October is black flannel shirt month for me. I took an old shirt of moms from her closet while I was rushing out into the chilly Montana night three years ago. I still have it and every so often get the urge to put it on, in spite of the fact that it makes me look a bit like her, unkempt, manly even, but I don’t care.

My mother passed away October 10, 2006. I was writing quite a bit back then-for how much was going on. Somehow I was squeezing in time for a writing group and that old ball and chain: “The Drill”.

Here is my journal entry for that day.

- Mom is dead. About 6:30 pm she looked up to the ceiling, the area over the living room floor, got , I can’t write anymore.

It’s  sentimental, dramatic, sappy maybe but that was what I wrote. I felt I needed to record it since that was what I did then, but in the end there wasn’t anything else to say.

My second daughter was born October 10, 2008.

Several days before I started preparing for her first birthday party, I began reading through my mother’s old letters to my grandparents.

I am so grateful for the fact that I have them. I feel so connected to her reading her thoughts on raising me, feeling she neglected me, hearing her thoughts on how to fit Pro-Life activism around my naps. In the letters I read, I was just over a year old. She wrote to my grandparents about daily life: how to get me to stay in the yard, she told them how my father carried me around the park one day on his shoulders, and then there’s discussion of a silver cup which eventually turned out to be pewter.

Apparently this was some sort of family tradition, my grandparents paid for it, and I have found it among her things. There is a little frog etched in to the bottom. I find this interesting since as a child they were my favorite playthings while she was fishing on the river.

When I pulled out the last photo I took with her, put it in the frame, and brought it upstairs to hang on the wall, I thought about the reasons why I hadn’t hung it up before. There is the fact that her face is bloated, her eyes are not looking at the camera but at some other point off to the side, the oxygen tube that we took from under her nose that lays on her shirt. In short, at first quick glance the picture looks like a family photo, but if you look closely at all it’s just not cheerful. I have always felt wrong about keeping the picture hidden away, maybe it was too much of a reminder of how the last part of her life was.

I still feel that the picture isn’t cheerful, now it doesn’t need to be. It is what it is.  I have a photo of my father, my daughter and I, Mom deserves a spot on the wall as well.

As an added bit of strangeness, my eldest daughter picked some flowers and put them in her blue Ikea cup. We placed the cup and flowers in front of the picture we were in with her when she was so much smaller, unaware of the significance of the photo. By the time Friday night rolled around, we hadn’t gotten daddy to hang the picture yet, and the flowers still sat in front of the picture as they had for several days. Something occurred to me when I thought about moving it so the party guests didn’t see this weird little set up which had now moved to the kitchen counter:

“Is this weird?” I asked my husband.

Before he could respond it hit me: “Oh my God. It’s the same day as the party. Holy shit.”

It occurs to me every so often that the two events happened on the same day but then I forget. It is only when I am trying to decorate for a party and at the same time not put mom away again, now feeling ready to think about her in a more aware sort of way, that I get the strangeness of the whole thing full in the face.

I thought it was weird at first and would possibly draw questions that would put a downer on the festivities but it never came up. We placed the photo and a candle burning, just off to the side, on my mother’s sideboard. That seemed to work. I looked over every so often and felt she was included, she was remembered, but didn’t need to cringe and push any bad thoughts away like I had in past years.

I wonder if this will be something I have to do every year, or if just having the photo up on the wall will do.

For now I still have the black flannel.