Taska Sanford
I don’t really know what it was like when she was born, but I do know what it was like when she died.
That’s the way I always imagined my mom Caroline Gage Sanford was born. (Taska Sanford)
“Wednesday July 15, 1942
Cicadas sang
A young man took a drink
A young woman cursed
A crack of lightning struck and a tiny baby screamed her way into the world.
The little girl thought - Com-on Let’s get this started.”
Taska Sanford
Caroline Gage Stanford
That’s the way I imagined my mom, Caroline Gage Sanford, was born. I don’t really know what it was like when she was born, but I do know what it was like when she died.
I accepted the duty and the privilege to escort her to her death. She died Saturday, July 25th 2020, at home next to her garden just as she planned.
It was cancer, in the time of a pandemic, during lockdown. That part she did not ask for but she accepted it, matter of factly.
1001 Southern Nights
People will either write some form of memorial or at least think of one when they can not sleep in the darkest part of the night. With that in mind, writing this I still felt so disconnected.
As one friend, also going through loss, said it pointedly, “Your first home is now gone.”
Caroline Gage Stanford
The days of raw primal grief felt like the darkest of nights. Alone in my head while the world slept, I wrote this memorial over and over and over.
Because the thought of telling you about how I knew her kept Mom just a little closer, a little warmer, a little less dead.
I then began a transformation. I took on a new identity. I left behind caregiver, daughter, youngest child, and put on the shining, embellished robes of Scheherazade. You remember from One Thousand and One Arabian Nights? Scheherazade was married to a terrible Sultan that married girls only to kill them the next morning and then married again... until Sheherazade arrived. She beguiled the sultan by spinning the greatest stories ever - to keep herself alive day after day. So I have become Shaherazade telling stories night after night. Stories that keep my mother alive in my heart one more day and then one more day and on and on.
What story do I tell you? The time in high school in a heated moment when told my very favorite teacher, Mr. Yates, to fuck off? Mom laughed so hard when I told her, she spit out her coca-cola.
Or I could tell you about that day when I was in high school and she said in all seriousness, “Taska, you will need to learn how to make money to buy your own groceries and pay your own rent, but I will always buy you art supplies.”
Caroline Gage Stanford
High school was rough, like it often is, and I had trouble connecting with my dearest friends for a time. I found myself at home in the giant house on West Drive feeling alone but not wanting to go out. Then a new friend came along and reached out to me. Mom, who had worked long hours to set up her own psychology business, now had the time to see her daughter struggling with teenage life. So she stopped being as much of a mother and instead became my friend.
We did so much together that gave me joy and confidence. She taught me to garden, to sing, to call bad drivers “jackass!”
We talked on the phone every week - I mean EVERY week when I left for college. We wrote letters. We took cool art classes together and sent altered art books back and forth across the country.
Caroline Gage Stanford
And then as life progressed my dad died in 2013 and she lost her partner in crime. And because family is family, without batting an eye, Travis, Cedar, and I brought Mom (now Nana) out to California to live with us. When thanking Travis for so readily welcoming my mom, he said he had promised my dad to help her. So we did.
And for the next 6 years while I slid from the role of daughter to mother, my mom constructed a new life out here that was quickly built on music, gardens, art, new friends, and late nights at the bars!
I could also tell you the story about the week when Cecelia came to visit. The cancer was coming down on mom fast and furious. Then her beloved friend and cousin, Cecilia Chilton, flew into town despite the pandemic. She fired up the iPads and she and Mom attended Augusta Music Camp online. What a phenomenon! I could not believe the strength and vigor mom regained. Her ailing voice returned and she played her guitar again and again. Then the week ended, July 18th, Cecilia returned home, and mom lay down her guitar…...
Taska Sanford
Alright Dad, I think we all did our part well with Mom’s last years. Now you and Mom can drive off in the Dodge minivan into the desert, together.
So you see I do have 1001 stories to tell about this amazing woman.