I detest January. It’s cold, often gray, and I feel fat and grumpy. Winter’s holiday treats and lack of physical activity are enemies to my usual good nature. No. I don’t ski. I’ve lived in southeast Idaho all of my life and the sport still escapes me. I’m athletic and coordinated, but I’m like a moose on ice when I have skis on my feet. A fat, grumpy moose.
If I continue to write,
you can count on continuing reflections of my mother, her life, and her death,
especially in January. You can count on threads of Mom woven through my writing
because the woman was wonderful and wise. She was my real Wonder Woman.
She provided years of great material to write about, learn
from and emulate. No one else is going to write about her, and some of her life’s
pieces should be shared, darn it. With no kids of my own, luckily you are the
audience who gets the stories of the life and death of Mary V. Johnson.
Her father died of leukemia when she was 11 years old. They
lived in a small town in northern Wisconsin and the whole community knew that
my grandfather was sick except for my mom. One day he just died. The lack of surprise from others compounded
her grief. She felt duped and lied to and wasn’t going to do that with her kid.
She adopted a philosophy of transparency with me regarding
some of the tough topics that parents tackle. Before I was in high school, I
had more dialogue about death, religion, politics, sex, drugs, birth control,
racism, and child abuse than many people have in a lifetime. I was lucky.
The day she died plays in my head like a Hallmark movie. I’d
had my tonsils out mid-January. After about ten years of having strep throat
during college finals, Christmas or New Years, I’d had enough. The surgery
knocked me out and I hadn’t seen Mom in a few days. She was housebound battling
emphysema and heart disease.
I visited on a Saturday morning, the day of George Bush’s
first inauguration. She hadn’t slept right in weeks because she was anxiously watching
news coverage of the Florida ballot recounts. I told her that her eyes glued to
the screen weren’t going to help America and the best thing for everyone would
be for her to rest her body.
She gave me her weekly shopping list. I remember popcorn
salt, trash bags, and prunes among the items. I was still under the weather
after the tonsillectomy, but luckily the sun was shining. It snowed that week
and it stayed cold, so Pocatello was bright and white rather than dark and gray
for my trek to the grocery store. Fred Meyer had recently opened and the wide
aisles and pristine floors were delightful.
When I returned to Mom’s I asked if she had any chores for
me. She had a few things but could tell I wasn’t feeling well so they could
wait. As I unpacked her groceries, she became irritated with me because I got scented
trash bags. As she opened them to see if she could handle the smell, the
chemicals sent her into a wheezing frenzy.She ramped up her oxygen, took a nebulizer breathing treatment and was back to breathing normally—her normally—in minutes. While she recovered, I wearily put the trash bags on the porch and the rest of her groceries away. The whole time I was thinking about how to approach the topic of assisted living. I needed to summon my own transparency in tackling a tough subject.
As I was leaving mid-day and told her I’d see her the next,
she said, “Oh Honey, feel better. It’s a beautiful day. I hope you get out and
enjoy it.”
Those were the last words she said to me. She died in front
of her TV a few hours later.
How many people are this lucky? I experienced a touching, poignant
parting with a simple instruction to carry forward.
When I got into my yellow Xterra, U2’s song “It’s a
Beautiful Day” was playing. I’ve wondered, had something else had been on the
radio at that moment, would her words have floated away? I’m lucky the song was
playing, lucky I truly heard her words, and so lucky to have had a mom with
that eternal outlook.
Even during my grayest, grumpiest moments of winter I remind
myself: it’s a beautiful day! Get out and enjoy it!
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