Early morning autumn sun streaks our wooden deck with strands of gold. The sky is a heavenly shade of blue. In the distance the sumac is turning. Celadon greens becoming burnt orange, barn red, mahogany. The reds stand out, brilliant against a drying, wheat-colored landscape. It is the sumac I remember most. It reminds me of the year my mother died, September 30, 1993, twenty-eight years ago today.
I wrote about the sumac back then. I wrote about how my mother, gone from earth would not be on hand to see the way sumac flames scarlet along prairie paths, meadows, hiking trails. I wrote about how she was a nature observer and taught me to be the same. And I wrote about the way her commentary on the beauties and intricacies of our the natural world wrought in me a way of seeing which became intrinsic.
That first year I walked the four mile round trip to the bridge on the prairie path in late afternoons after my days as a high school social worker. I was grieving deeply. I had watched my mother die, living for twelve agonizing days after emergency aneurysm surgery, cognitively aware, but in greater pain each day, fading, fading. We had sung hymns around her bed, my husband, brothers, sisters in law and I. Our children and grandchildren had drifted in and out during those days. We laughed, we cried, we hugged, we sang, we hoped, we dreaded and we hoped again.
We were asked to talk to her about a medical decision that would prolong her life, dialysis to give her more time. We were told it would be a brief stop-gap at most. I was elected to speak to her in person about it. I stood beside her bed, held her hand and laid out the scenario. She, who had always lamented any heroics and asked for a DNR said wistfully, “well, I never wanted to be a burden”…
Was that a definitive answer? I took it as such. I also saw that even in this near-death state, life, precious life, can be very hard to leave, even when one longs for heaven.
Twenty-eight Septembers have passed. I am older than my mother was when she died. I do not weep for her as easily, do not feel a bit unmoored by the primal losing of a mother. I have been the family matriarch for a long time now. I wear this mantle loosely, humbly but with a sense of responsibility. I honor her today for all she taught me as she wore the matriarchal mantle. And I honor her for saying, “April, look at the sumac! It’s brilliant!”