Eternal Memories

It’s been nearly two years and while I never actually spoke of my mom’s death on here, I figured seeing that next week would be her 77th birthday and that a few weeks later is the second anniversary of her death, I thought I would make a simple entry on her behalf:

Thru pictures, I thought my mother had been a movie star – my father, too! I was often confused seeing them in the hideous polyester 70’s smocks in my own reality, but then looking at pictures of them when they were younger in their beautiful clothing, beautiful looks and best poses, I was sure they’d given up their careers to be our parents. My mom looked like a beautiful actress from that time period – a starlet with dark hair, dark, twinkly eyes, flawless skin and a beautiful smile. When she wasn’t smiling, she looked like Ingrid Bergman, a look we all came to know.

My mother’s life was tough as was our life with her. She was mentally ill and it took its evil toll on every facet of her life and our lives. You wanted to hate her sometimes, but you could see the terrible struggle of a woman who truly loved her family, but who also was tugged and pulled by the power of illness.

But that wasn’t all her. She was also extremely gifted: she could draw, paint, and played the piano like nobody’s business. A self-taught piano player who later was in lessons with a superstar piano teacher in Chicago, my mother saved every penny in the early 1950’s to save for her own piano – the piano that is still at my dad’s house and someday I will somehow get here to L.A.

She was also a hero. My brother once fell through a plate glass door nearly severing his finger and maiming his arm. My mother carried him almost two miles to a hospital. This is one of the many times where she played doctor, nurse, cook, maid, problem-solver, etc.

My mother loved her own children, but even more so, her grandkids. She never held back on her time with them and taught them to cook, how to clean up after themselves, and loved taking them on adventures. There wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do for those kids.

But her Catch 22 was when one illness seemed to lie dormant, a bigger monster was waiting for her. I knew when I moved to L.A. that her forgetfulness was becoming more obvious, that her gait seemed to be thrown off and that her eyes were starting to look dimmer. Every visit home seemed to give more clarity to that fact and when I called her doctor that fateful day, I knew what his answer would be. My mother’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s threw us all into such a frenzy as we’d just moved on from one big illness.

After things had gotten so bad and she was placed into her wonderful, loving nursing home, we knew time was becoming more precious and anything that we’d known before, mostly the bad stuff, made way for a new peace and understanding of our mother who was slowly fading away.

I saw her for my last time on Thanksgiving of 2006. Alex had come home with me for the first time to meet my family and we’d spent every day at the nursing home. I am so grateful they met each other.

Our final moments were quick and sweet, with a hug that felt so deep and soulful, but left me with deepest, heaving weight in my heart for the weeks leading to her death. I knew deep down it was all imminent.

She passed the day before the new year.

There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of her: sometimes it’s happy, sometimes it’s sad. Sometimes it’s guilty and other times it’s just breezy, like she is here with me.

I feel like the best gift you can give a parent is a to live a good, solid, interesting life, full of love and light. Every day I hope I am doing a good job.

Losing a parent is going to happen to everyone – appreciate them and all of their idiosyncrasies while they are here.

'I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life” – Maya Angelou

Miss you...

Marilyn Zalokar December 11, 1931 - December 30, 2006