Strong Offer Friday : The End of Shloshim
I have not moved the big pot of beef stew that I put in the refrigerator before my mother died. Today is the last day of shloshim, the 30-day mourning period. The beef stew, which did not work out, has been in there for probably 37 days, a special number to me because I am friends with Patti Digh, and that is a special number to her.
Why haven’t I moved the beef stew, which occupies the bottom shelf of my refrigerator like a large emperor, like a full-size throne in a dollhouse, like a soccer ball on a checkerboard? Or the leftover vegetables that didn’t make it into the stew, or the banana peel lounging in the blue bowl? Nothing smells bad, yet. All of the other food is shmushed in around this food.
I cannot get rid of this food. It has become part of my shloshim.
These are some other things I now associate with my mother:
The earrings she made that have one deep purple mirrored metallic bead hanging down so that the color changes depending on the angle and light.
The gold diamond earrings that my mother gave me. I forgot that she gave them to me and my father and I looked through all of her jewelry the week after she died, frustrated and upset that we couldn’t find them. They were petite and valuable. She loved them even though they made her earlobes green and itchy. She gave the earrings to me this past year and I never wore them. I don’t wear gold. Or diamonds. I’m a silver girl. Days later, I was surprised. As always, it’s a short story.
My mother, an artist, was always up to something. I was looking through her sewing things today. She had three boxes – large, medium and small. All filled with threads, needles, bobbins, ribbons, string, fringe. So many colors of each. My mother, 5’ feet tall, would typically shorten most of the shirts she bought because they were too long on her. She hemmed all of my father’s pants as he became shorter and more bent over. When he started volunteering as a driver for the hospital, taking people to and from their cars, the hospital gave my father a t-shirt – but it had no front pocket for his flip-up cell phone. No problem! My mother cut a piece of fabric from the back of the shirt, sewed it on the front, and painted trim around it. The new front pocket was lovely, simply lovely. However, because of the new pocket in the front, there was a large hole in the back of the shirt on the bottom, smack in the center. So, my mother bought a loud, busy piece of fabric to fill in the hole. My father and I laugh hysterically whenever we see the back of the t-shirt, as one would think my mom would have chosen a piece of fabric to match the lime green hole instead of calling attention to it. Oh no. And why not make a pocket out of the piece of fabric to begin with?
Next to her sewing materials, I found a small basket with an unfinished tallis that my mother had started. Underneath the tallis were two plastic trowels – one with a bright green handle and one with a bright yellow handle. Trowels! I asked my father what the trowels were for when we were floating around in the pool. He said, “Who knows? She was always up to something.” We laughed and marveled at her. I looked up at the clouds and saw an x-ray of a spine.
Later that night I was putting the honey bell oranges that my dad had given me in a drawer in the fridge with the shloshim food. The oranges – only in season for a few precious weeks every year – are imported directly from the Garden of Eden. After I put the oranges away, I was holding the bag they came in and looked at it. And looked at it. Hmm…. It was made of white mesh.
I currently hang my earrings on a variation of a grater in my bathroom. While I liked the idea of using the grater at first, I don’t actually like it because the earrings always fall off. Most of the earrings that started out on the grater were now in the bedroom, piled on top of each other in a small silk tray that I bought in Shanghai.
I looked at the white mesh and wondered if it would make a better earring holder. So, I cut the bottom piece off the bag, took the remaining earrings off the grater, took the grater down, and hung up the piece of mesh on the wall. Ah – much better! I created a ritual of walking from the China tray to the new earring holder for each pair of earrings. When I got to the bottom of the pile there were the gold diamond earrings. It was like locating my mother.
Other things in my house that remind me of my mother:
Her beige house slippers covered in sparkles, that I now wear.
The chair she painted with large streaks of missing and dripping paint.
The multi-colored border that she painted around the wall mirror to make it more exciting.
Some of her shoes. They are too small, really, but I can still wear the open-heeled ones. Trying on her shoes was odd at first, as I could feel the literal imprint of her feet, her toes. Such obvious evidence that she had been here, in these shoes. Hours, days, years. Her body. A life.
I will have to clear out the food. There will be a large hole where the pot of stew was. Cleaning this out will be smelly and icky and intense for a short while. I will regret not doing a better job with the stew and I will feel bad that I wasted money, as well as food, that I didn’t pay better attention. I will think about God and food and gardens and abundance as I create space and order in the refrigerator. I will vow to take better care of myself. And I will mean it.
I will wash the large pot and put it away. I will cry, as I’m crying now, writing this.
I woke up so sad today, floating up from my dreams with such tenderness, more gently than I ever have in my entire life. Something in my dream was light purple, creamy—the color of a blouse I saw in my mother’s closet. I cried when I woke up and then went back to sleep. I dreamt of FedEx window pouches expanding into huge, wafty balloons. Messages being sent from beyond. Messages received.
Everything during these days of shloshim echoes grief – food, clouds, shoes, sitting dazed at red lights, leaning my forehead against the wall in the shower, scissors, the shift to past tense, dreams, my father napping on the couch, poems, movie subtitles, nests, gratitude, jazz.
I had a wonderful lunch with someone – lively, expressive, full of pathos and shtick and good stories back and forth. Then I came home and slept again. Grief makes you tired.
It is the end of shloshim. The food sits in the fridge. My mother is gone. The mesh bag hangs on the wall. I wear the gold diamond earrings every day. I do not know what the trowels were for. I will always love that my mother had them. I will keep discovering my mother as I go through her pockets, her arts supplies, as I study photos of her. I will continue to feel both wonder and anguish about her imagination – that she was always up to something and that I will never know what she had been planning. I will find things—a mesh bag, the fancy linen catalog, a broken car fuse—and find ways to use them, because I am the apple that did not fall far from the tree.
Jodi Cohen is one of the best writers I know. Her letter to me about loss, featured in The Geography of Loss and also here on 37days, remains a pylon in the bridge of grief for me, steadying the way from one side of the river to the other. And now this. Jodi’s mom died this January, less than a month after mine. We were on the phone that day when she heard her mom coughing and said she needed to go help her. Hours later, her mom was gone. At 3 a.m. that morning, I got a text from Jodi telling me so, and I was awake to receive it, so we texted for a little while in the middle of the night, as if that would help, but perhaps it does. My thanks to Jodi for allowing this strong offer to be shared here.
