Images

[vaneramos]

Cleaning the office turns up many interesting things. Buried on my desk was a bundle of photos Dad took last fall and printed to send me. I think this photo was taken on Labour Day weekend as we said goodbye. Mom might have guessed it would be our last photo together, though I didn't think of it at the time.

There were plenty of photos around after Mom died, but they recalled events long ago. This one reminds me of when she was sick, which chokes me up as the others didn't. She would soon be gone.

I don't think her appearance had changed much by Christmas, but her right eye was almost swollen shut. We were all together again but didn't take any family photos. By the time of my last visit at the beginning of February, she couldn't see out of her right eye, and the left one was swollen, too. She could no longer read, which was one of the great pleasures of her life. Especially the classics, like Tolstoy and Dickens. As a girl she had to walk to the corner and buy drugstore romances for her mother. Mom avoided pulp for the rest of her life.

The last few weeks deprived her of some things, but it wasn't a long time, and she was never in much pain. Breathing was only difficult the last day. Under the circumstances, it was the gentlest death possible.

Still, it is better to remember her this way.

Comments

[estherandmia.livejournal.com]

i assumed your mother passed away by now, but i didn´t know when.
I´m sorry you lost her, Van and i´m glad you have lots of great memories.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Mom died in February. It came a little sooner than we expected but was so peaceful that Dad and a friend were eating dinner in the same room and didn't notice. She was never confined to bed and didn't need any oxygen. It was a much easier death than any of us expected, and I don't mean that callously. I was so afraid of the messy business of the cancer getting into her lungs and other organs. Mom wished she could just close her eyes and goes to sleep, and it seems that's what happened. I was so relieved that I have hardly felt any sorrow. I only cried once during a massage session. But I guess the missing will hit me sooner or later. Finding this photo almost brought it home.

The last evening I spent with her we had an amazing conversation that resolved some important misunderstandings. She had been very much in the closet about me, but after she died I found out that all three of her surviving sisters knew. At the memorial celebration all my relatives were very warm and open toward Danny.

[estherandmia.livejournal.com]

Thank you, Van, by now i went back through your journal and found the entry about her death. I´m so happy you found understanding in your family!

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

it's good you have this photo, with your mother and your girls. even from this remove, without my having met her (or you), it touches my heart. i'm glad she didn't have much pain and died gently.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I have to say, it's a relief to have found this picture. I didn't remember Dad taking it, and thought there were none from the last few months. That didn't bother me much, but I'm happy to have found one.

[eloquentwthrage.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

You're welcome.

The collection of Annie Lennox/Eurythmics CDs you sent also turned up today. It was one of a few important things that disappeared after my apartment flooded in January, and I've been missing it. I knew it wasn't one of the damaged things that got thrown away, but it got buried.

I've reorganized my CDs laterly, putting them all into large books convenient for long road trips, which I make frequently. I had left space for that collection whenever it turned up. Today I transferred the discs and notes. The nice folder you sent will be used for important computer discs.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know how much I (and Marian) have appreciated them. Danny has always been an Annie Lennox fan; for him it has been a nice trip down memory lane.

[eloquentwthrage.livejournal.com]

Cool! Perhaps I need to update the collection; she had a new album last year. Maybe Danny's keeping you up to date.

I have to tell you a funny story. I was reminded when you said you're using the CD holder for something else now, which is cool. A few years ago I gave my friend myq13 an Invader Zim messenger bag for Christmas. He said he loved it and brought it over with him weekly (for WWE wrestling, of course). Spring that year, he met a girl named T and they started seeing each other seriously. At about this time, he moved farther away and wasn't able to come over weekly.

This is going somewhere, I promise.

After a few more months, I got an email from him apologizing to me for patronizing me. Apparently, he had only been using the IZ bag when he came over here because he didn't want to hurt my feelings. He liked it, but it wasn't something he'd really use. So once a week, he dropped into it whatever he needed for that night, came over to display it, then dumped it when he got home. But then he said he now had a much more important use for the bag. It was being used to cart sex toys and paraphernalia from his place to his girlfriend's and home again. (Myq and his T have since gotten married.)

So I highly approve of reassignment of gift items.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Hehe!

Nobody needs to tell me about Annie anymore! She is one of my three favourite pop artists. And that's saying something, because I have more than 4,400 songs on iTunes now, and a much broader appreciation of music than I did two years ago.

I have listened to Bare and Songs of Mass Destruction over and over in the car. Actually Danny hasn't listened to either of them all the way through yet; he finds them too emotionally raw for easy listening. I don't mind that.

[missprune.livejournal.com]

This is a beautiful family portrait. You all resemble each other so much! The Dutch (?) genes are very clear. I am glad to read that your mother had a gentle going.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

That's funny. Both my grandfathers researched our lineage a long way back, and as far as I know there is no Dutch blood! Mom was from an old Irish-Canadian family, but she was one-quarter German.

Dad is mostly English, though the Waffle family came from Swiss-German stock that emigrated to New England in the 18th Century. Oddly enough, my grandfather Van also believed it was a Dutch family, because Van was such a common given name, and he didn't understand that the New York Dutch were not Dutch. The revelation about Swiss lineage came from a distant relative who got in touch with Dad a few years ago.

But I digress.

Marian (beside Mom) is practically the spitting image of Mom as a young girl. The family resemblance is strong.

[leafshimmer.livejournal.com]

Thanks for sharing the stories, and the wonderful photos. I hope the memories bring you some measure of comfort.

hugs, Shimmer

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Thank you, Shimmer. I seem to have received the fullest measure of comfort possible. It is a great mercy.