Christine M. Quirk: Windows and doors

I spent New Year's Day with my mother. I did her dishes, sorted through a pile of her mail and then sat next to her and thumbed through a book. She, doped up on morphine and Valium in the final throes of a terminal illness, rested her hand on mine as she dozed.

When I glanced up, she was looking right at me, and when she was sure she had my attention, she tried to say something. It took me a couple of tries to interpret her correctly.

"You want to go?" I asked finally. "Is that what you're saying, 'I want to go'?"

She nodded. The motion was difficult for her, but she was determined. My husband Rich and I looked at each other and then, taking strength from my husband's loving face, I did the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life: I leaned over my mother's hospital bed and said, "Then go, Mum. Your job here is done. We're all fine."

The next morning, she did.

Cancer is a disgusting business. It robbed my mother of her health, her vitality and her dignity. When Mum decided to stop chemotherapy treatments that weren't working, she was afraid we would think she was a coward. We thought she was the bravest person we knew and we were impressed she was taking charge of the end of her life. She was able to have a voice in her final arrangements and we were able to fulfill her last wishes. But the fact remains that at 74, she was too young to die.

Then again, she was my mother. At 102, she would have been too young to die. With her passing, I've become both an orphan and the matriarch, and I'm quite sure I'm too young to be either.

It is no exaggeration to say my mother held us together. My brothers and I are not good about keeping in touch, for a variety of reasons both old and recent. We have our share of black sheep and closeted skeletons. And yet, as we begin navigating life without Mum, there has been no bickering. No one's fighting over who gets the bedroom set or the Christmas village or the hope chest. We are all getting along and trying our best to love each other, even when it's difficult and we vehemently disagree. Mum would be proud.

It's said that when God closes a door, He opens a window. I don't know what's outside this particular window. I was 4 when my own grandmother, my mother's mother, died. I look at my 5-year-old daughter and wonder if Mum looked at me and felt the way I do, a little lost and profoundly sad that her mother would not see this little girl grow up into her own person.

My mother has only been gone a month, and I've caught myself, several times, picking up the phone to call her. I wanted to tell her about Kristina's latest funny comment: "The brown rice was kind of hard, like dry cereal, but I munched it up with my sharp teeth." I wanted to brag on Thomas' first report card: "Thomas is always so happy to come to school … He is a pleasure to have in class." I wanted to gush about the great husband I have, the guy who brings me coffee every morning and then makes the bed, even though he couldn't care less, because he knows it's important to me.

My husband and children are sitting by me, physically and emotionally, as I weed through the boxes and bags that came from my mother's house. What treasures there are: Mum's high school diploma. Candid snapshots of my parents' wedding. Her wedding ring and rosary beads. A few stray pieces of wedding china, these 10 pieces the only survivors of years of rambunctious children at holiday dinner tables.

There are memories she kept from her own parents that now belong to me. My grandfather's baptismal certificate, dated 1893, and his confirmation certificate, dated 1904. The last Christmas card she received from her parents before her father died. My favorite is a newspaper clipping, yellowed and brittle, glued on a black piece of scrapbook paper. The article is entitled "Library romance ends in marriage" and tells the story of how Mr. Crowley will be marrying Miss Kennedy - my grandparents, who met while working at the Boston Public Library and married in 1923.

And so the circle will be unbroken, I think, as I put these riches carefully away for Thomas and Kristina.

Recently, I had my kids to the pediatrician for their annual physicals. As I mediated an argument about who was to step on the scale first, the nurse commented, "You're such a good mom." I thanked her, but what I really wanted to do was reply, "I had a great teacher."

That is my legacy from Mum and my tribute to her: To be the kind of parent that my mother would be proud of.

Christine M. Quirk can be reached at mothertown@cnc.com.