Mom

My mother passed away 5 days ago.

It's extraordinarily painful. I knew it would be. It is impossible to measure the impact of a wonderful mother, or to quantify her loss.

She tried, for years, to get us used to the idea that she wouldn't be around forever. We knew, of course, but we didn't like it. "Grandma, you have to live to be at least 100," my kids would say. "I have to do no such thing," she would reply.

She was ready to go. As the baby in her family, she'd lost her siblings years ago. My dad's been gone for 25 years, and all of his siblings are gone, as well. Her children are all doing well, as are her grandkids. She was in generally good health, although walking was more and more painful. She lived in her own home and had no desire to ever live anywhere else. She was 83 (five years older then my dad lived to be.)

"You have to live forever," my kids would say, and she'd harumph - "Hmph!" she'd snort. She was their last remaining grandparent, so they hung on a bit tightly, and she just rolled her eyes. A very practical and unsentimental woman, my mother.

That's a compliment, by the way. I aspire, in almost every way, to be more like my mother. Sometimes when I say things like "unsentimental," people assume it's a criticism, or they translate that to mean "cold and unloving." Nothing could be further from the truth.

I feel thousands of words waiting to be written about my mother. I will need to write them in the days, weeks and years to come.

We know that death is the way of the world. None of us is getting out of here alive. We know that death is necessary and beneficial. I know, down to my toes, that Mom left this world exactly as she wished to. She had a perfectly ordinary day, then went to bed. She passed away in her sleep; had she been able to script her passing, that's what it would have looked like. I also know that she is happy, really happy, where she is. In the words of C. S. Lewis, "There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind." I am truly happy for my mom; I am sad for those of us temporarily separated from her. "What an adventure!" said my adored big sister, as we discussed how things are for Mom now.

It's nice now to talk to people who knew her, to have experiences like the one I had over the phone with my cousin Karen. I told her something Mom had said, and from hundreds of miles away her laugh came over the line loud and clear. "That sounds just like Aunt Bev!" she said.

Mom belonged to some people unrelated by blood as much as she belonged to me. There's no real word for the relationship, but it doesn't need defined. "Family" comes close. One woman, as much my sister as anyone my mother gave birth to, told me about a conversation she had with her own dad. Her childhood had been marked by chaos, divorce and worse. When she was an adult, he told her, "I really feel that I failed you. I always knew there was a safe haven for me, a place that would always be home, where I'd always be welcome. I didn't give you that."

"It didn't matter that he didn't give me that. I got it anyway," she said. It wasn't the house, although the house holds many memories. It was Mom.

Oh, the minefields of childhood, adolescence and adulthood that my mother guided all of us through! Some were ordinary; some would curl your hair. None of them caused her to so much as blink.

If we loved someone, they were welcomed with open arms. She chaperoned the high school drama guild on our trips to Disneyland. These weren't school sanctioned trips - we took them on our own, 15 or 20 kids and Mom. When my dad was out of town on a hunting trip, she let the drama guild camp in her acre plus back yard; she let Tony use the occasion to demonstrate his fire juggling. She let us virtually empty her rooms in order to dress our sets. She loaned us her only fur coat, because the script called for it.

We could say or do the oddest things, and know she had our backs. I was about 16 and had my best friend sleeping over when there was a knock on the door at 11 o'clock at night. To my mom, who'd grown up on a farm, that was the middle of the night. She'd been in bed since 9. Still, when I answered the door and discovered two other friends there, then crept to her room to whisper, "Tim and Joe are here. They want to know if they can have fudgecicles," the answer was, "OK." When my friend Scott wanted to spend the night sleeping in my van in our driveway, the answer was "yes."

Another best friend had a key to my car before I did. I had no license, and he did, so he used his own key to drive me places in my car.

"Can I build a Swiss Family Robinson tree house in your tree and just live in it?" one of my friends asked her once. "Sure. You just let me know when," she said. Every few years, he'd bring it up - "That tree still there?" and she'd say, "Still waiting for you." "Maybe I'll bring my son over, and we'll build that treehouse," he'd say. "I'll be here," she'd tell him. We've called it Tony's Tree for years. It will always be Tony's Tree.

This does not mean that she had no boundaries; the boundaries were carved in stone. It meant that she knew the difference between the big stuff and the small stuff, and she truly did not sweat the small stuff.

My oldest sister is 57, and, with Mom's passing she said, "Now I'll have to be a grownup." She's a remarkable woman, brilliant, with a great life, great kids, and adorable grandkids, but she still counted on her mom. I feel the same way. The last time I saw my mom, the day before she died, she was bailing me out of another jam. I'd locked myself out of my house, in my pajamas, so I went to borrow her keys. She laughed at me - as well she should - and loaned me the keys. Without my safety net, without my mommy to rescue me, I'll have to step up my game. The world looks different now.

But, I swear, I can practically hear her. I will do or say something, and know what Mom would say if she were here. She may have moved on, but she hasn't really left us.

Still, I will miss her until we are together again.

"I'll miss you when you're gone, Grandma," my kids would tell her, and she'd say, "Why? I've lived a good life."

Indeed she did.