...slightly faded peach nail polish on both hands...
That is what the autopsy report read. It came last week. Finally. After 11 years. I wept, and the heaviness of grief took hold of my throat.
I remember her peach nail polish. She loved peach. I hated it. She loved fur coats. I detested them. She ate meat for every meal. I became a vegetarian at age 7. She loved fine dining and elegant ballroom gowns. I loved eating veggie burgers at hippie joints and wore mostly white tanks and torn jeans. She kept an impeccably clean home. My children's toys were impossible to keep in the toy box and I adored their crayon-drawn photos of "me and mommy" on my walls. She felt breasts were not for public consumption, and all my babies had anytime-access to my breasts for years after birth.
We could not possibly have been more different.
Today is my dead mother's birthday.
She died far too young, far too suddenly, and far too traumatically. I watched them resuscitating her in the emergency room at my favorite hospital in town. Slow motioned chaos, confusion, fear, desperation. I wasn't ready for her to die yet. We had to come to an agreement, first, on our many disagreements. It was Halloween night.
For four long days, she lived on machines, tubes delivering her means of survival. Until we said no more.
There is a time in all our lives when we realize that this very moment in which we exist is a game-changer. I would never get to tell her that I was sorry we didn't understand each other in the way a mother and daughter should. She would never get to tell me how proud she felt seeing me graduate, the first in our family to complete college and go on to graduate studies to eventually become "Dr. Cacciatore." I wonder, often, what she'd have thought of that. We never had a chance to agree to disagree about eating animals, and feeding the poor, and breastfeeding, and fur coats.
I love and miss my beautiful mother very much. With all our differences and disagreements and frustrations, I love and miss her. I hope she is with Chey, wherever that is... I hope.
And oh, the things I would do and say now if only I could...
Josephine Cacciatore- Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you. I love you with all my heart and I miss you and my children miss you too. I wish you could've seen them grow up.
I wish you could've seen me grow up too.
Your daughter,
Joya
2 comments:
Hello Dr.Cacciatore,
I have been following your blog for some time now.I want to thank you for all of the work you have done and are still doing.I have two young daughter's.Within my first pregnancy,one of my twin daughter's passed away in my 31st week and my surviving twin daughter was born five weeks later (healthy).I suffered three early miscarriages thereafter.I had my second daughter,five years after my first.
I signed up just to be able to send you this article/information I just came across.This was amazing information for me to find,now 12yrs after my first loss.
I was aware that our living children's cells are within us,as Mother's.But I never knew until now,upon finding this information,that the child/children whom we have carried within us,but passed away within us,ALSO left their cells within us!THIS IS AMAZING TO ME!!!
This information filled my heart and my soul to now know that I have been carrying the cells within me and always will,of the four babies I have grieved,for the past 12yrs!It is hard to put into words.
I hope that this information helps you in some way,however it may.You have done so much for me,for other's.I find myself hoping that this information fills your heart and your soul,in the way it has for me.It will not end my grief,but has me seeing it in a different way.Instead of only seeing my babies as having left me permanantly,I can see them as having stayed WITHIN me in this way,permanantly.
I offer you this link in hopes that it brings you what you find most you need,within the loss of your precious daughter (and as well,in the loss of your Mother.You will see how,when you read the article);
http://lauragraceweldon.com/2012/06/12/mother-child-are-linked-at-the-cellular-level/
I've read your article & thanks for sharing this kind of unknown info.
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