Being Back Here

I couldn't get the song out of my head once it started. It was 2:30 in the morning, last night, the night before my Mom's last memorial, which was earlier today. (That's what strung out feels like, kids. We were up for hours last night...)

The song was Still Fighting It, a bittersweet reflection on growing up and having children of your own, by Ben Folds.

"It was pain
Sunny days and rain
I knew you'd feel the same things...
Everybody knows
It hurts to grow up
And everybody does
It's so weird to be back here
Let me tell you what
The years go on and
We're still fighting it,
we're still fighting it..."

Because at that moment, while I watched the Mama (my wife) hold and try to console an inconsolable stuffy Bryce (my youngest daughter), and Beatrice (my oldest) and me laid awake unable to sleep, I thought of my Mom and all the times she consoled and took care of me and my sister growing up, much of it without help with we were young children.

It's so weird to be back here...

Whether it be a cold, or the flu, or chicken pox, or allergies, or asthma -- Mom always took care of us and did everything she could to make it all better. Always.

Even the time I nearly ate an entire bottle of orange flavored baby aspirin and our family doctor at the time told Mom to make me throw it all up. Now that was a joyous memory. If you've tried to convince a young child to throw up for their own good, you know what I'm talking about. So no, I never did throw up that time, but fortunately it all worked out and all that yummy aspirin didn't affect me adversely.

I watched the Mama hold Bryce and remembered Mom and those are/were the memories that live now and forever in the tidal pools of my heart, a universe within universe within universe without forgetting once the "sunny days and rain" shared amid torrent and still water like glass.

Two weeks ago we said goodbye in Oregon, leaving Mom and Dad forever in the bay where they loved and lived in the end, where their souls reach to heaven...and today we said goodbye with local family and friends in Visalia where we grew up and where it all started for us, another tide rushing in to scatter memories from pool to vibrant pool...

Thank you for always being there, Mom. We were there for you as much as we could be in the end.

We love you.

Heaven's Addendum

Their heaven wraps around the finger lake at sunrise
like a gold band forged now and forever.
I walk and cry and laugh and run along the paths,
Draw beauty of sky, trees, debris and water
deep into my lungs' tendrils that feed my heart.
I stop to pay homage to Kinkade and Sparks,
tempered (of course) by Hopper, Folds and Peart,
Bly and Kerouac, and Stein and Thompson Walker of late.
I thank God for my parents, for their love and suffering
when their bodies finally slowed to sudden stops
only four months and a day apart after a millennium.
Heartache leaves permanent scars of pleasure and pain,
but I thank God for my parents and their heaven,
for it will be there for me every morning I rise
promising more than until death do us part,
an eternal promise for my wife and us all.