Erin’s Story
I had lived more life without my mother than with her by the time I turned eighteen, and that was ten years ago. Sometimes I feel as though grief is an echo chamber – when the good days come, the memories and feelings reflected back are good, too, and that goodness seems to linger a while, until the bad days come; then the bad days echo back again and again and again until that’s all I hear.
Much of my life has been an echo chamber of my mom’s death. “I’m doing this because she couldn’t,” or “Hi, I’m Erin, my mom is dead.” For a while it felt like I was living my life as “the girl with a dead mom,” instead of as me and all I can be. I’ve lived nineteen years since my mom’s death, and her death, her sickness, her dying, have been reverberating in the background of my story since then.
On this nineteenth marker of the day my mom’s soul left her body, I want to fill the proverbial echo chamber with quintessence of who she was, and still is to me, because she is so much more than her death. If there is one thing to know about my mom, Beth Ann, it’s that she beamed.
For starters, knowing my mom, Beth Ann, was knowing you were in for a treat. She had the ability to make you laugh regardless of the circumstances, even if it was just laughing because she was laughing. She had this magnetic laugh that pulled you in, getting lost in the sparkle of her eyes and the brilliance of her smile. Once when she was in the hospital, she asked my sister and I if we had brought our playboys. Me, at age eight, and my sister, age five, had no idea what she was asking. What’s a playboy? Realization of what she said struck her – she meant GameBoy! Did we have our Gameboys! She erupted in laughter, smile brimming ear-to-ear. At the time I didn’t know what was so funny, but I couldn’t help but laugh with her.
She was crafty, too. When we finally emptied her craft armoire, years after she left us, we filled at least five eighteen-gallon Rubbermaid containers with crafting materials, from stamps and stationery to crochet yarn and needles, to everything in between. For a while she had a kiln in the backyard where she made her own pottery. Clocks, busts, vases. Made, fired, and painted all by her hands. When we moved from the house with the kiln, she would take my sister and I to the pottery painting studios – the ones where you pick out what you want to paint (bowls, mugs, figurines), you paint it how you want, then they put it in the kiln and you pick it up a week or so later. She loved taking my sister and I to paint. She taught me what dry brushing is, and other techniques. Despite her creative prowess, she never interfered with our designs. Never judged our works of art. She loved every tiny drawing on scrap paper we made for her. I wish she had taught me to crochet. She left behind a lot of unfinished blankets.
I remember baking cookies. Chocolate chip. Sometimes from scratch, and sometimes from the yellow tube of slice and bake. Regardless of the how, there was the guarantee of snacking on cookie dough. “Just a little bit though in case of salmonella!” she’d say. We also made thumbprint shortbread cookies. Oh man, I didn’t know it was possible to hate a cookie, but I did, and do. To this day I fervently dislike shortbread cookies. We made them because she made them with her mother, and my mom enjoyed them. I liked when she put Hershey’s kisses in the middle instead of jam because then I could pick the chocolate off and leave the shortbread for her. Now I make thumbprint cookies around the winter holidays, despite disliking them, because I did with my mom, as she did with her mother.
My mom was mesmerizing. Ethereal almost. Her brown eyes held the universe. Her brown curls enveloped her face. Her delicate hands made everything she did – needleworking, crocheting, scrapbooking, furniture painting – look effortless. Love poured from her. I loved watching her do everything. I loved how she’d lay on the floor with me to color. I loved how she’d bring crafts home for my sister and I to complete with her. It always felt like she wanted to spend time with us, to be around us, to laugh with us, watch movies with us. I don’t ever remember feeling like I took up too much space.
I want to live my life honoring hers – who she was and still is to me. I want to laugh when laughing is hard, when joy is hiding deep within the echo chamber behind the hurt and reverberating grief. I want to pour so much love into those around me that they can do the same to others. I want to fill my family’s story with so much laughter that the emotionally heavy days don’t seem weigh them down or hold them back from being all they can be. I want to beam like my mom did.
