Mother’s Day Reflection

It turns out I wanted to play just one more game of Scrabble, if my tears that seemingly came out of nowhere on the 400 northbound the other day are any indication. Apologies to the driver of the Honda mini-van if I swerved a little too close to your lane.  Turns out cheap mascara in the eye is a bit dangerous while driving.

Mom and I had more Scrabble games than Lake Muskoka has fish. Long ago she could be heard muttering subtle profanities, softly under her breath, so the grandkids and then later the great-grandkids, could not really hear their grandmother dropping a few choice expletives. If we were playing on the dock and it was anywhere near happy hour the competition would intensify, especially if there had been a vodka and orange juice, or two, with the tiniest splash of vanilla poured in, consumed. Mom was the champion of two and three letter joiner words, ones you have never heard before, but when a yell of “You’re cheating!! That’s not a word”, mom looked at you with this expression that said, “Oh ya? Check it out” and passed the official Scrabble dictionary, and there it would be sanctioned in all its’ glory in the damn book. She was never wrong. Qadi, Qaid, Qat, Qi, Qoph, words starting with Q, the letter worth 10 points, but not requiring a U, were some of her favourites. She would slip that word in, join it to an existing word in more than one place, and more often than not strategically placing the Q on a triple letter score and bingo 70 points.  The very best words were when mom did all of the above and then managed to use all her letters getting an additional 50 points for her efforts. One year at Christmas I got a trophy made for her, because she had her highest score in one game, I think it was a whopping 463 points, but my memory is not what it once was. I hope I am not getting the dreaded cognitive decline mom so despised.

A Scrabble game was the best way to connect, yet not have to talk if you didn’t feel up to it, or if we wanted to, we would take long pauses between turns to discuss the latest shenanigans going on in the clan. In the last years of mom’s life, as the dementia was slowly taking a greater hold on her fine neuropathways, she would grab onto an offer to play a game like a religious person grabs a bible for some comfort, calm and distance, from the inevitable descent into the abyss that is dementia. Her Scrabble scores would become lower and lower as the complex computer that is the brain found it increasingly more difficult to retrieve the words to put down on the board.  When words and conversation became harder, we still had that board between us to connect and bond.  When I would pack up my mom and take her for a sleep over somewhere, I packed the Scrabble board much like I would pack my kids stuffies in the diaper bag, when going on trips, soothing transitional objects to make the change less stressful.

Dad started playing with her a number of years before his death. He could never play like she could, no one could, but after a time he actually got pretty good. It apparently helped to while away the hours of boredom that come when you’ve been married 65 years and there is nothing left to argue about.  In regards to the length of time they were married my mom used to say most life sentences are shorter than that and other unfortunates get theirs’ commuted for good behaviour. Poor mom. Poor dad.

I have been thinking a lot about my mom as Mother’s Day approaches. It is my first without her, and its’ really hard. Grief sucks, and if the truth be known I avoid it as much as I can. I’m currently planning her funeral and mom’s only live sibling has graciously given me permission to inter mom, dad and my sister Jan into the family plot. In the transfer of ownership, the funeral home told me I had to put other names on the deed so that when I die the plot goes to my children.   They said our kids would be the right choice as kids are supposed to outlive parents and they can decide what to do when the time comes.  I was joking with the funeral director, since I have him on speed dial due to the fact that in the last few years, we seem to speak more regularly than I do with my best friends. He said that the arrangements were coming along for the plot transfer to be legal in time for the funeral. I told him that since my kids are now on the transfer deed, they will be quite ecstatic, since getting into the crazy housing market is unaffordable and they will never be able to buy a house but now, voila, they have some land!  Perhaps they could erect a tent…..

Humour and grief. The only way to get through.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.