Thunder and Lightning Illuminate Old Feelings

When you walk through a storm hold your head up high
and don't be afraid of the dark.
At the end of the storm is a golden sky
and the sweet gentle song of the lark.
Rogers and Hammerstein

Last night I woke to intermittent bright light in my darken bedroom. Sleepy, I tried to make sense of the flashing light and decided "there's got to be lots of cars going down the road." Ah, but then the thunder came and I knew it was the beginning of a thunderstorm.

Even as a little girl I've always loved electric storms, the tingling air, the tension after the first zig-zag light in the sky, the cymbal crash of thunder. Exciting to me and never frightening. My sisters and I used to run outside to be part of the show, so fabulous and often occurring in the Chicago area.

The last thunderstorm I witnessed was in Milwaukee. I was with my Mom in her  apartment on the eighth floor of the residential care facility where she lived. My Mom relished her view overlooking Milwaukee and she called the apartment her "Aerie". It had a spectacular view in each season, above the tree line, over the birds, where she would watch the clouds, the rain, the snow and the storms. When I visited it was mid August which as most people know is usually hot and humid. That year was no exception. 100 degrees most of the week I was there. Relentless.

On my last day, clouds started to gather. Mom and I watched an old western on the Turner Movie Channel and decided to turn in early. We'd had such a good day, I made her a fresh tomato, avocado, cheese, lettuce and mayo sandwich which she ate one quarter of with delight. We'd played Scrabble and talked, talked, talked. Mostly it was me asking her every question I could think of about her life and our family. And she willingly obliged though some of the stories were painful.  Ever the stoic, Mom told the stories without so much as a waver in her voice. [She is the last survivor of her family, her brothers all died before her, only Aunt Vali, Ed's wife is left.]

I tucked myself in for the night on the couch, grateful that we'd had all the time to talk and reviewing all the stories about her brothers and my Dad in WWII, along with the tales of her growing up in Wisconsin in the twenties and what it was like for her to be widowed at sixty five.

Crash, flash, boom! The noise was incredible and felt like it was inside the aerie. I awoke and knew it was the very close. I sat up and was treated to a fantastic spectacle of gigantic bolts of lightening, illuminating everything in its path and then the clap of thunder almost immediately following. Mom was awake too, it was only three o'clock and the show went on for ten or fifteen more minutes until the rain finally came. We agreed it was glorious.

The next day I was to leave and I packed my things and, as usual, was ready well before the proper time for departure. I did something out of character. I knew that my mother traditionally hated long or protracted good byes but I decided that I needed to do it, so I knelt before her. I took her hands and immediately started sobbing and shaking, through racking tears I said, "I have loved you so much and I am going to miss you, you have been a wonderful Mother to me." I had only seen my stoic mother cry on three occasions, when my Dad died, when my brother-in-law Dirk was diagnosed with cancer and then when he died. She was sobbing and crying with me right then.

I finally gathered my suitcase and wheeled myself down the hall, but I couldn't stop crying. Somehow I got to the airport, it was a tearfully journey. Most fortuitously my sister Sally was overlapping me. When I saw her I fell into her embrace and sobbed again. Basically I didn't stop until I got to the Northwest.

How I wish that I had jumped into her small bed with her the night of the storm but at the time I was still playing by her unspoken rules. Still, I like the thought of it. I'm glad that I knelt before her and put my head in her lap and held her bony-bird-like hands for the last time and she and I grieved together. She died exactly one month later.

I have loved you with an everlasting love, I have called you and you are mine.

Song sung at Mom's memorial, requested by her

As I wrote this I really relived those precious last moments and I became racked with sobs. Mr. G came in with a worried expression and I could hardly talk from the sobbing to tell him what I was writing. He rubbed my back until I could tell him about the storm, my Mom and the grief.

I expect for a long while thunderstorms will be tinged with an air of sadness, but there is still the thrill and the exhilaration of life.

susansmagicfeather copyright 2012 Susan R. Grout all rights reserved