The Blue Bowl
by Pamela Stone
My mother was extremely tidy and organized. An interior decorator, her home was filled with oriental rugs, expensive china, silver, and pictures with original artwork.
My mother could take a tired looking table and completely transform it with a vase of fresh flowers or an antique brass candy dish. She had a gift. She was capable of turning the simplest item into pure gold.
After my mother died suddenly from a heart attack, we returned to clean out and put away her belongings. Always exceptionally neat, it surprised me and my brother when we found a blue ceramic bowl sitting in the middle of her freshly made-up bed.
As usual, my take-charge brother went through her home like he was on speed. I’m not sure what the hurry was — but he put us on an impossible timetable. We set aside some of Mother’s clothes for the Goodwill, threw her shoes into a box, and quickly began rifling through her drawers. I felt guilty about this. I longed to finger each item lovingly, recalling memories of when and where she wore it.
Take her scarves. She had dozens of Neiman-Marcus silk scarves vibrant with color, which she wore with coordinating outfits. She also had a pearl-handled pistol (something my father bought which she never used), and beautiful costume jewelry. I longed to place each necklace and string of pearls around my neck and wear them, hoping she’d walk into the room, saying, “Pam, what are you doing with my things?”
Unlike my brother, I wanted to pocket all her possessions, hoping to catch her magic. Some of this magic was displayed on my mother’s dressing table, which was filled with her bottles of makeup, tortoiseshell hair brushes, rouge, and eyeliner. Here, she spent each morning of her life, giving new life to her spirit. A trained painter, my mother never neglected her morning ritual of making up her face. It was almost a religious duty to make herself come alive.
Gazing through her looking glass, I felt my mother’s eyes on me. Her dressing table had jeweled bottles of fine French perfume. A gold compact and lip liner case. And a fluffy pink powder puff. I remember seeing my mother at her dressing table, dressed in her full slip, methodically shaking the bottle of base makeup. Then, like a painter covering her palette, she’d carefully dot the makeup on her nose, cheeks, chin and even her neck. Then, she’d add the Vaseline on her lashes.
Then the eyeliner, and last, the Revlon lipstick. Her favorite was Persian Melon. Standing in my mother’s bedroom, her presence seemed alive. I could even smell her sweet, freshly powered skin. Her clothes were in order, where she separated them by seasons. Her shoes were neatly lined on the floor.
How I hated to rush in and begin throwing and discarding. It seemed almost painful. But, for some odd reason, I followed my brother’s rhythm. After we’d gone through each drawer, though, we noticed something odd. In the middle of her freshly made bed, there was a blue ceramic bowl, filled with crushed powder. In the midst of cleaning and tossing and rearranging, we hardly noticed the bowl’s contents. But, as we left, we looked inside and noticed something strange. There were crushed pills there. (At least it looked that way.)
Do you know what we did with that information? Did we taste the odd contents? Did we call the authorities and have the bowl examined? Did we call the coroner? No. We quickly bypassed the bowl, shrugging off our greatest fears, as we rushed out of her apartment. After we locked the door and walked away, we tried to bury the memory of the bowl’s contents.
Although it’s ten years later, sometimes my brother and I look at each other. Without saying anything, we wonder, what was in that bowl. It wasn’t medicine, but it sure looked like it.
The medical experts say my mother, who was 72, died suddenly of cardiac arrest. The coroner's report said she died of natural causes. Though silently and shamefully, we wonder if the bowls’ contents helped her along. When the paramedics came they cleared out her medicine cabinet, taking all of her many meds.
But the mysterious bowl was left behind on her bed.
One side of me refuses to think the worst. The other side says, “Maybe it was her choice. So what? Maybe she wanted to have control over her death — just the way she hoped to control her life.”
Maybe she fulfilled her wish. Always a hypochondriac, my mother knew her way around the medicine chest. “Don’t worry about me getting old and helpless,” she once said. “When the time comes, I know exactly what to do.”
Pam is an author, journalist and lecturer specializing in public relations, advertising and corporate communications. She's served on the staffs of the Los Angeles Times, The Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Times Herald. Her articles on women, senior and family issues are distributed by The New York Times and Los Angeles Times syndicates. Pam's articles on women's issues were featured on the the Phil Donahue Show and the Bertice Berry Show.
In 2001 Pam authored A Woman's Guide to Living Alone: 10 Ways to Survive Grief and Be Happy. Currently, she's writing a book about long-distance caregiving. While serving on the advisory board for Home Instead Senior Care, Ms. Stone became their national spokesperson. You can connect with Pamela through email and her website is www.pamstonewriter.com
