Still Life
That night she died in her sleep, and the next morning I’m betting she did see Leonard. I imagine they met up in heaven (Nanny definitely went to heaven) and sat down together to eat their usual breakfast of a half cup of bran flakes submerged in orange juice.
Nanny’s grandmother – this would be my mother’s great grandmother – was known to all as Old Oldie. Old Oldie had snow white hair down to her waist which she wore in two braided loops on top of her head. Family legend has it that she awoke before dawn each day, descended three flights of stairs to the kitchen and baked biscuits for breakfast. One morning, she didn’t. She had died quietly in her own bed of no particular illness. She was 102.
My mother, on the other hand, died in a strange place, strange hands changing her diapers, strange hands moving her, back to front, side to side, strange hands feeding her spoons of pureed food. She died choking on her breakfast. She had forgotten how to swallow. She was, according to her birth certificate, 77 years old.
But my mother’s life was not just shorter than it should have been; it was narrower too, a cramped life, a life that imploded on her. I’ve spent a considerable part of my own adult life trying to figure out hers, but I still struggle with the basics: What choices did she have? What choices did she make? How much or how little was she the author of her own life? If a mother’s life is a lesson to her daughter, what was my mother trying to teach me?