Mom's Obituary

Mom's obituary is in the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle this morning (as well as in the Contra Costa Times), and you can almost see the clouds behind her in the picture.  (Now I wish I'd asked about color!)  The picture was taken the day Kathy and I took her to the U.C. Davis Alzheimer's Disease Center in Martinez.  She wasn't leaving the house during that period because of a  very personal fear that I won't explain here.   One exception to her refusing to leave the house was when I was staying with her and she came across a letter from Nancy Pelosi saying, "Before you do anything else, write a check to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee" or something to that effect.  Mom said, "Oh, I meant to do that before!"  She wrote out a check for $150.00 and asked me to take her to the post office.  She directed me there, too.  There were also occasional visits to her doctor, though she didn't always make it to  those.  In March, she left the house with us and buoyed her own spirits by observing the cloud formations and sharing with us all she saw.  I sang her just the beginning of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now."

Bows and flows of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feathered canyons everywhere
I've looked at clouds that way.

I didn't continue with the less cheery lyrics.

Mom was really brave that day, and the picture of her in today's newspaper shows her afterwards, smiling outside against a backdrop of fluffy white clouds--even though there's just the slightest suggestion of the clouds.

There are things we left out of the obituary.  I wanted to make a special mention of David and her asking about him and expressing the hope of seeing him.  He had asked about her recently, too.  We were going to take him to see her at Aegis on her birthday, October 25. Instead, we'll have a special family gathering--hopefully with our nieces and grandnieces as well as with Suzy and Kathy before the nieces return to the East Coast.

I also hope that by mentioning that Mom was adopted, I didn't make it sound as if the Robisons weren't the "real" parents.  I always thought they were, and I loved them both.  Mom adored her father.

I'd wanted to give some examples of  her travels:  She and Kathy traveled together to Canada, Europe, Scandinavia, and Russia, bicycled across the Netherlands, visited her daughter Tina in Algeria, took cruises to Mexico and Hawaii, and went camping across the northern part of the United States to find the perfect apple pie.  A francophone, her favorite trip abroad was probably one to see the Impressionist exhibit in Paris.  She also made trips to see her daughters Dana and M’Lissa and their children and to visit her daughter Susan and son-in-law in Texas.  

Of course, I'll always remember her comments when she asked me (a year after I first mentioned him), "So who's this man you love?"  We had the following exchange.

"I wish I knew.   He's very secretive.   I think he's either a drug dealer or a CIA agent. "

"Well," she said, "I hope he's a drug dealer because I don't think CIA agents are very nice people."

"Some people don't think drug dealers are all that nice," I pointed out.

"It depends on the drug," she said.

Then, after she met our Mystery Man, we had another exchange.

"He's so nice!" she said.

"Yes, he is," I agreed.  "And I love him.  But, Mom, he lies."

"Well, that could work," she said, and when I laughed, she explained, "I mean, as long as you know he's lying."

Yes, she made a good point.  We can appreciate and even love people who aren't honest with us as long as we don't fool ourselves into believing that we can trust them or base our happiness on them.  As Mom knew, our happiness comes from within or not at all.