Last Respects

Is it really a good idea? I’ve asked myself this question more than once. I am getting in the car. I am leaving the Guppins and Sir Dick to their own devices for thirty-six hours.

I am going to visit my mother on her Frozen Lake. For the last time. She has sold her home and is moving to Loyalist Territory. She will be leaving behind my father’s ashes. They are spread behind the garage amidst the dead dogs of our family. A friend suggested to me I was going to pay my last respects. Which begs the question of my father. Of respect, perhaps. And what does it mean?

It is warm out.

This is the first time I’ve gone to see my mother or visited with my mother on my own since the Guppins was born. We have not been alone, completely alone, for three years. My eyes widen as I looked down the expanse of highway before me. The jaws of the 401 are open…waiting for me to enter the Den of Mother.

Surprisingly I am feeling really excited and happy. Because I am going on a journey by myself! It’s been a bit of a haul. I’ve been looking after the Guppins, solo, for about seven months. Sir Dick has been being in another city doing a show. He has broken his wrist (again) and that has allowed me to leave. He is understanding.

Driving away, the first question that enters my mind is, “What do you want to do with your life?”

Is this what three means? Do we get our lives back? I have been struggling with writing the letter I’ve committed to write to my daughter, detailing a yearly portrait of myself. There just hasn’t been very much going on. But now, driving away, I feel my old skin settling in. Can life be the same? 

No. I knew it last night when I lifted her from her bed and cradled her sleeping body in my arms and carried her, willingly, into my bed with such hope and longing. I will never be the same. As happy as I am to be driving away on my own, I am already terrified and anticipating that moment when she doesn’t want me to hold her anymore. And so I will repeat to her over and over: I will always hold you, I am always here to hold you, even when you don’t want me to hold you, even when you want me to be the furthest thing from you in life, I will still be holding you.

I arrive at the frozen lake. The first thing my mom says when I get out of the car is, “Did you get your hair streaked...white?”

The last thing she said before retiring to bed was, “Ella, would you like some more wine?” (My name’s not Ella.)

But in between one and the other there were, to use her words, “piles of alcohol,” and tenderness. She thanked me for coming and told me it meant a lot.

Of course there was the obligatory moment of her tears and claims that things have been so bad between us; but it’s really all right now, isn’t it? Isn’t it?

She gives me art. Some gloomy oils that I am deeply fond of: Ontario barns and a sugar bush, purchased early in the marriage. She gives me her mother’s Singer sewing machine and teaches me how to use it. We laugh a lot. We are…who we are together in the absence of family drama.

I do not say good-bye to the lake.

I do, however, go behind the garage to the little knell where the dead family dogs’ and father’s ashes lie. I remember the ceremony we held in 2008. No funeral. No memorial. Mother stands with a bag and throws down ashes. My brothers quiet. Me running to the house to grab whatever whiskey is around to drop on the grave… “Is it okay if I make this gesture?” “Sure...just do it quickly.” No song, no poetry, no ritual per se. Just a gaggle of three descendants of Presbyterian Ontario immigrants vague on spiritual intelligence. I marvel. I try to not rock the boat. My voice caught in a deadly grip in my throat. Do not speak. Do not cry. Do not look. Get in the car. Drive away…

Drive away.

Good-bye Father, for the last time. Good-bye Mother, to your new life. But I now have something to go to. I am full with joy to see my beautiful daughter again. I say: I will hold you, I will always hold you. Even when you want me to be the furthest thing away…I am speaking to myself this time. And I write her a letter.

-Drama Mama