Finding myself in the memory of my mother

Understanding my mother and the impact we have on those around us

Vibrations from the cars rushing past sent shivers up my mom and grandma’s backs as they stood on the edge of Deception Pass Bridge in 1992. // Photo courtesy of Maylis Laverne

The weight of my grief landed in my small, bare hands six years ago. A book. Its cover, my mom’s smiling face, followed by 218 thick ivory pages bound together by a spiral binding containing memories of my mother. A series of letters and poems, from a myriad of friends and family, chronicling her 41 years. My mom, Linda Scott Laverne, was loving, kind, patient, and loved to live. She laughed like no one else, a sound so contagious you couldn’t help but join. Her laugh was paired with a smile from ear to ear that never left her soft, rosy-cheeked face.

Or so I am told.

My memory of her is limited. The more I push to remember, the hazier it gets. I often feel like I am running towards something I will never catch. I don’t remember the sound of her gentle voice, but I could never forget the smell of the lavender lotion that would fill my nostrils when she pulled me close to comfort me. I can’t close my eyes and picture her face surrounded by thick locks of hair, I can picture the bright yellow sun-shaped cake, with sunglasses and a crooked smile that she spent hours preparing for my fifth birthday.

The book sat alone in the corner of my room, collecting specks of dust. The guilt of not reading the composition of letters my uncle, aunt, and grandfather selflessly put together gnawed at me, but the fear of remembering, coping, and dealing with my loss kept me from touching it. An invisible barrier I created myself, to keep me safe — to keep me from thinking too hard.

Years passed as I pushed the book to the back of my mind.

Why couldn’t I bring myself to read it? Why didn’t I want to? Who was my mother? Before the sickness? Before the loss and pain?

I was terrified to learn more about someone who I had already lost. Someone I missed so much regardless of knowing so little. Learning more could only bring more pain, more innocent tears that would roll down my face.

It wasn’t until recently that I found myself curled up on my stained gray couch in my creaky, empty house. I collected my grief, guilt and fear, and with a roll of toilet paper by my side, picked up the book and read it from beginning to end. Not just flipping through, looking at pictures or picking out letters, but reading every word. An undertaking I never knew I was capable of until half a roll of toilet paper and eight hours later.

Times New Roman font danced across the smooth ivory pages recounting what people loved and remembered about my mother. Paul Normington met my mother in 2007 when she was the coach for the Hurricanes soccer team, in his letter he wrote, “Her hugs carried power. Getting a hug from Linda was like getting your internal battery charged up.”

Malcom Macleod, one of the hurricane players, wrote, “Linda will be remembered as the one who took in pain and gave out love.”

The experience of meeting my mother, getting glimpses of her childhood, adolescence, and adult life through the eyes of people who loved and cared for her was incomparable to what I had imagined.

My mom loved to be outside, she sled down the grassy rolling hills in her backyard and climbed the tallest trees she could find. When she was 10 she fell out of one of the two walnut trees perched in her front yard and broke her right forearm. She played the French horn with the same intense tenacity she brought to volleyball. She wore the same bright blue one-piece swimsuit for five years. When she attended Santa Clara University she and her friends would pile into a car and drive to San Francisco for late-night donut runs.

Mark Spencer wrote, “Linda was the kind of person that was absolutely open to any possible adventure.” She walked across Deception Pass Bridge in 1992, 29 years before I unexpectedly walked across the same bridge when I first moved to Washington.

Thanks to my uncle I know one of her favorite jokes, the string joke. It goes:

A piece of string walks into a bar and orders a beer.

The bartender says, “Sorry, we don’t serve your type here.” So the string goes outside, gets all tangled up, messes up his hair, then goes back in and sits down at the bar.

The bartender looks curiously at him and asks, “Hey, aren’t you that string who was just in here?”

The string replies, “Nope, I’m a frayed knot.”

All of these anecdotes, letters, and pictures fill in some of the gaps in my memory. I get to hear and imagine who my mom was before she was married, before she gave birth to my brothers and me and before she was diagnosed with cancer.

All of our parents and guardians have stories to tell about the lives they lived before us, if they aren’t around to share it with you themselves, there are people who can. We live through ourselves, but most importantly we live through those we touch around us, creating and collecting memories with the people you surround yourself with. We should listen and learn from the people who lead lives before us. The experiences you share with others are the ones that last.

In January of 2015, my aunt wrote the preface to this book, “Go ahead: open the book…Spend some time with her [Linda] and remember her; it is a journey worth taking.”

Boy was she right. All of the jealousy and anger I had previously felt toward those who got to know my mom longer than me shifted into understanding, gratitude and joy.

Kerry and Dale Freeman wrote, “By touching so many people in so many communities in her lifetime, Linda has ensured that a vast array of people…is at the ready to support Christophe, Emeric, Quentin and Maylis from here on out.”

I have the chance to know those who knew my mom, each of them holding a piece of her they are willing to share with me.

Panda Hershey became a second mom to me after my mother passed away. The scent of freshly baked cookies wafting through the air and up the stairs to where I was reading, playing or sleeping would coax me downstairs. There, waiting in her kitchen, was Panda holding a plate of chocolate chip cookies we had made together, “Are you ready to watch Project Runway?” she would ask me. This became a tradition for many years to come.

In Panda’s contribution to the book she wrote, “[My] girls considered Linda their second mom.” This is because my mom would take Panda’s two daughters and my brothers to the park where they would play three flags up and then come home and bake cookies.

There it was, something I hadn’t understood for many years. Panda, like many others, carried a piece of my mom, one she shared with me. I couldn’t bake cookies with my mom as her kids did, so she took it upon herself to share those experiences with me. I had unknowingly gotten to know a little bit about my mom through the time I spent with Panda.

Tears cascaded down my face as I read about my birth and the love I am told she felt for me. Apparently, we were attached at the hip. The tears that landed on the pages and left streaks of salt on my glasses were not tears of sadness. In reading about the portion of my life where I was blessed with the presence of my mom, memories came flooding back. What I had been trying to catch up with for years was sitting on the cluttered coffee table right in front of me.

These memories had been locked away, the days from my childhood I couldn’t remember but wanted to so badly. These letters and pictures evoked the feelings I felt on those days. I remember how she used to sing me “Hallelujah” before I fell asleep every night, and how my uncle continued to play it on the guitar after she passed. I remember my sixth birthday, in a cottage in France, where my birthday cake was a heavy blue bowl filled with raspberries and six delicately placed pink candles. Until I read this book I couldn’t remember my mom’s presence, how she helped me get on the orca whale-shaped floatie as it bobbed up and down in the pool.

I would be honored to have a fraction of the impact my mother had on the people around me. She lived so passionately and treated everyone with kindness and love. I will never be able to ask my mom about her life: the struggles, moments of joy and excitement, but I can and will talk to those who knew her, they can tell me about ways they may have helped each other. She will live on in the pieces I have of her and the pieces others hold.

As I carry the book upstairs, back to my room, it feels lighter. I feel lighter. Not a speck of dust in sight.

I allowed my grief to consume me and let a cloud encumber the memory of my mother. She was not her sickness, she is not my loss. She was a confident, kind, and beautiful soul that I had the joy of knowing for seven years. This isn’t my grief to hold alone. I share this loss, just as I share the joy of knowing her with so many people.