Last Thursday, we unknowingly entered a whirlwind and on Friday afternoon, we came out the other side, stunned, hurt and crushed but worst of all, Mom was gone. The suddenness of our loss seems cruel and arbitrary; it reduced us to anguished tears and tumbled us into an abyss of grief from which we must somehow make our way. Ironically, I think the woman most capable of leading us from such darkness is no longer with us. This post is my tribute to her, a love letter of sorts, an appreciation of Mom and the gifts she gave us, a way for me to share all the things that made us love her and laugh with her.
She asked me to call her “Mom” almost immediately upon our first meeting. Deb brought me out to her home “in the sticks” --- Lippitt Estates in Cumberland --- not long after we began seeing each other. Dad gave me the first-degree like any Dad would but Mom trusted me right away. I soon learned that I was not special in any way --- she easily trusted and gave up her heart to just about everybody. (I’ve heard that she was the Neighborhood Mom in Lippitt’s and this should not surprise anyone who’s known her for at least five minutes.) So, she was “Mom” for me, always, never Helen. She treated me as one of her own and welcomed me into her family and for that, I will always be grateful.
Mom was that Mom who goes to your kids’ baseball/softball/football games and is annoyingly loud. Professional athletes often say they dislike that guy on the other team because he’s such a fierce competitor until he’s traded to their team. That’s Mom: you want her on your team because she cheers so hard for your son or daughter (and their teammates) that it makes you cringe. (Ask Deb how often she used to tell Mom to tone it down. Does anyone know if she was ever asked to leave by an umpire or referee??) Here’s something, though: she attended MY baseball games and cheered just as hard for me as she did for the kids.
There was her driving. If you’ve ever been her passenger, then you know the feeling of sheer terror that I will describe forthwith. “Hell on Wheels” is appropriate, I think (she had a pro football pick ‘em team one time called “Helen Wheels”). It’s an understatement to say that she drove fast on the highway and always in the fast lane. For those of you who thought Mom never used bad language, always substituting “bananas” or other French words instead, then you never rode with her. First time I ever heard Mom swear was in the car. She sometimes tailgated, using the travel lane as a passing lane, cursing the driver as she passed him or her by, and swerving back into the high-speed lane. If I was beside her or in the back, I white-knuckled it all the way, my hands cramped up and my feet tired from pressing a non-existent brake pedal by the time we safely reached our destination.
Conversely, I know I drove her crazy when she was my passenger because I rarely drive faster than the posted speed limit by more than 5 mph. I use the (middle) travel lane and the left-hand lane only to pass and rarely pass slower traffic. Her frustration (and Deb’s, too, to be fair) would sometimes escape her: I’d hear murmured French (“…eh, banan”) or a satisfied “Yes!” when I finally did pass that tractor-trailer I’d been behind for the past two miles.
When Mom and Dad lived in The Villages in Florida, they had a golf cart to get around the community. First time I’ve ever been on two wheels in a four-wheeled vehicle. I’ve heard the story about my nephew Ethan being thrown from the golf cart while out with his Grandma (he was unhurt, no worries).
Mom’s idiosyncrasies and peculiarities are near-legendary. She was a good sport about being the butt of jokes and she often piled on herself. There are so many --- here’s my list (you probably know some that I don’t):
- Ziplock™ bags (she would often label the contents of these)
- Twist ties (stored in a Ziplock™ bag with the words “twist ties” written on it)
- Brewing coffee (only a 500-word blog post or a tri-fold laminated pamphlet with a flowchart would serve this topic any justice)
- Sleeveless tops
- Chocolate-chipless chocolate chip cookies
- Ordering breakfast out (her instructions were very specific and she was not shy about sending something back)
- Re-using lightly soiled paper plates (“Mom, they’re single use!”)
- Used paper towels everywhere
- Powerfully loud sneezes, usually a series of them
- Obsession with backing into parking spots*
- Clean trash (I kid you not)
- Dynamites
- Mashed potatoes (the best ever)
- Best-smelling laundry ever (Mom taught me everything I know about laundry…I loved when she did ours during the times she stayed with us.)
*A favorite story of mine: when Deb and I were on our Caribbean cruise, our cruise ship was captained by a woman (apparently the first ever such captain, as I recall). One morning, we were enjoying the breakfast buffet as the ship was arriving at a port of call and an announcement was made that the captain would be making the unusual maneuver of backing the ship into the dock. I looked at Deb and our eyes met --- we were both thinking the same thing. I mimicked someone backing up a car, hands on the wheel, looking over the backseat and said, “Moud zee, don’t tell your father I scratched the boat.” We both had a fit of giggles, crying, snorting, and hiccupping --- we could not stop. I felt everyone in the room staring at a couple of crazy people sharing the perfect inside joke.
The punch line: later that day, returning to the boat from an excursion, we noticed workers painting scratches along the hull at the waterline. Can’t make this stuff up. We told Mom this story when we returned home and she laughed right along with us, the good sport she always was.
You may know of my nerdy love of music and near-manic collection of same. Yet my favorite music is not an mp3, or a cassette or a record. That music is what I hear when I am in the house with Deb and Sarah and Mom. They are in the kitchen and I am in another room and I hear their laughter, their girly giggling at something, anything (usually at Mom’s expense) and it is the sweetest music I will ever hear, bar none. It never failed to make me smile, or laugh, even though I was too far away to hear the joke, or the time Mom misheard something someone said (this was usually her telling on herself), or described an incident of her road rage or told how she opened a bag of marshmallows that she bought seven years ago. Those memories --- and your own memories will serve us all well on those days when you’re feeling a little down, your boss is being less than nice, or the New England weather is making you miserable. I will miss that a lot.
Mom was a…ok, let’s say this: she was a collector. We have all teased her relentlessly about this. We helped Mom and Dad move two times in the last 29 years: from Cumberland to the Villages in Florida and from the Villages to Johnston. We were astonished on one hand by the sheer amount of “stuff” they had --- especially Mom --- but it also was a never-ending source of laughter at Mom’s expense. If you’ve ever seen her cupboards, pantries and food closets, you know what I mean. Everything is neatly labeled and in its place. There are at least five (or more) of everything, expiration dates be damned. Yet, I know for a fact that on more than one occasion, Deb has gone shopping at Mom’s house, or alternatively, Mom would bring her surplus over. “Hmm, how old is this can of…wait, there’s no nutrition data on the label!” (Do a search for “nutrition labeling” on this page: https://www.fda.gov/aboutfda/whatwedo/history/milestones/ucm128305.htm )
What else did she collect? Where to begin? There are the small kitchen appliances she never used: waffle makers, blenders, the stuff that’s “Seen on TV”, the hard sell pitchmen who say “but wait, there’s more!” There are meticulously labeled binders and binders full of recipes. Containers from Dave’s Market. Empty Fluff® containers. Medicine bottles. There was no container that was not re-used, re-labeled, re-purposed --- all saved from the landfill. I’m going to make a leap here, but Mom may have been the very first environmentalist.
Mom’s favorite collection, though, was one you can’t see or catalog, or store in a prominently labeled shoebox or re-purposed medicine bottle. She collected hearts: yours and mine and every heart that she encountered along her travels. She nurtured them, and remembered them and laughed with them and fed them and cherished them. Each of those hearts was a prize that she protected as a lioness protects her cubs. If your heart was in her collection, it could never be traded. There were so many of these that she sometimes lost track, but when you saw her at a family event or a ballgame or at a restaurant, she remembered and held it up to the light to make sure it was ok. Your heart mattered in that moment and you smiled and laughed along with her.
She is not here. The other day, I happened to find myself home alone, working on the slide show project. It was quiet and I realized that I expected to hear a knock on the door and then the kitchen door opens and Mom is there, popping in. No more. She is not here and I cannot wrap my head around it because it can’t be true. There is no medicine for melancholy.
We should all be comforted by knowing that she is watching over us, loving us, enjoying a sun-splotched afternoon on the shores of an idyllic pond as she casts, over and over, fishing for our hearts and collecting them, one by one.
