A couple posts ago, I talked about the silly thoughts that come to mind during the heat of battle of a recital. During this past week following my mother's death, I have been reminded that one's mind also comes up with all kinds of things during a time of family crisis. Dates and odd facts stick in your head:
March has become an interesting month: My birthday is March 4. Mother's birthday was March 21. Mother died on March 20, only an hour short of her 72nd birthday. Dad died on a March 28.
Mother shared a birthday with Bach. I share my birthday with Vivaldi. And Dad died 60 years to the day after Rachmaninoff did.
We buried Dad and Mother in similar colors. Didn't plan that, but as I was staring forward during Mother's funeral, I remembered that. We also buried them in the same style caskets -- natural cherry by the Batesville Casket Company.
Does this sort of thing happen to you, too, or am I just a freak?
Mother always hand-wrote her calendar. She transferred appointments, birthdays, anniversaries, etc., BY HAND each year into a new Avon calendar. Other facts such as "25 years since Jingle [family dog] died," "17 years since surgery," "12 years since Dwayne was ordained." etc., were handwritten year after year. And every calendar was saved in an ever-growing stack in an ever-burgeoning cabinet. In part, this is all a "Southern thing." It is also a bit of an obsessive-compulsive thing. But Mother's meticulous if hand-written record-keeping is serving us well for estate managing purposes. We don't lack any information; even if there are many piles of papers, the piles are categorized. And when the time comes, cleaning out her house is sure to be a greatly detailed trip down memory lane.
I have picked up some of Mother's attention to details not so much by sending birthday cards as by calling family members on anniversaries of their loved ones' deaths. [My previous attraction to the funeral directing profession is always just below the surface.] There is something to be said for living a fact to learn it. Mother lived a lot of memories and kept up with them, and I am following suit to some extent. If only I could have learned facts this well in Organ Lit and Music History classes.