There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me

by Brooke Shields

  I nodded, bought my meat, and went to wait on the street. I started to beat myself up for talking loudly on the phone and for looking to strangers for recognition of my pain. It was an affliction of mine of which I thought I had been cured and felt angry to have seen it rear its ugly head once again. Thankfully, Steph got to me and we drove downtown together. By the time we arrived at the house, Lisa was already there. She knew something was going to happen and cleared her day. I must have called her to tell her but did not remember much from the previous hour. Chris got me on my cell and I told him I couldn’t talk because the girls were with me and if I stayed on the phone all I would be able to do was cry, hearing his voice. My mom loved Lisa and Stephanie like her own daughters and they knew her better than any of my friends. It made perfect sense to have us all together.

  Another friend from our school arrived as well. I must have called her, too. I don’t remember calling anybody but Stephanie. All I remember from the rest of the day and night was a big fire in the living room, steaks on the grill, and lots of wine. We managed some morbid humor so as to keep me from careening off a cliff.

  Overall, I was numb. I was not tired but I knew I could not handle being awake much longer. Being awake was simply too dangerous. I was offered a sleeping pill but was terrified that I would have some kind of hallucination and not make it through the night. Some more wine seemed to do the trick, and I promised my friends it was safe for them to leave. My girls came home from a friend’s house and let me sleep. Chris must have told the girls about their Toots. In the morning I opened my door to find a note from Grier that read, “Dear Mom I am sorry about your mom but she will be OK. It’s OK to be sad. . . . I love you. . . .” She had erased something under the “I love you.” “You will see her soon. . . .” I cried at how sweet the note was and then burst into hysterics at the part she erased.

  It was October 31. The day that Hurricane Sandy dissipated, Mom dissipated, too.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Cremation/Look, Ma, No Pants!

  The funeral home came and took Mom’s body. I had gone there a few weeks prior to make all the arrangements. The funeral director had told me to also contact the church ahead of time, which I did. Afterward I even stopped at Finnegans Wake for a cold beer after speaking to the priest. It was a mini-tribute. One of Mom’s old haunts when we lived on Seventy-Third Street. It was easiest to find her there because it was often the first stop and was just at the end of our block. I didn’t even have to cross the street.

  My assistant Mike had flown in from LA to help me prepare for the memorial. In the two days that he had been in New York City I suddenly decided to have him go through all my closets with me. We did a massive frenzy of a purge. I needed to stay busy because I was afraid to feel. I could not stop myself from whipping around my house and cleaning it all out. I combined my stuff with my mother’s from the residence and we lugged four grossly heavy black garbage bags into our car. Mike had finally found gas, from a Hasidic Jewish man who had a minipump under a bridge in Brooklyn. It was surreal but Mike followed up on a tip from a buddy and we had wheels to get to the Upper East Side funeral home. Mom had a favorite thrift store that had been around for decades. It was the same one in which she bought her Puccis and my infamous gauchos.

  Parking was hard and we could only find a spot five blocks away. Sweating and running, we lugged the bags across middles of streets and finally reached the store. I deposited the mother lode, and the little ladies behind the counter were thrilled. They recognized me but, when they heard my mother had died, did not ask for a picture. I explained it was my mother’s stuff as well as mine and she had died two days prior. I needed to keep saying it to believe it was actually real. I joked to Mike that I should have said “the mother loaded,” because Mom would have thought it funny and a bit outrageous. We rushed home because we still had no power and the house was empty and without an alarm.

  The funeral director called and explained to me that they were going to use a different facility for cremation because their regular one had lost power due to the storm. I told him Mom would prefer the one without the power! I think he got the joke but was afraid to laugh. Funeral homes make me laugh nervously. Otherwise it is all just too horrible.

  They had taken Mom’s body to be embalmed so I could view her and say good-bye. Two days later I was called and told she was ready for me to see. I was first shown the vessels to choose from for after cremation but was unhappy with the choices so I said I would buy my own.

  I was then sent up to the ice-cold viewing room. It was huge and empty except for Mom’s basic wooden coffin at the far end. They said they have to keep the room cold because if not the bodies thaw. A detail I did not need to know. He closed the door and I stood for a moment before moving. I then walked across the huge empty room and it felt like an hour-long trip. There she was in her shitty stiff cotton leopard-and-neon-printed shirt and nothing on the bottom. I looked. Under the cover was just a plastic tarp and I did not see her big grandma panties, either. I did not inspect too closely for obvious reasons but I had to know about the stuff they don’t show you. It did strike me as morbidly funny and knew that Mom would get a chuckle out of it all as well.

  “Look, Ma, no pants!” I said. “Oh, Mom . . . here we go. Haven’t you taken this far enough? You are not getting up, are you? I love you, you know that, right? God damn it, Mom. Really? We could have had more laughs. My babies are really funny, too. I am sorry.”

  And with that, I put the weird square-bodied doll in the box with her and placed my picture in the little heart frame, which by the way was one of the party favors from my sweet-sixteen birthday. Mom had over two hundred made with a picture of me as a baby inside. We would always find the extras hidden in surprising places. I tried to put the small frame in her now freezing hands but once again could not open her fingers because this time she was actually dead and stiff. I attempted to wedge it under the clasped part but it felt too Sopranos-like. I settled on placing it on her sunken chest and pictured it rolling off during her transfer to the crematorium facility in Long Island City.

  I had to kiss her forehead, which was indeed freezing and such a contrast to the moments right after her death. I am glad I did it, but wish I had not. My lips will forever remember the cold, smooth skin. She still didn’t jump up or tell me it was all OK. And it wasn’t OK. None of it had been but here we were. This was indeed it. The moment I had been afraid of my whole life.

  “I love you, Mama. Bye.”

  I walked out, looking back once more and wanting to rush in and shake her. I was so truly alone. And she was so not ready to go.

  I was quiet in the car as we drove away.

  Three days later I got another call from the funeral director. He was hemming and hawing and I could tell something was wrong.

  “Yeah . . . hi. . . . Well, you know how I said that we were using a different facility to do your mother’s cremation?”

  “Yes?”

  “Well . . . yeah. . . . OK, well . . . we um, we started the process. . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “And then, um, well, that facility lost power as well. So we had to then have your mom sent to a different one.”

  “OK . . . So was she . . . ah, lumpy . . . or just done from the waist down, or . . . You know what, don’t tell me. I don’t need to know. . . . I am good. . . . Thank you.”

  I went shopping at antique stores for a sterling-silver container of some kind. I even toyed with the idea of its being a martini shaker as an inside joke. I could not find one big enough. Neither did my mother, obviously!

  Anyway, I ended up buying a sterling-silver round jar with a lid that probably had been used for biscuits or cookies. It must have been some kind of retirement gift because it had engraving in a foreign language and a date around the lip of the lid and was very heavy. My plan was to put her on my bar and nestle her among the array of glass bottles and s
terling knickknacks and stirrers. I figured this way she could remain forever close to the two most important things in her life: me and booze.

  I know the joke would not be lost on her and that she would actually appreciate it. It is not against Catholicism to cremate, but a burial and a headstone is more often the norm. But “dust to dust” sounds more like cremation than decomposition if you ask me. There is not even a skeleton left after the oven. Catholics love funerals and a place to visit their dead, so I will eventually find her a spot in a mausoleum in the city if I can. But cremating her was what I wanted, and I did what I wanted to do. I did not like the idea of her in a box under the ground because it did not feel finished to me. She was never a woman to be contained. She was the kind who would rather go down in a blaze of glory than be in a box. It seemed fitting. I wanted her with me as well as near or in her favorite places.

  This would end up being easier to do than expected because she, of course, did not entirely fit in the cookie jar. When the funeral director handed me the jar, he also handed me a canvas bag with the name of the funeral home printed on the side. It was shockingly heavy. I felt like I had just visited a gift shop in a theme park that had happened to be death themed. The director sheepishly said that she didn’t fit in the jar, “So the rest of her is in this plastic sealed bag and blond wooden box. Sorry about that.” At this point that was the least of my worries. I was just glad they finished all of her.

  The wooden box sits next to our beloved dog Darla in a cabinet. I have yet to decide what to do with either of them. The sterling biscuit container indeed sits on my antique marble bar table amid the beautiful bottles and antique decanters and items we collected from all over the world. I can’t wait to feel her watching me.

  • • •

  While Mom was dying I tried to keep giving myself the benefit of every doubt. I was there and loving. Toward the end, I consciously made myself breathe and stay present in every moment. If I drifted in attempt to escape the situation, I would snap back and touch her arm and tell her I loved her. I said what I thought I wanted to say. I said what I thought she would want to hear. I said words but it never felt cathartic or sufficient. And I will never know if she heard me or not.

  I would have to remind myself that every time I visited her I did hug her and tell her I loved her. It had to have an impact. But it never seemed enough for either one of us.

  It never felt satisfying and I never exhaled. I didn’t think I started early enough, while she was able to respond. I kept beating myself up for not doing something differently. I kept having that gnawing feeling that I waited too long to start really spending time with her. But then I remember how impossibly hard it had been to be around her. I had created a distance so as to form my own life. I had to leave so I could return.

  And yet I look back, and I realize I really tried. I did my honest best. I never fully abandoned her all those years. While in the facility I always went back in for another hug or to say I love you again. She would sometimes smile and mumble it back or she’d start to cry as I was walking away. Had my lifetime of devotion registered with her at all? It really was not supposed to end this way. Or maybe it simply was?

  In the end I wanted her to forgive me for the “divorce” and for stripping the entire office and for putting her in a facility. I admit I do carry some residual guilt. But I did get a bit of a reprieve when Lisa told me that Mom said to her, “I can’t believe Brookie did that to me with the office,” then with a pursed-lip smirk added, “That took balls.” Lisa said it was as if she was proud and had taught me well.

  I got nothing like that from her during her dying days. Before she left this earth I never had that moment with her alone where she gave me peace of mind and heart. I never did with Dad, either. But the problem is they are the ones doing the dying. They can’t make it about us, the living. But if she had been peaceful I might have been able to exhale. I don’t know if my mother had ever been at peace.

  Now that she’s gone, I’m not sure what I miss. I miss the earlier years and who I believed she was. I missed our unabashed laughter. But most of all what I think I miss is potential. I was always waiting for the drama to be over. I believed one day it would all be fine. She would be normal and sober and happy and we could relax and enjoy all we had experienced in life. Her alcoholism permeated our lives and it was on a rampage to steamroll our dreams. Mom was not strong enough to fight it. But honestly the alcoholism didn’t kill me. What did me in was the hope. I was never ever released from the hope. There was never any freedom from it.

  I miss my mommy, but do I miss the idea of her more? I wanted to feel more relieved for her when she passed, but I don’t feel that way. Mostly I just feel sad. It seems like such a shame and such a waste actually. And yet maybe if she had been healthier, my life would not have turned out as extraordinary. I can’t regret any of my life but I do regret for her. I am OK. I was always going to be OK. She was not and that is simply sad to me. All I ever really wanted was for Mom to be happy and healthy minded. I wanted this mostly for her but it would have been an amazing gift for so many.

  I also wanted my mom to accept me entirely and support my decisions. But like I have said about my own children, we are not the same people. I wanted her to agree with me and it could not happen. I often had to force myself to go against her. I wanted her to be independent, and at the same time I wanted her to help me be independent. Two things that threatened her to the core. Independence equaled loneliness for her. She claimed she was independent, but it scared her to death.

  There’s an Erich Fromm quote I love: “The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother’s side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent.” I did become my own person, but am not sure I was or will ever be completely independent of her. I was born from her.

  Once we stopped living together full-time I didn’t want Mom to be alone. I wanted her to maximize her many creative talents. She used to help cast male cowboys for Bruce Weber. Why not go into casting? She collected linens. Maybe open a linen shop? I wanted her to streamline her life and not become a slave to her possessions like she warned me against becoming. I wanted her to not be lonely. Admittedly, I would have been jealous—and even squeamish—if she had a relationship. But I’d get over it, because I’m a big girl. Plus, if she’d had one, it could have freed me considerably. At times I wished I had a sibling from her to carry the burden. I envisioned her traveling or having a fabulous shop in New York and fun colorful friends. I wanted us to have great holidays and family gatherings. Nothing is ever like it is in the movies.

  I guess I harbored such romantic visions about who she could have been because I really believed they were options. I saw it all. Why couldn’t she? I wanted her to never drink a drop of alcohol ever again and be released from her crippling addiction. I wanted her to know how fabulous I thought she was and how much more I thought she could enjoy. I wanted her to feel loved and to have truly loved herself. But that last key desire of mine never happened. Instead, she was sad inside and alienated everybody around her. Her loneliness was epic and I felt like I was watching a life squandered.

  And, because she was not communicating at all at the end, her dying was even more frustrating and I felt increasingly helpless. I could not snap my fingers and change any of it. It is a crazy, gut-churning feeling to be alive while somebody is actually dying. We should not have been done yet but maybe you never are. Maybe it never is enough. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe life just needs to be lived, period. Mom was leaving this world and I could not stop it from happening. My mother did not want to die but she spent a lifetime killing herself.

  I will never feel like I said good-bye to either of my parents. But honestly, nothing would have been enough. I prayed she would hold my hand once more, make eye contact, or say I love you. They say that the hearing is on
e of the last senses to go and that she could hear me telling her I loved her, but I will never know. I will never know what she was or was not feeling. She seemed horribly scared to me and not at all peaceful. Maybe people just make that stuff up to help the living, grieving people? I have played and replayed those last few days and her last moments. I’ve done it drunk; I’ve done it sober. I’ve done it in therapy and out loud to myself when I’m alone. And I still can’t fucking grasp it. I wanted to be there, and I was, but the horrific image will be etched on my retinas for the rest of my life. I would have beaten myself up if I weren’t there, but I will forever regret seeing what I saw. I cannot believe my mother no longer exists. She is no longer present in this world. I simply can’t believe it.

  I understand nothing more about death than I ever have before. In fact, because I can no longer just imagine what it would look like, I no longer have the luxury of painting it the way I want to see it. I did see it and I did not like one bit of it. I saw it and I still don’t get it. I have no clue as to what really happened or happens.

  • • •

  For me it helps to believe that there is a God of some kind because it means that maybe Mom is not alone.

  I hope and pray that our loved ones find peace and are only dead to the material world. I wanted nothing more than to know Mom ended happy in her heart. Maybe that’s why she looked so unfamiliar the second she died. Maybe the body is just a temporary house. There has to be more than this. There has to be something else. I know this world can’t possibly be all there is. I have to believe she went somewhere, because otherwise it’s just that she no longer is. I simply hate to bear that thought. I wanted some sort of proof she still occupied somewhere. I wanted a sign or to feel a “presence.” But that is not the way it worked for me, evidently. I now know why people seek mediums or psychics. They want to believe and will take any proof.