My Big Sister

I spend Sundays with my mother who is 93. Very grateful that she’s doing well but her memory is deteriorating and I miss her not remembering times we’ve shared, movies and running jokes. She does remember me and that’s a blessing.

Yesterday, she was off and not herself and I realized that it was the anniversary of my oldest sister, Mary Ann’s death. She was the first born of our family and born almost 9 months to the day of my parents wedding in June of 1950 which was joked about during the pregnancy. Jokes my mother did not appreciate..

Mary Ann was born with congenital heart disease and Coarctation of the aorta or as my mom would describe - A hole in her heart. She lived less than a month and died on 4/23/51. (Just a few years later, heart surgery corrected this and there is a beautiful film Something the Lord Made with Alan Rickman that caused my mom to weep at the end.)

As I get older, it’s clear that my mother never got over this. When you really look at her relationships with her surviving children, there is something missing. She told me in the past that her mother immediately sent back all the baby gifts, it was never discussed and the solution was to have another baby asap. My oldest brother was born 10/10/52.

When Elvis Presley died, he was first buried near Mary Ann’s unmarked grave in Memphis. While watching the news, my mother commented that it comforted her that some of Elvis’s flowers were on her baby’s grave.

After my parents’ divorce in 1979, my mother saved money and bought a gravestone for Mary Ann.

Mary Ann’s death affected my father as well especially since she died on the anniversary of his mother’s death on 4/23/33 when he was 7. (See blogpost The Meeting Place).

So there was a melancholy and sadness with my parents that stayed with them throughout our childhood. You could never really say they were happy people. It wasn’t uncommon for their generation to put grief aside and get on with their lives as there was death all around, but grief has no semblance of time and will always reappear to make it’s presence known in one way or another.

When my oldest son was born, he underwent surgery at 3 weeks and I became keenly aware of my mother’s pain and it definitely became something we bonded over.

So my mom didn’t say she remembered about Mary Ann yesterday but her heart remembered and she was sad because as we know, love never dies.

Turns out Mom also has a hole in her heart and my belief is that it will be healed on the day they’re reunited.