Humph. I set down a lilikoi harder than was strictly necessary. After paying for the papaya and a cluster of apple bananas, Mom suggested we head back north.
“Let’s go into town. Gypsea Gelato still has that coconut flavor you love. My treat.”
Back in the laid-back beach town of Kailua-Kona, we stood in the long line of sunburned tourists at Gypsea Gelato, then took our cups and strolled as we ate. We spent the afternoon happily poking around the shops, trying on oversize sunglasses and floppy hats, laughing about nothing, just enjoying each other’s company. It was easy to forget that these moments were fleeting. They felt so normal. I fell under their spell and forgot all about the slow but steady passage of time.
Later, however, as we enjoyed a leisurely dinner at a local restaurant overlooking the water, the realization came rushing back to me. I picked at my grilled sand dabs and roasted vegetables. I had no appetite even though the food was fresh and delicious. I remembered what wascoming, and the grief almost choked me. It was too soon. The day had gone too quickly. Already the sun was sinking low on the horizon.
“What do you want to do for the rest of the evening?” Mom blotted her mouth with a napkin and waved the server over for the bill. “Want to catch a movie or see if there’s live music playing somewhere?”
“Can we go see the stars?”
We had such little time left together. I wanted to stand with her in the darkness under the vast swath of the Milky Way and feel our tiny place in the universe. I wanted to remember how brief life was and how precious.
“Of course. Your father always loved to do that with you girls.”
The mood was contemplative as we headed out of town. Mom pointed the car northeast on Mamalahoa Highway, then turned onto Saddle Road, climbing higher up Mauna Kea, the verdant volcanic mountain that makes up half of Hawaii’s Big Island. It grew cooler as we drove, and Mom put the top up on the convertible. We saw few other cars. Behind us the mountain dropped away for miles in a long, slow slope down to the endless sea. It felt wild up here, remote and open.
Sunset was splashing the western horizon behind us in a tumult of orange and purple when we pulled off the side of the road. The visitor’s center was still miles away up the mountain, but we had never made it that far, not even when I was a kid. Every vacation Dad took us up here on the last night of our trip. He knew all the constellations from his time in the navy, and he’d point them out to us. We’d shiver, teeth chattering, wearing too-thin nightgowns and warm jackets as the cold wind whipped our legs. It was surprisingly frigid this high up the mountain. The night sky was magnificent, but I was always a little bit relieved when we would wind back down the mountain into the tropical, warm darkness once more.
The temperature had dropped easily twenty degrees when Mom and I got out of the car, and I knew that as night fell it would get even colder. I was already shivering in my summer clothes. Maybe this had been a mistake. But Mom calmly pulled a fleece blanket and two jackets out of her trunk and handed me one. She also had a couple of folding camp chairs stashed back there, and we positioned them to catch the last of the sunset colors. Cocooned in warmth, we sat together as the light faded and night fell across the mountain. Soon we were swathed in a cold velvety darkness and a silence so complete I could hear my own breathing.
I sat wordlessly, my heart aching, wishing for more time, yet grateful for this taste, this brief, bittersweet moment with my mother. A shooting star arced across the sky, brilliant and fleeting. I closed my eyes and made a wish.
“Mom?”
“Hmm?”
“I’m scared to let things go,” I confessed. “What if everything falls apart and I can’t make anything good come from the broken pieces?”
A moment of silence. “You have to have faith, Lolly. It takes faith and courage to let things fall apart, not knowing what will happen after you do. But you are strong. You can do this. There is more for you, my girl. More life and love and good things, maybe babies if you want them.” She chuckled. “This is not the end for you,” she said simply. “There are good things ahead. Trust me. I’m your mother. I know this is true.”
And then her hand, strong and warm, gripped mine. I leaned my head back against the camp chair and let myself cry silently, tears tracing warm and salty down my temples and into the shells of my ears. I’d made a promise to this woman and sacrificed everything to keep it. Now here she was giving me advice that felt like both absolution and an invitation. I didn’t know how to do what she was suggesting. If I letthings fall apart, I feared I would never find my way. In holding things together I was holding myself together too. If I let it all go, would I dissolve into nothing?
The drive home was quiet as we wound down the mountain, but when we reached the warmth and lights of the Mamalahoa Highway, Mom slipped the country singers CD out of the CD player and chose another artist.
“Figured we needed to lighten the mood.” She smiled at me as the unmistakable opening bars of Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog” boomed through the speakers. She laughed at my startled expression and started to dance in her seat while she drove, bouncing and jiggling with abandon as she belted out the lyrics alongside Elvis’s smooth Southern drawl. I gaped at her for a few seconds, then gave in and joined her. I’d forgotten how goofy my mother could be, how unabashedly she could let loose and cut a rug. I’d missed that about her without even realizing it was gone from my life. How long had it been since I’d sung along to the radio and danced with such carefree abandon? More than a decade, I guessed.
We laughed and gyrated our way through “All Shook Up” and “Jailhouse Rock,” arriving back at the condo breathless and giggling a little after ten. Once inside, Mom checked her watch, then stifled a yawn and bid me good night.
“It’s getting late for these old bones,” she said. I hugged her tight, unable to let go. She pulled back with a little laugh. “Goodness, we’ll see each other in the morning. Sleep tight, my dear girl.” She kissed my forehead, then held my face in her hands and said firmly, “I love you, Lolly, no matter what. I want you to always know that.”
I nodded. “I love you too, Mom.” I choked up and blinked fast against the tears. Inside I was a welter of conflicting emotions. Gratitude and grief mixed. I was grateful for the absolution, for her words that freed me, but they felt like they came too late. I knew she’d onlyhad these realizations because of Dad’s death, but I wished I’d heard those words earlier, before she died, when Rory’s ring was still on my finger, when my future was still bright and shiny with potential. I was glad to hear the words now, but I had already lost so much. And now I knew, with a sharp stab of sadness, that I was also about to lose her all over again. It was inevitable. There was nothing I could do to stop it this time either.
In the quiet of the condo I put on my pajamas and brushed my teeth out of habit, then crawled into bed, lying in the warm darkness, forcing myself to stay awake. If I slept, it would all be over. I would never see my mother again. After a few minutes I tiptoed to her door, hesitating outside. It was open a few inches and I could see her in bed, propped up against the headboard, her hair tied up in a silk handkerchief, reading a magazine. Dad’s box of ashes was beside her on the table. She heard me at the door and waved me in.
“Can’t sleep?”
I shook my head, though it wasn’t quite the truth. I was trying desperately not to sleep.
“Come here,” she patted the bed beside her, and I crept over like an obedient child and slipped between the sheets next to her, my head pillowed in her lap. She smelled so achingly familiar and I breathed her in, trying to remember her exact scent. She continued reading but began to gently rub my back with the tips of her fingers, just as she’d done when I was a child and had a nightmare and couldn’t fall back asleep. Her touch was steady and warm. She didn’t stop, just turned a page occasionally with one hand but never lost the slow, soothing rhythm on my back with the other. In the buttery pool of light from her bedside lamp, I tried to stay awake, but my eyelids drifted shut, and the last thing I felt was the gentle touch of my mother’s fingertips tracing endless circles on my back.
23
When I wokealone in my own room in our house in Magnolia, once more in my normal life, I bolted out of bed, grabbed my glasses, threw my hair up in a messy bun, and dashed to Aunt Gert’s cottage. It was early, barely dawn, the light still gray and the air chilly and smelling of rain and moss.
I found Aunt Gert in the middle of Mom’s neglected edible-flower garden in the backyard near her cottage. Mom. I felt a pang when I thought of her and our day together. She had been so vibrant, so... alive. So close. It brought the grief of losing her swelling up again. I missed her practical wisdom, her zest for life, that wide-open laugh. Aunt Gert was crouched down in the garden, pulling weeds and shriveled dead flowers, wearing a paisley jumpsuit in a psychedelic print that looked like it was straight out of one of Andy Warhol’s legendary parties.
“Can I go back again?” I blurted out, thinking of my mother and the utter impossibility of not seeing her once more. She had been there, real, solid, and alive as I drifted to sleep. I didn’t want to say goodbye. I couldn’t say goodbye. “Is it possible to have another day?”
