Chapter 9
Pearls
DECEMBER 27, 1996
Dear Ma,
Part of what makes losing you so hard is all the things we will never get to say to each other. That’s what death did, Ma—robbed us of the things we still have left to say.
Did you feel it the way I do? The weight of what’s unsaid?
Over the last sixteen years, I’ve learned to swallow my feelings. How to swallow the things I couldn’t say because I didn’t want to hurt you or push you away.
You and me, Ma, reminds me of how pearls are made. People see pearls as beautiful, perfect gems, but never realize that they actually come from pain—from something hard or dangerous getting trapped inside an oyster where it doesn’t belong. The oyster makes a pearl to protect itself.
Behind my own sealed lips, Ma, that’s what I have done—oystered our family’s pain until pearls were born, thousands of tiny losses to withhold. But you’re gone anyway, and I am not sure my silence did us any good.
You died on a Wednesday, around 8:30 in the morning. I was somewhere, sleeping, laughing, or forgetting you.
I will always regret that.
You were alone when you died. No one had visited you for days; I hadn’t been there for almost a month. Did you worry that your daughter was never coming back to see you again? Did that make it easier for you to go? I’d always been there, to give you money, to clean you off, to be your diary. Why couldn’t I be there when you were dying? When strangers changed your clothing, fed you, put their hands on your naked body, frail as a newly hatched bird?
I know they coldly discussed their private lives with one another over your sick bed, changing your bedpan with their braceleted wrists fragrant with department store perfume. The isolation must have terrified you.
Were you afraid, Ma?
While I made love and ate burgers in diners, and laughed in the sunshine, were you afraid?
I’m not a loner anymore, Ma. I have friends. Some of them came to your funeral. Remember Carlos? He came. He’s my boyfriend now. Sam wouldn’t get out of bed. “I can’t, Liz, those things are depressing,” she’d said just before I disappeared into the cab. We paid for the transportation from a pool they took up at Madden’s; a friend of yours gathered it for us. I never wrote a thank-you note to her, or to any of them. I’m not sure why.
Lisa, Carlos, Fief, and me pulled up to Gates of Heaven Cemetery just before they were about to bury you. The day was overcast. You had a charity funeral. From the slot they donated, you could hear cars on the highway shooting by. You were put in a pine box that was nailed shut, with your name misspelled on top. Strangers had handled your body.
Were you still wearing your hospital gown inside?
Gene Murry, the box said, underscored by bold letters reading, Head, and Feet, to note the direction. Carlos knew how much that bothered me. With his black marker, he drew a flowing angel on the front of your box, and filled in all the correct information: Jean Marie Murray. August 27, 1954–December 18, 1996. Beloved Mother of Lisa and Elizabeth Murray and Wife of Peter Finnerty.
Mother. You’d nourished us with your body for nine months, given birth to us, and passed us on to the world. Now that body is cold, unmoving, and forever out of reach.
Wife of Peter Finnerty. He didn’t make it to the funeral—something about hopping the train and getting ticketed. I was the one to give Daddy the news, over the phone. I asked if he was sitting down, and he knew. Just remembering the horrible moan he let loose, I am filled with love for him and for you. He needed holding then, but you were gone. You are gone.
You didn’t know it, but he kissed you on the mouth in the hospital one day and the nurse scolded him. Said you posed a health hazard. I was glad you didn’t hear it. People had done that to you all your life, hadn’t they? Treated you like something they needed to back away from. Me too.
Did you feel I’d done the same, Ma, backed away? Deserted you? I will always wonder about that.
Can you imagine Daddy’s train rides back to the shelter after visiting you alone? I think of them often, how he might have put his head in his hands the way he does when something is really difficult. Passengers surrounding him, reading the day’s news while his wife’s body failed and his daughters lived their lives elsewhere. How he must have wished for your body to be healthy again so he didn’t have to leave you there, in a building smelling of sickness, filled with machines and the dying. Maybe he couldn’t accept the fact that you were one of them, dying. I wouldn’t.
We buried you the day after Christmas; it had taken almost a week to locate a free funeral service. The night before, Christmas night, I ate a twelve-dollar turkey dinner in the Riverdale Diner, surrounded by friends. Fief, his cousins, Sam, Lisa, Carlos, me—we were all missing our parents. We helped each other forget about you guys, the mothers and fathers who used to tuck us in, sing at our bedsides. The stars of our dreams and the basis of our reasoning. We banished you with the help of one another.
But I saw the diner’s Christmas tree blinking red, orange, and yellow onto Lisa’s sad face while she picked at her food, everyone laughing and talking around her. She looked so much like you there, with her petite frame and large, amber eyes. Ma, she’s beautiful. She’s grown into a beautiful woman, just like you. I wish we were closer so that I could have held her then, the way I want so badly to hold her right now and to hold you, and Daddy.
Someone paid for our meals at the counter. Before we slipped out into the winter air again, Carlos dropped two quarters into the table jukebox and played Sade’s “Pearls.”
Love Always,
Lizzy