A Goodbye to My Mother by Bea Tifton

 My blog is late, because I have struggled to write it, dear Reader. My amazing, beautiful, clever mother passed away May 1st,  and my heart is broken. 

I have so many wonderful memories of my mother. One of the earliest is when I was three years old. Each year Mom made Christmas cookies. She made some shaped like the state of Texas, and I was thrilled when she told me I was old enough to put the little candy circle right where we lived on the cookie. I felt so grown up and privileged. My mother absolutely loved Christmas. Our house was bursting with decorations, store bought and hand made. We had things I made at school, things family members had sewn, and lovely things Mom had bought along the way. Each year we would go look at Christmas lights, and this continued into my adulthood. But when I was a little girl, Mom would make a yearly trek to this craft/hobby store called Arnold's. It was in a strip mall built to look like houses so it was like going to a little village. Arnold's was a magical place with all these wonderful displays and items to purchase. I especially loved the doll house section. Mom would let me wander and look by myself. And then we would go to downtown Dallas to drive around and look at the elaborate Christmas displays in the store windows, especially the site of the original Neiman Marcus. 

My parents treasured knowledge. Both voracious readers, they read to me from infancy, and I became a reader early on. We would go to this strip mall library branch just around the corner from our grocery store. There was never any limit to how many books we could check out, just as long as we didn't get more than we could read before the return due date. And I was encouraged to ask questions. My mother answered my questions patiently and when it was relevant, she steered me to our set of encyclopedias or the dictionary. When it was time to write research papers, I was the only one among my friends who wasn't overwhelmed. And I truly think that this learning process and encouragement is partly why I became a librarian. 

We went to museums frequently, including on our vacations, as well as numerous historical sites. My parent made history seem relevant and vivid. But when I asked an odd question, my mother never laughed. She had hung a print of a Renoir portrait, "Little Irene"  in my bedroom. I was about three or four, and I stared at that portrait  many times as I was going to sleep and wondered and wondered. One night as Mom was tucking me in, I asked the burning question, "Why does that girl have a fish in her hair?" Mom looked startled, then looked closely at the painting. She said, "It does look like a fish. I never noticed that. But it's just the way her hair ribbon is tied. It's just a hair ribbon." She didn't me feel embarrassed or foolish. 

My mother loved antiques. When my sister was in school and I was small, we would go to an antique store close to her school and look around. Mom usually made small purchases, or simply looked, but one day she asked me to help her choose something to buy for the house. I choose a brass Kwan Yin statue. Mom put it in layaway and carefully paid it out. We moved so frequently when I was growing up but that statue was always lovingly and carefully packed. I have it in my living room now. Mom brought it when she and my father came to live with me. We continued to look at antique stores my whole life and I remember our first cream tea. We all dressed up and Mom took us to seemingly distant and exotic Dallas to a special tea room and it was a real event. I still have a love of antiques. Mom and I had our own antique business for a few years and it was wonderful. 

Four and a half years ago, my parents moved in with me. My father's Parkinson's had progressed to the point of pain and he mourned having his own house. But Mom was thrilled. We are so similar that we had fun talking about everything. It was like having a slumber party every day, even as her own health declined much more than  she wanted her loyal readers and friends to know. We watched movies as a family each night and after my father passed away Mom and I continued to do so. We loved the same kind of things so we gleefully streamed old movies and British mysteries, with occasional Hallmark movies or episodes from HGTV shows thrown in. Mom's favorite movie and one of mine is "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes." We watched it once a month. Every Thursday was pizza night. Nothing interrupted pizza night for us and Mom absolutely loved it for some reason. It feels weird not to order pizza now but I just can't bring myself to do so yet. We always had the same delivery man, a very nice Ukrainian man who was probably a teacher or a doctor or something in his own country. I wonder if he's noticed our absence. 

I've had vivid, intense nightmares my entire life. When I was a little girl, Mom would come and sit with me, holding my hand until I was able to fall asleep. But this last month has been a waking nightmare. A month ago Mom fell at home and broke her arm, so she spent four days in the hospital. The doctor wanted her to go  to a rehabilitation hospital, but she was too weak to stand by herself. You see, she had been grieving my father's death deeply since he died May 29, 2025. From Christmas on, though, she seemed to decline rapidly. She would sleep all day and I would wake her up to eat, then she would fall asleep again. I took her to doctors, encouraged her, and did everything I knew to do. She would rally herself to come watch movies each night. We did get a very good skilled nursing facility, the best in the city. They just happened to have a bed. She received excellent care. But that Wednesday night, the nurse called me right as I was about to go to sleep and told me they were sending her to the ER for "breathing difficulties." I met her at the ER and we spent the entire night with tests and breathing treatments, then she was admitted to the hospital late that night. The next day at 2:00 p.m. she was transferred to a hospice center. Then at 12:45 a.m. on May 1, the most important person to me in the world passed away. I had been sitting with her for two days, holding her hand so she wouldn't be scared as she fell asleep. 

Caroline Clemmons 1940-2026

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