What happened next was horrible, as far as I was concerned. No one else, including Dad, seemed to think anything of it, but I was mortified. After Jim finished speaking, Dad stepped up to the microphone. He began to talk about Mom. He talked about how they met when they were in college, and how they were drawn together by their beliefs—in peace and nonviolence and gun control, in issues of equality and tolerance—and how the only big fight they ever had was over the fact that Mom couldn’t help but feel intolerant of intolerant people. Dad had told her that made her a hypocrite, and Mom replied that she just couldn’t feel anything but disgust for people who hated other people because of the color of their skin or their religion or the sex of the person they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with. And that was that.
I was hearing things about Mom that I hadn’t heard before. But they didn’t surprise me.
Anyway, the horrible thing was when Dad began to talk about the love that he and Mom had for each other. His voice broke and at first he simply couldn’t continue speaking. But then it got worse. He began sobbing. Right up there at the microphone in front of all those people, with all those other people listening outside. I kept waiting for Jim or someone to escort him back to his seat, but no one did, and Dad seemed to want to go on. Except that he couldn’t. He just stood there and cried and cried.
If I could have fit under the pew, I would have crawled there and waited until the service was over. As it was, I slid down until my head was about level with Dawn’s shoulders. Aunt Morgan actually tried to haul me up, but I edged away from her.
After what seemed like hours, Dad got control of himself and continued. He talked about Mom’s illness and how brave she was. He even talked about how she planned the service. All around me I could hear people sniffling and letting out little sobs.
When Dad finished, Jim hugged him hard before Dad returned to his seat. Then Dad sat down, put his head in his hands, and began to sob again. I looked helplessly at Dawn. She squeezed my hand, which was her way of letting me know that I should take Dad’s hand again. So I did. We sat that way until the service was over.
A lot more people got up and spoke after that. Maybe ten or even fifteen. No one spoke for as long as Dad did, but everyone said what a wonderful person Mom was, how she’ll be missed, how she was a star whose light had been snuffed out, that sort of thing. The longer it went on, the less I felt like crying. I don’t know why. I felt like I was turning into a rock, all hard and cold.
I couldn’t wait for the service to be over.
8:42 P.M.
I want to finish writing about the funeral. I just want it out of the way. I’ve been writing and writing and writing, and I really should start to catch up with my homework, but I have to finish this. I’m going to write it out and then never look at it again. I may even need to start a new journal after this entry.
When the service finally ended, everyone filed out of the chapel. We left in the same order we’d entered. Dad and Aunt Morgan and Dawn and I first, then our relatives, then everyone else. Since Mom had been cremated and there isn’t going to be a burial, people gathered in the vestibule and outside. They just wanted to talk. Of course, everyone wanted to talk to Dad and me. And of course I didn’t want to talk to any of them. Except Dawn and Ducky and Maggie and Amalia. Thank god they formed their cocoon again. I let them wrap me up and I was able to ignore everyone else. (Pretty much.)
I have never seen so much crying and hugging.
I don’t really want to write about it, though.
Finally, finally, finally we were able to leave. Dad and Aunt Morgan and I drove back to our house. I couldn’t believe it. The house was full of people. People who had been at the funeral. What had they been doing there when we weren’t even at home yet?
It turned out that they were setting out all the food that had been delivered in the last few days, along with stacks of paper plates and cups and napkins (what a waste of trees). A lot of the people who had been at the service stopped by the house to eat and talk and offer their shoulders to Dad and me.
All I felt was ungrateful and frustrated.
I wanted them out of our house.
Hadn’t they just spent the morning crying and talking about Mom? Dad and Aunt Morgan seemed glad that the people came by. I was only glad about my cocoon. I don’t know if it was correct funeral behavior — and I really don’t care — but the five of us huddled upstairs in my room and ignored the activity downstairs. I didn’t want any kind words or shoulders unless they belonged to my friends.
Somehow the day passed by. All during the afternoon my friends sat with me. At 6:00 Amalia said she had to leave. Maggie followed soon after. Ducky and Dawn stayed until almost 10:00.
“You know what?” I said then. “I’m going to go to school tomorrow.”
“Great,” they replied.
And that is the end of this journal. I will never look at it again.
Part Two
Wednesday 3/24
5:58 p.m.
Brand-new journal. At least in my mind.
After I wrote the last word on the page before this one, I almost put this journal, unfinished, in the box with the others. But finally I decided that was too wasteful. So I’m starting Part Two here. I’ll fold down the corner of this page so I know where the second part begins, and I’ll never look at the first part again.
Went to school today. Second day back. Still can’t concentrate. I wonder how long that will go on. When am I going to feel better? I known Mom’s only been gone for a few days, but I’ve been grieving for months already. Grieving and goofing off. I’m not sure I’ll be able to make up for everything I’ve missed this school year. I wonder if I’ll have to repeat eighth grade. I’ve made a big mess of it.
Still, I see one good sign: I did a huge chunk of homework after school today, the first work I’ve done in a long time. And I saved writing in the journal for AFTER I’d done the work.
Now I’m going to do something I had thought I might not do for years. I’m going to start reading Mom’s diaries. I want to feel close to her.
9:26 P.M.
Wow.
I’ve been reading the diaries since dinner ended. This is like reading someone’s autobiography. I’m living someone else’s life. I’m living Mom’s life again for her.
Mom’s very first diary was given to her on her fourteenth birthday. All of her diaries except the first one look like my journals—messy, well-worn spiral-bound notebooks. But the first one, which was a gift from her parents, is an actual diary—a small book with an amber-colored cover and a brass clasp that actually locks with a key. Mom helpfully taped the key to the back of the diary.
When I opened the diary I realized my hands were shaking a little. I was about to enter Mom’s life nearly thirty years ago.
The first entry was written on the night of Mom’s birthday. It starts off with:
Great birthday! Everyone was here: Janet, Liz, Molly, Dale, Nancy, Corrie, Beth. We had a swim party. Well, that was no surprise because I arranged it. But Mom and Dad didn’t tell me that Aunt Mel and Uncle Rick were going to come with Caroline and Peter. Fun to see them! Peter is so cute! He’s almost four now. And Caroline is so good with him. Now that she can read, she reads stories to him all the time.
Got great presents! This one is the best! I’ll write in it every day!
I frowned a little as I read this entry. It seemed just the teeniest bit immature to me. Then I thought about how small the diary was, and looked at the big lines on the pages. I realized that Mom had to summarize each day in twelve lines.
I kept on reading. Finally I flipped ahead and found this entry:
October 30
Getting ready for Corrie’s Halloween party! She’s going to invite boys! Am I ready for boys? I guess I’ll find out. I’m glad this is a costume party because I’d be a lot more worried about what to wear if I couldn’t go dressed as a hippie. (Very easy costume!)
(The rest of this page is a drawing
of the parts of the hippie costume.)
I turned the page.
October 31
VERY LATE AT NIGHT.
The party didn’t end until almost midnight. I have reached a decision: Boys are disgusting. They should not be allowed out of their cages until their voices have changed and they can dress and speak properly.
Unless they are Kevin Darcy.
Sigh.
Note: Halloween doesn’t mean candy anymore. My trick-or-treating days are over.
I read through the autumn entries and on into December to see what Mom’s Christmas had been like. And I came to a page that was nearly blank. It read:
December 13
High school is horrible.
It was followed by several blank pages. The next entry was on December 17th and it was all about Christmas. There was no mention of why high school was horrible or what had happened. I decided it was just one of those school problems. I skimmed through the rest of that diary and noticed that Mom tended to skip days in it anyway. Finally I laid down the leather diary and picked up the first of the spiral-bound notebooks. It was SO different from my journals. And SO different from the formal diary Mom had gotten for her birthday. She had doodled in the journal and pasted down letters, photographs, newspaper articles, ticket stubs, and so forth. It was really a scrapbook. I paged through it, fascinated.
One of the earlier dates in the journal was October 6th of Mom’s sophomore year in high school. The entry for that date was sprawled across two pages and included a slightly blurry photo of three girls in cheerleader uniforms with pom-poms and a megaphone. I stared at the photo until I realized that the girl on the right was Mom.
Mom?
Mom was a cheerleader?
I couldn’t believe it. It did not fit in with my image of her. The hippie Halloween costume had been much more appropriate. Later in the same journal I found a photo that looked like it had actually been cut out of a yearbook. (I wondered why, and where the yearbook with the hole in it was today.) The picture was in black-and-white and was a group shot of about 25 kids sitting on bleachers under a banner that read YOUNG REPUBLICANS.
Now I was totally stumped. Cheerleaders. Republicans. This was not Mom. She must have had a twin sister who had been felled by some weird tragedy, and this was her way of telling me about her. Or maybe the girl in this photo was Aunt Morgan. Mom and Aunt Morgan looked pretty similar. But no. I read the caption. The girl who looked like Mom was clearly identified, and she was Mom, all right, not Aunt Morgan.
I wondered again where the yearbook was. I would love to get my hands on it.
And now, I can’t believe it, but I’ll have to stop reading and writing and go to bed. It is SO late. And I’m determined to go to school tomorrow and do my homework and everything.
So…more tomorrow.
Thursday 3/25
7:20 P.M.
Back to Mom’s journals. They are all I can think about.
By the beginning of the second journal I found myself close to the end of Mom’s junior year in high school. I read the first entry.
May 16
How am I going to tell Mom and Dad? They are never going to understand. I feel like I have to CONFESS something to them, and that makes me even madder, because I know I didn’t do anything wrong. But if I don’t tell them they’re going to find out on their own. Soon too.
I better tell them.
Later
Told them. They hit the ceiling. Both of them. With their stupid conservative little hairdos. Banged them right on the ceiling.
I hate my parents.
They will never understand me, and I try to understand them, but I really don’t.
Dad just kept yelling over and over, “You’re an embarrassment to this family.”
He should be glad I didn’t get arrested.
And Mom kept saying, “People are going to read about this in the newspaper?”
Then Dad said, “What about the Young Republicans?”
And I had to tell him I had dropped out over a year ago. When I was suffering from terminal hypocrisy.
The entry ended there. I turned the page. On it was pasted a brief newspaper article. It wasn’t dated or identified, but I was pretty sure it was from Mom’s local paper. It was about a peace march that Mom had staged on her high school campus. It was very brief (the article, I mean), but Mom’s name was the only one mentioned, and it was clear that the march had been her idea and had been carried out by her.
I was puzzled. I still didn’t understand what was going on between Mom and her parents. I almost carried the journal downstairs to ask Dad about it but decided I was enjoying this private process of discovering my mother.
I read through the entire summer that followed, the summer between Mom’s junior and senior years in high school. Things at her home were not simple and happy. But then, I knew that the early seventies were not simple and happy. They were a time for questioning and redefining and protesting and standing up for what you believed in. It sounded as though that was just what Mom had done back then. It also sounded as though her parents wished she hadn’t. It ALSO sounded as though Morgan wished Mom hadn’t. Or was Morgan jealous of Mom? Did Morgan wish she too could stand up for her beliefs—but she was afraid to stand up to her parents first?
This was fascinating.
I read on until I got to Mom’s high school graduation. I wasn’t the least bit curious about her hopes and dreams, her fears and worries on that day. What I wanted to know was what was going on in her family. I knew Mom had chosen to attend UCLA, and now I had a funny feeling that was entirely her choice, something her parents had not wanted.
Boy, was I right. Mom’s parents had wanted her to go to Townsend, some teeny, tiny conservative college in northern California, the college Mom’s mother had gone to. It sounded more like a finishing school to me. Mom would have none of it, of course. She wanted to go to a big university where she could study whatever she wanted and meet all different kinds of people.
In the end, Mom had won. But she had paid a big price for it. Her parents hadn’t attended her high school graduation. Nor had they helped pay her tuition at UCLA. Meanwhile, Aunt Morgan was busy being the good girl — for awhile. She had gone to Townsend but only for two years. Then she took herself as far from California as she could get without leaving the United States, and got her degree at new York University. For years she wasn’t in touch with the rest of her family — with her parents because she found them as smothering as Mom did, and with Mom because, well, I wasn’t sure why. Just because they lived so far apart? Or because she resented that Mom had been able to stand up to their parents long before her big sister was able to?
So Mom had put herself through UCLA (which wasn’t easy, but she was determined), and that was where she had met Dad. Eventually they had gotten married—and her parents had not attended the wedding. But now Aunt Morgan came back into the picture. Mom wrote her and asked if she’d like to come to California for the wedding.
“I know it’s a long trip,” she had written in her journal, recording her conversation with her sister, “but it would mean a lot if you could be with me on that day. If you don’t want to come, though, I’ll understand.”
Guess what Aunt Morgan had replied. She had sent Mom a telegram (who ever thought to send a telegram?) saying, “If I’m going to come all that way, you’d better let me be your maid of honor.”
And that was exactly what Mom had done.
This was how Mom and Aunt Morgan had become part of each other’s lives again. They had stayed in touch ever since, although they were two very different people.
Aunt Morgan’s next trip to California had been to see me when I was born. But before that happened, something else took place. Something huge. Something I’d heard little bits and pieces of here and there. However, until now I had never had this setting in which to place the incident.
Oh god. It’s after 10:00. Time for bed.
To be continued.
Friday 3/26
Study Hall
I’ve got my own journal and one of Mom’s here with me. I should be concentrating on catching up, especially in science and math, but the teachers don’t really care what we do in study hall as long as we look like we’re working.
So back to Mom.
A couple of years after Mom and Dad got married, and a few years before I was born, Mom’s parents left on a cross-country summer trip. Mom heard about this through Aunt Morgan, who was occasionally in touch with their parents. The trip was to last for over a month. But on the third day their car was struck by a van and everyone in the accident was killed.
Mom was devastated.
At first I couldn’t figure out why. She wasn’t close to her parents, hadn’t spoken to them in years. It had sounded as though she hated them. But I continued to read, and soon I saw that even though Mom had grown apart from her parents, hadn’t understood them, and knew they hadn’t understood her, she still wanted their approval. She still wanted them in her life. She had longed for them to attend her high school graduation, her college graduation, and then her wedding. After all that time she had hoped they might reconcile. “Perhaps,” Mom wrote, “it will happen if I have a baby one day. Their grandchild.”
And then they died.
Now I understand why Mom had given me her journals. At a certain point she must have realized that she wasn’t going to beat the cancer, that she was going to die, and that like her, I am going to be unable to share some of the most important occasions of my life with my mother, even though for a very different reason.
I have just set down the journal I was in the middle of. I’ve decided to go back and start over again with the first journal, to read more slowly, to savor every one of Mom’s words. I’m no longer eager to rush through her life.