Call it Apophenia

Apophenia- "The tendency to perceive a connection or meaningful pattern between unrelated or random things" Webster's Dictionary

It was the sticky summer night of my mother's sixtieth birthday. We were all sleeping soundly to the lullaby of crickets when suddenly a bone-chilling scream shattered the night.

It was my mother. After some time of sitting in shock, staring in silence, she finally told us about her nightmare. She'd been buried alive and was screaming from inside a casket, pleading to be let out.

My mother had been through a lot of scary things in life, but I had never seen such fear on her face. We assured her she was safe, and that it was just a dream.

Five years later standing in the snow, the cold seeped through my cheap ballet flats while I gazed at her casket. I wasn't crying then or thinking about my frigid feet, I was thinking about one thing; that night and the horrible way she screamed. The moment repeated on a loop in my mind as the pastor recited, "Ashes to ashes dust to dust." I could only do one thing to keep myself from descending into madness, repeat my mantra.

"That's not her, it's her body. That's not her, it's her body."

Knowing the fear she harbored about being buried— that's enough to push anyone over the edge. Truth was the only rope I had to keep me from being swallowed.

"She's not there, her spirit is free. She's not there, her spirit is whole."

As this recitation echoed loudly in my mind, a small voice slowly began to faintly interrupt my mantra, growing louder until it finally broke through my mental armory.

“Mommy, I wanna go!” the voice was saying.

I shook myself and looked down at my three-year-old tugging my hand, “What?”

“Come on! Let’s goooo!”

My poor buddy was cold. His sweet innocent face looked up at me with confusion. He didn’t understand why we were standing outside in this weather and staring at a box. The box held no significance to him, nor did the importance of our silence.

My sorrow mingled with embarrassment and erupted in rage.

Bending down to his level, I hissed through gritted teeth, “SHUSH! I’m trying to say goodbye to Grandma and you’re being rude!”

Regret filled my heart immediately and hurt brimmed his big brown eyes as I stood to my feet. My mother would have handled that better. I’d apologize to him later.

Shifting my gaze to the ground on my left, I could see the grave that neighbored my mother’s —my grandmother’s. I could see it just under the bottom edge of the green tent flap standing over my mother’s plot. The earth had become harder since October, I observed.

Then, the soil still held the warmth of Summer's sunshine in its embrace. The day of my grandmother's funeral was lovely, warm with gently cascading leaves like confetti celebrating a life well lived. My mother remarked, “This is the kind of weather you want for a funeral. Not rainy and cold.”

I wondered what she would think of the snow at her funeral. Maybe she thought it was fitting for the occasion. Her day, her death, was more sudden and cold than my grandmother's. Maybe her snowflakes were also confetti, but they still brought a chill and a sense of sudden finality.

She hated snow, or at least that's what she said. I think she hated clearing her car off, or the hazards the cold presented; like the time she slipped while holding a case of Diet Coke and broke her ribs. She, however, regularly decorated with different variations of snowflakes and snowmen. Maybe she'd think the day was pretty since she couldn't feel the cold.

I stood there reflecting more on the fact that my grandmother died three months before my mother when I was six months pregnant. "Death comes in threes," Mom would say. We certainly were close to that, since I very nearly missed becoming a name on that list in December.

Just six weeks before my mom died, my OB noticed I had protein in my urine— a sure sign of pre-eclampsia. After a failed twenty-four hour catch I was ordered to have an induction. At midnight the night before there was an elephant on my chest. I could not breathe and I could not get comfortable in any position.

I went in early. A good thing, because according to my doctor if I hadn't I could have died in my sleep. I had full-on HELLP syndrome. It was hairy. I was well within "the woods." The only way to cure HELLP syndrome is to have the baby. He was born healthy but I only held him for a couple of moments before I told the nurses to take him and passed out.

I was there for five days in recovery. It truly was a close one.

As I stood at my mother's grave I thought about the night before at the visitation. I had just finished nursing my six-week-old when my Mom's sister approached me. She was, of course emotional, but I'll never forget what she said to me. She looked me in my eyes and said, "I'm so glad you're here."

Anybody would assume she meant she was glad I was able to drive the thirteen hours home with four children under five to make the funeral. But something in her eyes told me she meant something deeper. Always a declarer that death comes in threes, it seemed that what she was glad of was not that I was in that room but on the planet. I echoed her thankfulness and agreed I was equally glad to still be here.

In the graveyard, as the pastor finished, I knew that this was my last moment with my mother. I couldn’t let her go. I wished there was something I could take with me, something to hold on to if I could no longer hold her hand.

Roses lovingly lay in a mound atop her casket. I saw my opportunity. As we dispersed from the gravesite, passing her casket one by one, I took the very last memento I could. A solitary rose.

I turned the rose in hand and thought about my mother saying goodbye to her mother just three months before. I was sitting next to her in the van as we pulled away. She looked out the window while tears streaked her face. She placed her hand on the window, looked out at the gravestone, and said, "Goodbye Mommy." It was strange to see my mother as a daughter. I mourned with her not only because I had lost my grandma, but also because my mother had lost her mother.

The death of a mother is a unique sadness. It's more than the loss of a person, it's the loss of the very foundations of your personhood. A mother is the origin story for us all. To no longer have that is a sorrow that hurts in a way you can't understand until it happens to you.

As I walked away from my mother's gravestone, looking down at the rose, I reflected that it was my turn to be the daughter saying goodbye. As I gazed at the beautiful red petals a gentle snowflake landed within them, pristinely displaying all of its intricacies.

It was just a snowflake on a snowy day, but I felt like it was a kiss blown by my mother. I quickly snapped a picture with my phone, freezing a moment in time—my last moment with my mother.

I walked down the path smiling and holding my rose. We packed up the van and began to pull away from the cemetery. As we did, I sat next to my infant son, looked out the window at my mother's gravesite, and said, "Bye Mommy."