Mom, God, and Messages from Friends

          This morning, beginning an assignment for my course in Comparative Religions, I've been listening to Moses (well, Charleton Heston) read about Saint Augustine, something worthy of its own blog (!!!).  (Must remember to look up "I am who is" as well as the society that Augustin of Hippo (Algeria/Tunisia) belonged to before returning to and affecting Catholocism.)  But since I copied and pasted a hymn yesterday, I'd like to talk about Mom in the context of religion and nostalgia and religion as nostalgia--and religion and nostalgia as performance of  long-term memory.  Yesterday I got a call from Sandy Ellington Kirkeley Lipkovich, a close friend from seventh grade through high school, and I was touched that in spite of being a really religious person, she left me a message that could console a person without religious beliefs.  I'm not always that nice about my beliefs in vegetarianism.  (Just this past Friday, I expressed horror to Beth and Shehla that the lamb they were eating was halal or whatever the word is for kosher--killed in a way that causes a lot of suffering to the animal.)  I'm obnoxious.  Sandy isn't.  She also sent me a sweet e-mail, also drawing on our commonalities and not Baptist beliefs and rhetoric.  Still, I want to consider the possibility that Mom was like me:  Not an atheist because that would be presumptuous.  How can anyone know what isn't?  But an agnostic with both a spiritual leaning and a love of ritual through years of our lives--in spite of not going to church or any other place of worship in recent years.  Mom was definitely talking about God and prayer at Aegis.  Of course, she was talking about devils, too.  Even during the transition place between her home of 45 years and Aegis, one of the dark days had her telling us who among the hospital staff were demons.  But even before she started showing signs of dementia, she liked to sing both patriotic songs ("This Is My Country," "God Bless America"), in spite of being critical of our foreign policy, and hymns--probably ones going back to her years at her parents' Methodist church as well as the Anglican hymnal from the Episcopal Churches we went to in Idaho and in South Carolina.  "Onward Christian Soldiers" was one.  I'm not sure what the others were.  But one of the hymns I remember best is "Oh, God, Our Help in Ages Past."  Years after we'd moved from South Carolina and Mom was no longer going to church, I asked her what it was that she was thinking while sitting in church.  While other people just recited the liturgy, Mom cried.  What was she crying about?
"I was thinking that if it weren't for God, I'd be a divorced woman."  By the time she told me this, she was a divorced woman, so I'm not sure just how she would feel about the words "Oh, God, our help in ages past."  Did God's help keep her married too long?  But I've chosen the hymn for the last words:  "And our eternal home."  Mom wanted to go home for her 90th birthday.  She and I were the only ones who thought that was a good idea.  When I found out that Jonathan agreed with Kathy and Suzy, not with me, I started trying to familiarize Mom with the dining room at Aegis.  I took a picture for her invitation, and I kept showing it to her so she would feel confident enough to go around the corner to celebrate her 90th there.  (At Aegis, she no longer spoke of going to Berkeley Square in London for her 90th.)  Maybe Mom never gave up her dream of going home.  Maybe that's where she is now.  Not here, this untouched place of beauty with a table setting never touched.

    
  But a home she'll never have to leave.  What do you think, Saint Augustin of Hippo?

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.