I have put together all the information about my mom on the page “In loving memory”. You can go over there to get all the info you need.
My mom had always valued education. Aside from the Red Cross, this was another cause she supported. As a matter of fact, a monk turned up one night at the wake. Apparently, my mom had paid for his ordination 10 some years ago when she and the aunties stopped at a countryside temple. He saw my mom’s funeral announcement in the papers and came to pay his respect. But I digress.
My dad used to teach at a university. He has some contacts there to explore the opportunity to set up a scholarship for architecture school in my mom’s honor. This is definitely something I can get behind.
Now, back to life without mom.
It seems we all have survived our first night of “normal.” My dad, my brother and his girlfriend had dinner at the house. The first home cooked dinner since I got back. Dad watches the news after dinner and heads back to the office. Onk is back in his true form and already sneaked out of the house after sending off my any-day-now sister-in-law. Me, at the computer, blogging away…at dad’s office instead of my own. Ake still has a few days left on bereavement so I don’t know what he’s doing.
The only thing missing from the routine is mom.
Dad and brothers used to visit mom at random time during the week. Ake swung in at lunch. Onk’s schedule varied. And dad usually went before dinner (which these days is served around 8 p.m.) or sometime in the afternoon on his way back from meetings. And when I was here, I was there from morning until night, pretty much.
After her death, everyone still had a schedule to keep: work during day and be at the temple by 6:30 for the wake. Then the cremation and the scattering of ashes, still mom’s events although the schedule was different.
The wake was like a transition period. A bit of a built-in adjustment courtesy of our traditions. Or maybe it was just 8 more days of denial. Frankly, part of me felt like mom wasn’t really gone during those evenings at the temple.
The cremation hit me like a brick. Leaving the spot in the Gulf of Thailand where we “scattered” mom’s ashes (more like sinking the water soluble urn, really) hit me like a Mack truck full of said bricks.
Pueng, our faithful housekeeper, is not taking all of this very well. We almost had to drag her away from the crematorium as she went back in there to be right by the “oven,” refusing to leave mom’s side.
I think we all try to get her to move on along like the rest of us are by keeping her busy and putting some normalcy back into her life. Having me home right now is giving her one more person to take care of. As for Kob, the caregiver, the person who was there as my mom drew her last breath, heads back out to her home town for a few months before returning to city for the next job.
What a job to have, to care for the sick, got all attached to them and have them die on you. I really believe hospice nurses and caregivers are born with bits of angels in them.
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I woke up this morning and found myself missing my mother.
I pulled her clothes out of the closet in dad’s bedroom today. Some of the pieces I remember well. Some of them I haven’t seen before. Funny how I don’t miss her while I am elbow deep in her clothes, breathing in her scent, but a walk passed the picture frames she had set up so long ago brings tears to my eyes.
But holy crap, that was ONE half of a closet and I have easily 2 garbage bag worth of stuff. And I haven’t even empty out the drawers yet. The other 2 closets are packed the same way. Pueng has a lot of work ahead of her, bringing all of that downstairs tomorrow morning before Aunty Sida gets here. Me and my dearest Aunty are so going to have fun swimming in the sea of my mom’s clothes tomorrow!
See what I mean right there? We are moving on along here. And we are missing her in all sorts of different ways.
My dad told me he misses mom most in the morning for some reason, not in the evening when he used to visit her. I told him it’s because now there is nobody to push him to get ready and go out the door on time. And while I’m here, I’m the one doing that job. I caught myself sounding exactly like my mother this morning as we were late getting out the door to go to his doctor’s appointment.
That Mack truck of bricks will probably come to dad the day after I leave. And probably going to hit Pueng too.
It seems my presence here is just another built in step to ease people’s pain. I just stepped in to fill the void left by mom right now at our house.
But once I’m gone, I wonder how this place would be like. And how empty I will feel being all the way over there.
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Oh, and I just realized that I haven’t written about how mom passed away yet. That’ll be later. Right now, I’m going to upload a few more pictures to the album and head home to bed. Good night, y’all.
