June 25 would have been my adoptive mom’s 85th birthday. I had really hoped she would live as long as her late Aunt Jane, who made it into her nineties. After all, she did not get to raise children until she was in her thirties, which was considered to be pretty late back then. But that was not to be.

A few days before her birthday, my youngest son James brought me his big Snoopy doll, and said “Nammy loved Snoopy.” I said she did, and we talked about a few more things (Ziggy, tigers) that she loved. She earned the moniker “Nammy” when my daughter was a toddler and couldn’t say “Grammy.” Only my children called her that. My niece could not manage to say “Nammy” as a child, so to her she was “Mimi.”

There were some things that bothered me in the time she was in the hospital. First, the staff called her Betty. Her full first name was Betty Jane. She was named for her mother, who went by Betty, and her Aunt Jane. But she preferred to be called B.J. No one brought it up until after she passed, and a priest came to give her last rites.

My first thought was he was a little late. My second thought was annoyance, because he messed up and called her C.J. though the whole thing. Afterward, we laughed about it. My mom was not particularly religious anyway. She converted to Catholicism when she married my late father, because she was expected to.

The other bothersome thing was her eyes. It was the first time I had been with someone when they were newly dead. My mom had very pale blue eyes. I arrived at the hospital about 30 minutes after she died, and her eyes were open. They hadn’t really clouded at all, and they looked like the unmoving eyes of a doll. That bothered me a lot. I don’t know why, but it disturbed me enough to look into it.

If the eyes aren’t closed before rigor mortis sets in, they have to be forced shut. I won’t go into detail, but bless the funeral workers who have to close dead people’s eyes.

Although, Mom probably would have found my discomfort amusing if she could have seen it. So Happy Birthday Mom. This is probably the last I will mention her, except for little anecdotes in the future.