Last summer, after my mother passed away, I had been in a deep sadness, unable to find a reason to smile or laugh. Nothing made me happy, and the weight of loss lay deeply on my soul.
I saw in my email a note from Guidepost magazine. I'd sent them several of my writings before, but had totally forgotten about it from all that had gone on with my mother's failing health. When I opened the email, I saw that they accepted one of my stories! Joy flooded back in. A reason to smile, and even to sing once again! Someone had recognized something good in my writing. And of course, it was an article I'd written about my mom. The timing couldn't have been better.
I want to share that article on my blog today since everyone may not be subscribed to "Mysterious Ways," Guidepost's sister magazine. It is not as I originally wrote it, as their editors had an idea to focus on the earrings. I had to make a few changes to my first draft. Looking back now, I see exactly what they intended. May you be blessed by the little story you are about to read:
The
Earrings
Mom’s earrings. I had to find them.
I dug through the top
drawer of my bureau, rummaging through my jewelry box and the knickknacks
accumulated over the years. Printed scarves, strands of beads, dried flowers. Where were those earrings? I could see
them clearly in my mind. Pink teardrop diamonds framed by rhinestones. Costume
jewelry from the nineteen fifties, certainly not worth much. Yet Mom had to
have them.
I’d been at my parent’s
house earlier filling their pill containers and washing a few dishes left from
the night before.
Mom had been sitting at
the kitchen table, nibbling the corner of a jelly donut and licking her fingers
like a little kid. Her wiry gray hair stood on end around her face. Food from
the previous day stained her sweatshirt.
“Kar,” she asked, using
the nickname she always called me. “Do you have those earrings I gave you? The
ones with the rhinestones?” She stared at me expectantly as if she needed me to
understand.
Dad and I glanced at
each other. I knew what he was thinking. How
in the world could she remember something like a pair of earrings when she
could barely remember the names of her grandkids? Dementia had turned my
mother into someone I barely knew. And here she was trying to tell me something
with those earrings—giving me a clue of some sort. But every time she mentioned
them, I felt like we were speaking two different languages. Like I was losing
my mother all over again.
We hadn’t always been
close, Mom and I. When I was little, she suffered from deep bouts of
depression. She’d been in and out of hospitals for most of my childhood. She
got better around the time I entered high school. A time when we became like
best friends. We remained that way until three years ago when Mom was diagnosed
with dementia. Now every day only seemed to bring more darkness as Mom became
like a stranger. I was worried for her. I was worried for Dad and me too. What
did the future have in store for us? What little did it hold for Mom?
“My earrings,” Mom said
again.
“I’ll look for them
when I get home,” I told her, giving her a kiss. “I promise.”
Now I picked though the
clutter in my bureau, searching for a pair of earrings she’d given me some
twenty years ago. She’d gotten them from her mother and then passed them on to
me. I’d never seen her wearing them. Why were they so important now?
I turned to a small
wooden jewelry box, one I’d kept since I was a kid. I nudged aside my
grandmother’s gold locket and an old cameo pin. Underneath a tarnished seahorse
necklace, I saw them. Two brilliant pink gemstones. Mom’s earrings!
The rhinestones
twinkled, casting prisms of light against something else in the box. A piece of
paper so worn I could barely read the writing. What was it doing in there? I
picked it up and stared at it, recognizing it at once. A page ripped from my
girlhood diary.
I plopped down onto my
bed as tears welled up in my eyes and then made their way down my cheeks.
February
14, 1970, it read. Mom
went to the hospital in an ambulance today. . .
The memories flooded
back. Valentine’s Day, 1970. Mom was thirty-three and I was eleven. Too young
to know the full extent of her battle with depression, but old enough to know
it was bad. Mom would arrive home from one of her hospital visits with dark
circles under her eyes and a haunted look on her face. When relatives and
friends came to visit, I’d hear whispered words like “crazy” and “suicidal.”
Dad did the best he could to take care of both Mom and me, but I felt so alone.
I’d escape to my room, soaking up fantasy books and writing in my diary, trying
to imagine what it would be like to have a normal mother and a normal life.
That Valentine’s Day,
her admission was different. Mom had been rushed
to the hospital. She’d suffered a cardiac arrest in our upstairs bathroom.
I’d watched terrified as she was taken out of the house on a stretcher. I
thought I’d never see her again, that she was gone. That her depression had
finally caused her heart to stop. But a week later, Mom was back at home. And
she was completely different.
The dark circles were
gone and her face glowed. When she spoke, I noticed that the confusion, anxiety
and sadness had vanished. There was a lightness to her step I’d never seen
before. My parents became affectionate once again. Laughter replaced hushed
voices and secrecy. Mom finally fulfilled a dream of becoming an antique
dealer. And several years later, at the age of thirty-nine, she gave birth to
my brother. Life settled into the kind of routine I’d always envied in my
friends’ lives.
I didn’t question Mom
about the change, too afraid the spell would be broken. It wasn’t until four
years later, when I was in high school that my mother shared what had happened
that Valentine’s Day.
“You remember my
cardiac arrest, Kar?” Mom asked one night while we made dinner together. “I
didn’t tell you the whole story. I didn’t tell anyone except your father. I was
afraid people would talk.”
“What do you mean?” I
asked.
Mom paused. “Kar, that
day in the hospital, I died.”
I stared at Mom,
confused. Died?
“I remember falling in
the bathtub,” she said. “But the next thing I knew, I was at the hospital,
staring from above my body on a hospital gurney.”
She felt herself floating
away and found herself at the entrance of a dark tunnel. The further she
traveled through the tunnel, the brighter it became. She became wrapped in a
brilliant light, unlike anything she’d ever seen. The feeling of complete love
washed over her, surrounding her. Yet after a few minutes, Mom felt herself
being pulled back. All at once, she was on the gurney again. She heard the
doctor’s exclaim, “She’s back!”
“The light was so
pure,” Mom said, a starry look in her eyes. “Like an all-encompassing love.
That’s the only way I can describe it. I got a glimpse that day, sweetheart. Of
the joy waiting for us all.”
I stared at the page in
my hand now, and the earrings—their light so brilliant, so like the light that
returned to Mom’s eyes that long-ago Valentine’s Day and the light Mom
encountered when she died and came back.
She knew. Somehow, even
in the midst of her dementia, Mom knew that I needed a reminder. Of the joy
that awaits her, and the light that overcomes darkness.
This is my actual diary entry that I'd found.
