeeping business well into her seventies, stopping only when her focus became more emphatically on her health and the need to keep herself going every morning: getting up going for a walk, checking in with her sons and grandchildren in addition to a life full of friends and commitments generated by a life fully lived. 

When her lungs decided to make it impossible for her to live without nights spent connected to oxygen, she apologized to her overnight guests if the noise from the tubes kept them awake in the other room. "Sorry if the machinery that is keeping me alive disrupts your slumber." 

I used to joke with her about the tchotkes and relics that she kept around her home, artifacts from her travels as well as gifts from friends and family, all of which carried some memory or story. I suggested that maybe she should be careful that the wrong combination of idols of various sorts might generate some sort of curse and bring about some sort of cataclysm. As it turns out, it is much more likely that these talismans were the thing that were keeping her alive, and when she had to leave her home and its collective ju-ju at a time when she needed it most, that power drain was what left her in a position that even she figured was best described as death's door. 

She decided to walk through. Not because she wanted to give up on life but because it seemed like it was the next thing to do. Because my mother was all about moving forward. 

I miss her today.