She was a spitfire, a firebrand, a woman with seafoam green-blue eyes that could melt you with a single glance.
We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations. -Charles R. Swindoll
She was my mom. And she died sixteen years ago today. So I'm thinking about her today.
Let me tell you about her, what I remember of her.
Her name was Celeste. I've always thought her name was so beautiful. Celeste Bell has a certain elegance to it that still ricochets around my head when I speak her name. When I think it.
She was about five foot six as an adult and petite, which earned her the childhood nickname "Itzy." It stuck. Her childhood friends still thought of her as Itzy until the day she died, probably many days after.
There is so much I can't remember that I try not to think about. It's easier to think about her preferences than the sound of her laugh, for instance, which I can't remember at all.
She loved Cocoa Krispies. She loved Pepsi and the doctors eventually made her give it up. She loved to have her hair brushed, not combed, by one of us.
My mom was a spitfire, a firebrand, a woman with seafoam green-blue eyes that could melt you with a single glance.
I can't remember her pregnant, but I can remember her picking off the dead skin on a burn I got from spilling tomato soup down my thigh. I screamed, kicked, cried. Hot tears poured down my face as she held me tight in her grip...this is for your own good, she was saying. Something like that.
Who remembers the exact words?
Through the years people have tried to set the record straight about her for me. This is how your mom really was, said one of her former lovers. This was the real Celeste. Even at thirteen, with a forked tongue I'd spit fuck you keep your stories to yourself. I know who she was.
And indeed, I know who she was. I know she could see through walls so we'd better be good. I believed that. Truth about our mothers is we believe what we want to believe. Keep your stories about my mom to yourself, I have mine about her and those strands of memory are all I have left of a woman with a spirit so huge she could swallow the entire world.
She did swallow the entire world. Mom told her mom, my grandmother, to stop turning up the oxygen. My grandmother couldn't bear the thought, turned the oxygen up a little more as mom slept.
This really happened. Who knows why these things happen.
Green oxygen tanks in the basement taller than I was at the time. Nosebleeds that turned my world upside down. So that even today I sometimes listen to the squall of a passing ambulance and stand still, petrified to imagine the suffering at the other end of that journey.
She died around 5:30 in the morning on November 30th, 1992. The night before I had massaged her upper body while my grandmother massaged her lower half. She was skin and bones. We used unscented lotion that I can still smell.
Bill Clinton had just won the election - mom had a Ross Perot button and, to the best of my memory was a big fan. Although that could be because she thought he had huge ears and a funny voice.
Mom won't be at my wedding next year in March and I selfishly wish she could be. I selfishly wish she could meet my husband-to-be, see his eyes fill with tears as I talk about her.
It's a funny thing, death. Meet it once and you always know its presence. You always know its promise. It will come. It won't be pretty.
What can we do now, today, with this moment? That's the question I constantly find myself asking. How can I practice like my hair's on fire not knowing when a diagnosis might come. There's this hokey Tim McGraw song (and, I just discovered, equally hokey video) about this man who gets diagnosed with something and then he starts really living. I've decided I don't want to wait until the day the x-rays come up positive. Today is good enough for living to the fullest. Now is the right time.
She died just after Thanksgiving, was buried December 3rd, just a few weeks before Christmas. The holidays are a time for celebrating and we mourned. We mourned the only way we knew how. For a woman who fought until she spoke her last five words: Oh God, oh my God.
The holidays may be a time to celebrate life, but for me, they are also a time to remember those who are suffering, dying, have died. Try as I have to cordon off this death, it visits me every year around this time. The days get shorter, the weather turns dark, moody. I think of a woman with seafoam green-blue eyes, reflect on life with her and since. Honor her spirit by breathing deeply, saying a tiny prayer and sending out compassion to you and to all beings, everywhere. May I and all beings be at ease.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Reader Comments (45)
I think she is very proud of you, especially the woman that you have become. May her spirit be there at your wedding. I'm sure you will feel it.
I remember seeing my grandmother dead for the first time; she was the first person I'd seen dead in real life. It was pretty surreal. She was like a mother to us growing up, and when I saw her, it still looked like she was just asleep in a nap. I miss her!
Wow Gwen, I'm speechless. (and that doesn't happen often) What a beautifully written piece about your mom. Thank you so much for sharing her story and your love with all of us. Holly
The world is the worse off without her presence in it.
Oh Gwen, I am so sorry for your loss and thank you for your lovely testimony to dear Celeste Bell. I don't think there will ever be a time when I don't think about my own missing mother. For us, Thanksgiving is the time that our kooky mom, Sally Schneck, was finally diagnosed with ovarian cancer. December 4 would have been her b'day. On significant days, though, I cherish the memories, love my children and husband all up. Without our moms, we wouldn't be sharing this conversation. so sad. so sorry. deep breaths to you and yours. xo See you this week?
The holidays always get me too. My maternal grandma died between Thanksgiving & Christmas. It was Thanksgiving when she sat on the couch with my then-bf, now husband, and told him to take care of me. Seven years later I spent the last Christmas I would ever have with my mom. I was pregnant with her first grandchild & granddaughter, the one she had been bugging me about for years. Death sucks, it really sucks. I like your train of thought...to start living. She did have a beautiful name. It's the name of a long-suffering heroine in a novel, who wins at the end. Thanks for sharing.
Gwen, it was so painful to read this. I lost my mother in 1997. She was 72, and died of AML, and it was the most difficult thing I have ever endured, not having her in my life anymore. I cannot even imagine how devastating it had to have been for you to lose her at such an early age. I hope that someday you can let others tell you their memories of her too, because she was all of that, and all of the memories you have as well,and so much more. I hope that as time passes this time of year will get easier to go through, I am sure she wants you to be happy. She will be at your wedding, because you carry her memories in your heart forever.
gwen, thanks for writing this. she sounds like she was an awesome woman, and she left such a great impression on you. very inspiring.
She isn't dead. She lives on in you and in the lives of all the people you have touched.
What a beautiful post to honor your mother. I am coming up on 10 years anniversary of my mother's death in June. Thank you for reminding me that I am blessed to remember the sound of my mother's laugh because it is so much like my own. Have you read Motherless Daughters or Motherless Mothers? I wish she would write Motherless Brides.
I am honoring her today. Your words will stay with me. And she will surely be present in some form at your wedding. I know you'll feel her there. Steph
There is so much pain in this, but so much beauty, Gwen. When I think of a 13 year old passionately protecting her memories of her mother, I think it is so beautiful. You do not really remember her laugh, but you do remember the spitfire spirit she had - and that is beautiful. How you weave a story so strong with strands of memories so few is amazing ....All of it is a testament to how much of her spirit and energy your mom left with you ...and then you touch all our lives - and then some more ...every year. If ever there was someone so alive in her absence ........I am a mom and somehow I think Celeste Bell is very proud of you today. Your piece has touched me in so many ways. I have 2 little girls, and if I ever have to leave them and move on, I only hope they protect their memories of me as fiercely as you have protected the memories of your mom. Thanks Gwen.
Gwen, Today... I will remember your mom , and the life she lived, and the care she gave and the love she poured into you... to make you the woman that you are today, the young woman that I love. And I love you because of the life you live, and the care you give and the love you pour into others... and I will love your mom because of it.
My Mama died four years ago this coming Christmas eve. Her name was Ruth. She had steely blue eyes that cut through all the bullshit. When she was a kid, her brothers called her Baby Ruthie Candy Bar and told her she was delivered in a flour sack. I used to lay my head on her lap as she combed my hair, and that would make me feel safe. Whenever something bad happened, I'd hold it in until I saw her face--and then I'd bawl until I couldn't anymore. My Mama died of a broken heart, quite literally. A childhood bout with rheumatic fever calcified her mitral valve--which caused her to go into congestive heart failure. In one day, she went from being strong to not being able to walk half a block. The day I brought her home, I was so afraid that she'd run out of oxygen before they delivered the permanent machine. It was green and silver. I remember the ambulance runs, too. She died about two months after her first episode--after undergoing open heart surgery that caused her to hemorrhage--after being in an induced coma for a week. She died around noon on Christmas eve, and I was at work...well, at a salad bar..when they called and told me not to hurry...to take my time. I never said goodbye because they took her away too fast. I just remember holding her belongings and going to work. Five days later, after she died, I remember carrying her shoes and crying on a bus. December is my month for grieving. Every time I hear a siren, I wonder if it's the paramedic I know. I wonder who's holding the shoes.
How proud she would be of you.
I'm sorry you lost your mom so young. Thanks for sharing your memories of her and I wish you peace in this time of year that is so troubling for you.
That sucks. I wish I had better words, but for something terrible, there shouldn't be words. Thank you for sharing Celeste with us, and the way you inspire everyone around you is a testament to your choice to live out loud. xoxo
What a beautiful tribute to your mom. It's nice to hear about someone with my name who had such an impact on those around her. I lost my mother right before Christmas in 1997 and the holiday has never been the same for our family, although we've carried on enough of the traditions she established to keep her firmly in mind.
Thanks for sharing this Gwen, I know it's difficult, even after all this time, to think about this, much less write about it so I admire your courage just like I admire everything else I know about you (and probably all the things I don't know).
what a moving post. thank you so much for sharing your memories of your mom with us. like others have said, i'm sure she would be so proud of the woman you've become. (and i'm sure you know this, but you look just like her.) hugs to you, gwen.
So intensely beautiful Gwen. I am so sorry for your tragic loss. A girl should never lose her mother. Mothers and their children should be together always, until they are both old and closer to ready. Your mother sounds like she was remarkable and unforgettable as you are. {{{HUGS}}}
Yes, once you've seen death and know death there's no going back. I lost my father in 1999 and still think about him every day. This was beautiful... your mother would be very, very proud.
{{{{{}}}}}
Hello, I watched an interview on 5 minutes for mom, then found myself here. Understanding so clearly of what you speak. All of mine have passed. The u tube video below was priceless! Be Embraced
Beautiful post, Gwen. I am so sorry for your loss. I am sure it never gets easier, only different. I am glad that you are able to share what you are experiencing now about it, even though it really is yours alone. I am here for you and my thoughts are with you this time of year. Much love.