On this day, 25 years ago, my life was permanently altered when I found my mother lying lifeless in her bed. She had spent over a decade battling lupus, Type 2 diabetes, and cycling in and out of hospitals, then on a seasonably warm spring afternoon, she slipped into permanent rest.
I was a junior in college when my mom died. Almost legal drinking age, and still living at my parents’ house. I thought I knew adulthood, and desperately tried to shed the “little boy” image she had of me, the youngest of her three sons. As a now fully grown adult who is three years shy of the age my mother was when her life ended, I now have a full understanding of just how much of a kid I was at the point of her departure.
For the last 25 years, I have commemorated my mother’s life and legacy through writing. Before she passed, she was concerned about how I was prioritizing the poetry open mics over the Sunday church services she raised me to attend. At that time, I was finding new gospel in smoky clubs with my band of Bohemian poetry friends. My mother never got to see me in that element. She did not know that the hardest public performance I ever endured was at her funeral.
I knew I wanted to tribute her differently for this milestone anniversary of her new life. There have been times when I felt that my recollections of her were fading into the passage of time, so I wanted…I needed to be reminded of the full spectrum of the woman who raised me. My desire to be reconnected with my memories of my mother as a best friend, an aunt, an educator, a second mom to our friends, a church soloist, and even as an advocate for chronic illness inspired this storytelling project, Eternal Anna, a collage of audio reflections from a diverse representation of the village that knew and loved her.
I conceptualized and created this project for myself and my family, but I hope that anyone reading this and watching this project is able to also find their lost loved ones in these reflections. Once upon a time the people we loved and lost were building a legacy that we could not always see as it was unfolding.
My mother, Anna Ruth (Andrus) Rose was certainly building an unforgettable one. I am thankful to those who were a part of her village that chose to give voice to the impact she made on their lives.
