Dear Mama

Annie Ruth Doyle Gray, June 5, 1935 - January 12, 2012.

My mother died yesterday, Thursday, January 12th. She was relatively young, 76, she would have been 77 in June. This is almost 2 years exactly from the time my father died. A little over 3 years since I'd last seen her.

The story of her last day is a cute one. My mother had Alzheimer's, had had it for a number of years and had also spent the last, I don't know, 4+ years in a nursing facility on a floor specifically for patients with the disease. My sister said she had a regular morning, woke up, was given/fed breakfast - she was on a special puréed diet - and told the woman who was feeding her that the oatmeal was terrible and that she should learn to cook. Later that morning, she went to take a nap and when the nursing staff went to wake her for lunch, she was gone. Janet, who saw her body, said she looked peaceful.

I don't know what she's going to look like, her body, I mean. Janet says she'd lost a lot of weight. She was always short, maybe 5'2" at the tallest, and when I saw her 3 years ago she seemed even tinier. So tiny. She was practically cute. Much different than the formidable woman in my memory who would slap me across the face when I said something she didn't like.

A couple photos from the last time I saw her, December 2009, I think.

And I don't feel like mourning, I don't feel especially sad, because I've already done it, to be honest. I did it 3 years ago after I saw her, when I realized, sitting next to her, that she wasn't there any more. It was strange, she still knew me, knew who I was, she would turn and look at me every once in a while and smile, but she was also very child-like. I knew that the person who had been my mother was gone, and so, not long after that visit, I let her go. And I have not regretted that decision to let her go when I did, even knowing she was still alive.

She was a tough lady, but a sad one, an angry one, and she had every right to be. She had been hurt often by men in her life, passing from her father's violence into the hands of her husband's when she was still a girl. She was tough and would put up a fight, but still, she wasn't strong. She should've gotten out of there but I realize how hard that would have been in the 1950s with small children to take care of. So she did the best she could, I think. Which is why I always forgave her no matter how much I thought I hated her or how often I thought she was weak for staying. I wish she could have experienced more happiness in her life, done more of the things she wanted to do, but it's been too late to think about that for years now.

Annie and cat, probably mid-1940s.

Annie, late 1940s or early 50s?

Annie, early 1950s?

I'm probably 2 or 3 here, 1979-80, Tony's Road.

Must have been 1984-ish or early 1985, Tony's Road.

Kitchen, Tony's Road, probably 1985-86. I love the look she's giving me.

Hideous Easter outfit, 1990 or 91, probably, Janet's on Blue Ball Road.

 

So nervous! Before the wedding, September 2002, Philadelphia

There's so much more to her story that I could relate and I only knew her for less than half of it, I'm sure there were more secrets than the ones that I knew, secrets that have died with her. Secrets that are probably best left unknown.

I love you, mommy. I really do.