I confess, I’m a mommy’s boy.
Separation anxiety is a well-documented and very common developmental stage. It is a period of time when many toddlers experience heightened levels of fear and stress when their primary caregiver is not in sight. For me, however, this pitiable transitory chapter in my youth lasted slightly longer than the nine-to-thirty-six-month age range that most reference materials suggest is normal. I’d like to say I was maybe three or four years old when I finally transitioned out of my “holy shit, where’s mommy” phase, but the truth is I know I was a tad bit older.
In any case, I have unusually vivid memories of a young (or youngish) me. Hysterically chasing my parent’s car as they drove off down the street for a night out on the town. Bowling with friends, or maybe a movie. They were not hypersocial folks, my mom and dad, so them leaving me in the care of one of my older siblings was not a common occurrence. But still, infrequent as they may have been, those occasions of maternal abandonment triggered in me a kind of juvenile panic that sent me running down Elsie Avenue hoping to catch the bumper of our family’s two-tone, 1965 International Travelall before it rounded the corner. On each occasion, the vain attempt leaving me out of breath and sobbing on the rough and lonely asphalt in a swirling cloud of sardonic exhaust.
This was years before my mom had to rescue me from a sleepover because I was afraid to fall asleep and wet the bed at a friend’s house. Years before she found me the perfect periwinkle dress because I wished to be Cinderella for Halloween. Years before she nursed me back to health with bottomless bowls of ice cream because my tonsils had to be removed. Years before she helped me cover the cost of some cheesy headshots because I wanted to chase my dream of Hollywood stardom. And years before she hugged me close with tears in her eyes thinking she would lose me because I told her that I was HIV-positive. And yet, somehow, standing there in the middle of the street at the age of four or five, screaming for her to come back, I already knew that’s who she would be. Always. There for me. Without judgement, exasperation, or disappointment. Just lovingly there.
Decades later, I received a call from one of my siblings. My mom was in the emergency room. She had suddenly lost the ability to swallow. It was March 17, 2019. Just a few months shy of her 89th birthday. I left work immediately, and jumped in my car. As I drove toward the hospital, I became increasingly aware of the curious, undulating, orange swarms outside. It was the annual migration of Painted Ladies. As butterflies go, they are on the small to medium size, but their bright, carroty-colored wings are striking, especially in large groups. And in 2019, the Painted Ladies were on their annual move north through the San Fernando valley in record numbers. That year’s unusually massive migration was spurred by above average rainfall in the deserts of Northern Mexico and Southern California the year before. All that water helping the vegetation in those regions to flourish. Providing expansive breeding grounds and ample food for the caterpillars to thrive, enter their chrysalis stage, and eventually emerge into something wholly transformed.
Held up at a traffic light, I watched through the windshield as the wispy creatures seemed to fill the intersection. Many hundreds of them. Flapping then floating, then flapping again. A perpetual, frenetic ripple. Like the tiny, glistening shards of a small, shattered sun. Working with delicate determination against the swirling gusts of crisscrossing vehicles to pull themselves back into a single, shimmering sphere. I could see the medical center looming in the distance and it occurred to me how much my mom would love the fluttering spectacle. She had a handful of favorite things: chocolate, root beer, roses, Neil Diamond, teddy bears, and butterflies.
When I arrived at the hospital, my mom had already been moved upstairs. As I exited the elevator and moved down the long, wide corridor, I took note of the nature inspired artwork that hung on the otherwise sterile walls. And, as I approached the doorway to my mother’s room, there on the wall just outside was a large framed photograph of a Monarch Butterfly perched in the center of an orange flower. It was as if the Painted Ladies escorted me to my mom’s bedside where the majestic Monarch was keeping vigil just outside.
This was by no means the first time I had seen my mom unwell or laid up. When I was a teenager, she had her nose fixed to correct some residual damage caused by having broken it three times over the course of her lifetime. During that procedure, she decided to go ahead and have her eyes done at the same time. While the work on her sinuses was mostly reconstructive, to eliminate a visible bump caused by a buildup of scar tissue around the bridge of her nose and allow for much improved breathing, the eyes, on the other hand, were purely cosmetic. Many years after that, she fell and broke her leg which required another surgery and a period of convalescence in a rehabilitation facility. And at some point, between those two occasions, she had a stint placed in an artery in her groin after a small blood clot was discovered in one of her lower extremities.
During all of those medical escapades, my mother always seemed to be in good spirits and in full command of her superbly pointed wit. In fact, I remember visiting her in the hospital just after the stint was put in. When I arrived, she was talking to the doctor. I stopped and was lingering just inside her room when I heard him inquire, “So, do you have any pain?”
Without missing a beat, my mom gestured with her head in my direction and said, “Just that one standing there in the doorway.”
To varying degrees, I think it’s safe to say that I inherited both her temperate vanity and her scorching sense of humor.
But this time around, starting with the curious throngs of Painted Ladies, everything felt different. In fairly short order, my mom was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. She started smoking at the age of sixteen and never stopped. Ironically, after her retirement, she volunteered for a number of years at The Discovery Shop. A not-for-profit thrift store that donated all proceeds to the American Cancer Society. Often times when I stopped in to visit my mom when she was volunteering at the shop, I would find her out back smoking. “Taking a break,” she would say with a wink and a smirk. In any case, now at the age of eighty-eight, the toxic warning on the side of her pack of Virginia Slims had finally caught up with her.
The decision was made to move my mom home under hospice care. There she would be looked after by her longtime caregiver and my dad would be close at all times. A bed was delivered and placed in her bedroom and I have no doubt that the long familiar surroundings were a comfort.
It was only a matter of days before I again received a call at work. Again, I left my office and drove through the now much thinner flights of Painted Ladies. Still the butterflies were present, but in numbers far diminished. By the time I arrived at the house, my mom had already passed. It was less than a week from diagnosis to death. I don’t recall her being conscious much in those final days. There was no silly moment for her to make me laugh and I was never afforded a chance to look into her eyes and tell her how much I loved her. Of course, she knew. But her decline and subsequent transition were shockingly quick. And, thank goodness, mercifully smooth.
My family gathered around and stayed with her for some time before we called the Neptune Society. Prior arrangements had been made to have her cremated. I watched as two somber people came into the house with a gurney. When they finished gathering my mom, placing her in a large black bag, they wheeled her body into the living room where we were sitting with my dad. Our final opportunity to say goodbye.
I then followed them out the front door and stopped at the top of the driveway. I watched as they placed my mom in the back of a nondescript van parked at the curb. My husband walked up behind me as the vehicle doors slammed shut. And I watched them slowly drive off down the street. The same street where I had chased after my parent’s car fifty years earlier. And as the van disappeared around the corner, with everything inside of me, I wanted to take off running. Again, I felt like that child. Confused and afraid. Abandoned by the person I loved and trusted most. But before my feet could move, I felt my husband’s arms wrap around me. He held me close and I cried.
In retrospect, I have come to believe my mother wasn’t actually ever in that van. Rather, when those doors slammed shut, her liberated spirit was already in the ether. The confines of her physical visage cast off and left behind. Transformed into something wholly new. Fluttering somewhere above my head in the presence of angels. One of whom likely asked her if she was free from pain. “All but that one there in the driveway,” she no doubt replied. And then, off she soared. Gone. But still. With me forever.
In the days following my mother’s passing, the Painted Ladies slowly disappeared altogether. On to the Pacific Northwest. To breed and begin the cycle of birth, metamorphosis, and migration all over again. And although the butterflies’ journey is an annual event, they typically only number in the tens of thousands as they make their way through Southern California. In 2019, however, the year my mom moved on, they say the estimated number of migrating Painted Ladies was one billion. But this proud mommy’s boy knows in his heart. It was really one billion and one.
