Dear Suzan

By TAD BARTIMUS

It's Mother's Day again. Lots of folks call this a trumped-up holiday to boost greeting card sales. I don't know what you'd think of it.

That's one of the things we never got around to talking about. One of the millions of things.

It's been five years since you left us, but I still talk to you a lot. All of your old friends do, and we talk about you every time we bump into one another. It happened again the other day, when Mike and I wound up at a journalism conference.

He and I talked about how we were all writers together, but you were the best of the bunch. You could say in just a few words what it takes most of us far too many to express. (You were always embarrassed when we told you that.)
You were a great columnist, Suzan, and your clear voice is dearly missed. But Mike and I agreed your real legacy was right where you wanted it to be, in the lives of your two boys. And what we all remember best is your being a mom.

You could have spent your last year writing your memoirs or a Pulitzer prize-winning account of your losing struggle with cancer. You could have gathered up your husband and sons and toured Europe, set sail for the South Seas or withdrawn to a beach.

Instead, you spent your dwindling days in your kitchen baking birthday cakes with marzipan fish on them. The kids made the fish, and you let them trash the place with sugar sprinkles and green icing. They fed so many sweets to the dog that he threw up. But who cared? The sound I remember, that whole last year, was children's giggles. There was also an elaborate Christmas, with new needlepoint ornaments you'd made yourself from your resting place on the couch. And tea parties with the good silver and the fancy china cups, so the boys would know what it was like to "have manners." 

You also insisted we have what turned out to be your last picnic in the backyard, on a table that had to be scraped of snow. We shivered so hard our teeth chattered, but by heaven there was a red-checkered tablecloth and homemade potato salad and barbecued hot dogs. And you insisted, though you could barely stand up, on pushing your younger son on the swing that hung from the bare branches of the crab apple tree. 

By then I was so mad at you I could hardly speak. I thought you should fight. But you wouldn't. As a journalist, you'd researched your illness. You told us that no matter what anybody did, only 4 percent of your cancer's victims survived longer than five years. I wanted you to be in that four percent. But treatment meant going into an isolation ward for as long as six months, not being allowed to hold or kiss or hug anybody. 

We humans don't get to control much in our lives, but some of us get a chance to control our dying. You chose. Your decision to stay home with your boys, to give them one last year of a mom to remember, was not made lightly. If the odds had been better, the treatment less extreme, or if you thought you could buy more quality time with your kids, you probably would have done it differently. 
But you, Suzan, decided to stay in the kitchen and the carpool as long as you possibly could. You packed every single day with good memories for your 8-year-old and your 5-year-old. Even as you grew weaker, there were longer bedtime stories, more cuddles, messier cookies. Of all my memories of you that jockey for prominence, the most enduring is watching you in full-blown mom mode, running across a soccer field to be with a son who'd fallen down, and God help anybody who got in your way. 
And you wrote: 

"Almost immediately the long road of motherhood that has stretched out so ominiously seemed too short. Time would become the enemy, I sensed, and it would pass all too quickly ... Now I think of the years as pieces of gold." 
The week you were buried, long before you had a tombstone, we could find your grave because there were seashells pressed into the freshly turned earth, spelling out MOM. 

You did good, Suzan. Your boys are wonderful. Your husband has been the best father on the planet. All the memories you worked so hard to create have sustained them. They are living happy lives. 
I know you know that.

Love, Tad

© 2001 The Women Syndicate

Visit TAD at www.tadbartimus.com and send your own great stories – 300 words or less – to friends@tadbartimus.com or write c/o The Women Syndicate, P.O. Box 728, Puunene, Hawaii 96784. Thanks for sharing.

© 2001 The Women Syndicate. The content on these pages is the property of The Women Syndicate and may not be used without express written permission. Contact friends@tadbartimus.com