Bubbles, Alison, and Ava Jeanne leave the hospital to begin our lmulti-generational together! (Note the beautifully smocked – if I do say so myself – dress Ava Jeanne wears home. The bonnet Ava Jeanne wears was worn by her mother when she came home from the hospital.
Sounds of
Tiny hands slapping watermelons
and joining in with applause
until she knows an A+.
Boats making their way
through the deep water of our backyard.
Birds melodiously conversing
with birds of different feathers.
Wind chimes singing a duet
with clacking palm trees to the tune of gentle breezes.
The feel of
Really cold ice on her tongue.
The tickle of peach fuzz against her chubby cheek.
Heavily mayonnaises potato salad
squishing through her tiny fingers.
Ephemeral bath bubbles on her arms
Ocean waves stealing the ground from beneath her feet.
Scents of
Roses and peonies.
Heavy hot air of the Lowcountry summer.
A watermelon busting open.
Bubble gum flavored toothpaste.
Seeing
Her mother’s face when she enters the room.
The vast ever-changing ocean.
Her bedtime bottle.
Slowly
slowly
Sometimes taking one step forward
and thirteen backwards,
The shroud of grief is pierced
at least momentarily
and she reacquaints me with
wonder
delight
and hope.
~~~~~~~
Notes:
~ Ava Jeanne is a year older now than in this photo, but the computer wouldn’t cooperate and upload the photo i want to use.
~ My mother took her last earthly breath last fall, and still I grieve. Hard.
~ This was written as granddaughter Ava Jeanne took her 2-hour nap this afternoon in my lap. I know, I know. I shouldn’t be rocking her at this stage . . . but one thing I know for sure: I won’t get a second chance to do this.
Mother and Daddy (Yea Yea and Car Car to the Grands and Great Grands) got married in the Fayette County GA jail. yes, really. Granddaddy (Mother’s daddy) was Sheriff, you see, and in those days voters elected the Sheriff and taxpayers got the family – especially the wife – for free to cook, clean, and make sure the prisoners had freshly laundered white shirts and pants with the black strip down the side.
Though I love the story about them getting married in the jail, Mother did not find it charming at all. So 26 years later when The Engineer and I decided to publicly say “I sure will!”, I told Mother to plan and host the wedding she always wanted because all that mattered to me is that I got to spend the rest of my life with this man . . . and that we had watermelon at our reception. Mother went all out, hiring caterers (who brought delicious watermelon, attractively served), planting snapdragons (something she’d always wanted but never could seem to get around to it till she had a big deadline), and her front door – usually ignored by people who preferred to save steps and instead come in through the back door under the carport – got used! At the end of the night, her smile was as big as her exhaustion.
April 5, 1973 (the fourth day anniversary of our engagement)
So there we were necking – I mean SITTING – on the gorgeous blue one-piece L-shaped sofa in the living room, The Engineer and I, talking about plans for the next weekend when I noted that I had to go to a wedding shower for a friend, also noting that as an introvert of the first order, showers are not my favorite type of gathering. “Well,” he said, playfully tapping my nose with his finger, “when we get married, you’ll have to go to lots of showers.”
Caught completely by surprise, I sat upright, leaned away from him, and noted the obvious, “You haven’t asked me yet.” I. just wanted to make sure this Atlanta boy knew the correct order of things. They might, after all, do things differently in the big city, but he was in the country now, and we did not make assumptions about such things as being the lead actors in a wedding.
“I know,” he said, obviously pleased with himself, and taking a better position to see my reaction.
I picked him upmet him 8 weeks before when a high school friend and I ventured into the bar where he worked weekends, drawing beer, and I took one look at him in that brown leather floppy-brimmed hat and knew that very night that this is who I wanted to go through life with. I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life necking sitting beside this adorable, funny, brilliant man, but even I hadn’t had time to start planning how the engagement and consequently the wedding would go.
Finally, he slid off the low sofa, got on one knee, took my hands in his and asked, “So will you?”
“Have you asked Daddy?”
“No, I wanted to ask you first.”
“You still have to talk to Daddy, but YES I WILL!!!” I said (and I didn’t cry).
That was March 31, 1973.
On April 1, 1973, we were sitting (not necking this time, just sitting, I promise) in the swing in the backyard when he had another good idea: “Why don’t we promise not to tell anybody just yet?” he asked, an idea that was fine with me because I was sure . . . and not sure. You know? We decided to keep it a secret for a while . . . which turned out to be less than 24 hours!
And the rest, as they say, is 51 years of history.
April 5, 2023
The 8 month anniversary of the day Mother took her last earthly breath. It seems like this morning, and it seems like my whole life ago. Grief still has its boot on my neck. I now cry at the most inane things. Sometimes I don’t even know what broke the dam and allowed the tears to flow.
David Kessler who studied death, dying, and grief alongside Elizabeth Kubler-Ross says the number one need of a person grieving is to have someone bear witness to their grief. I feel that strongly, deeply, near constantly, but i keep my lips zipped because most people are uncomfortable talking about such subjects deemed “sad” and “negative” and what I want to do more than anything is make people smile. So yea, I turtles in soon after that last breath, retreating to my shell and pulling down the black-out curtains. I stay away from social media, talk to only 3 people: a cousin who’s like my Big Sister, my friend Laura, The Engineer, daughter Alison, son Kipp, and daughter-in-law Marnie.
I know that’s more than 3 people – such is the thinking style of a #BrainOnGrief. I’m just glad I caught it here. Usually it’s weeks after before I see some embarrassing goof.
That’s another thing: my brain is mushy.
I can’t seem to find ground under my feet.
I spend more time in bed than ever before. Bed therapy, I call it.
I’m exhausted all the time – and I do mean all the time. Grieving is exhausting.
Even now I’m embarrassed about what I’ve told you and fear I sound like I’m auditioning for one of those tv commercials for insurance where the fella is trying to teach adults how to be young by getting them to cease and desist doing all sorts of things – like telling your life story to complete strangers! (Personally, I think I’d be a shoo-in for that role.) (And several of the other behaviors the dude is trying to eradicate in the name of not embarrassing your children.)
I binge read grief memories, seeking the magic key or password that will allow me to escape. Just last night I started reading a book on happiness. Joy is still way too far out of reach, but happiness? I might one day find my way back there. I have a plan. I’ll tell you more next time. Right now, I feel a bed therapy session coming on. Thanks for being here. Thanks for listening reading.
A woman with long brunette hair wearing a long green dress with white polka dots stands to the left of a man with brunette hair wearing a brown suite with a red shirt. Both are smiling broadly.
“I don’t like to go to showers,” I (the introvert who, though I may enjoy them, am exhausted by parties and gatherings) told this man I’d known for 64 days and seen a dozen times.
”You’ll have to go to showers when we get married,” he said, touching the end of my nose gently.
“You haven’t asked me to marry you,” I said with breath that was stuck somewhere in my lungs, refusing to come out.
”I know,” he said, then sat back.
<Insert awkward moments.>
”Will you?” he asked after what seemed like hours, weeks, eons. “Will you marry me?”
”YES!” I said on the way to throwing my arms around his neck. It was the easiest, most confident and sure yes I’d ever uttered. “I sure will marry you.”
Later that night, we moved from the mid-century modern one piece L-shaped blue nubby fabric covered sofa with a chunky blue, green, and black resin cylindrical lamp hanging from a gold chain over the teak end table built onto the sofa (Oh how I wish I still had that sofa and lamp!) to the wooden yard swing hanging in the red dirt
yard. The air was cool and quiet. So were we. Keeping the swing moving in a slow sultry back and forth, back and forth, back and forth movement fell to him because my feet wouldn’t touch the ground.
With one arm around me and one hand on the swing chain, he said, “Let’s not tell anybody about our engagement just yet,” something I readily agreed to. Was his question an April Fool’s joke? Was my answer an April Fool’s joke? We’d sleep on it and have the final answer tomorrow.
As the sun stretched open the next day, my phone rang. It was Andy asking if I still wanted to marry him, and my answer was an exact replica of the night before: “Yes, I sure will marry you!”
That proposal happened 50 years ago tonight at my parents’ house. I can’t speak for The Engineer, but I can tell you with absolutely and enthusiastic certainty that I like the answer I gave then, and I’d give it by way of exact quote again today.
(The above photo was taken 6 months later.)
To hear me telling the story in my own voice, here you go . . .
My granddaddy had one brother – Uncle William – and three sisters – Aunt Rene, Aunt Lucy, and Aunt Mary. Aunt Rene was the fun one. When ever we were with Aunt Rene, life was a party. Aunt Mary was the school marm. She knew she was put on earth to make rules that children were to obey implicitly. Aunt Lucy was the veritable encyclopedia of knowledge on everything – including raising children, which was surprising, given that she had none of her own.
The three sisters were very close. When they weren’t in the same room, they were writing letters to each other. When Aunt Lucy’s husband died, she moved in with Aunt Rene, and the two of them spent all day every day sitting by the same heater, eating at the same table, sleeping in the same bed.
When The Girls hit their mid-nineties, they began to take more naps, and every time they woke up from a nap and found it light outside, they were sure it was morning, so they took their morning tablets. Which meant 2 things: overdose and time to find another place for them to live where others could be responsible for disbursing their medications.
We found a lovely assisted living home close by so we could visit often. As the annual Christmas party approached, Aunt Rene got more and more excited. We made an appointment for her to have her hair fixed, her nails done, and went shopping for a new gold lame outfit.
The night of the Christmas party, Mother and I went to join in the festivities. We wiped The Girls sitting in the back corner of the room in front of the drink table. On our way to them, Mother made a wide right turn and stopped by to get herself a cup of wine, then we took our places standing behind them. Aunt Rene turned around to greet us, and did a quick double take. “Darlin’, is that alcohol?” she asked Mother.
Mother held the cup out in front of her, looking at it as though wondering what it was and how in the world it got into her hand. Thinking of nothing to say, she went with the truth: “Why yes, Irene, I guess it is.”
”I’ll be right back,” Aunt Rene told us, then took the cup of lemonade she and Lucy were sharing, and headed back to the drinks table where Mr. Joe, the facility’s maintenance man, was ladling out punch. “Mr. Joe,” Aunt Rene said, putting her cup down on the table and pushing it over towards him. “Put some Southern Comfort in my cup, if you please.”
”We don’t have any Southern Comfort,” Mr. Joe told her.
”I think if you’ll go look under that end of the table,” Aunt Renesaid, pointing to her left, “I think you might find some. I’ll wait.”
Mr. Joe obligingly went to the far end of the table, lifted the tablecloth, and looked around to see what was under the table. He came back shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Miss Irene, we just don’t have any Southern Comfort.”
”Well, in that case, I guess you better give me some more lemonade,” Aunt Rene sighed.
The music started, and we all knew that meant time for dancing. Aunt Rene sat up a little straighter, dialed her smile up a notch or two, and handed the lemonade off to Aunt Lucy,. She was ready for the line of men to form in front of her. That woman did love to dance. I knew that, and that’s precisely why when we first got to the party, I asked every able-bodied man to ask Aunt Rene to dance. To a person, they said the same thing: “I sure will take Miss Irene out on the dance floor, just as soon as a slow dance comes on.”
While Aunt Rene was out for her first slow dance, smiling to beat the band, Aunt Lucy decided she wanted to go to bed. “Where’s Irene?” she asked. “I’m ready to go to bed.”
”Aunt REne is at a party, Aunt Lucy. Y’all can go to bed when the party is over,” I told her.
Aunt Lucy got increasingly cranky and louder. I spied a post on the other side of the room, drug an empty chair in front of it, and told Mother to take Aunt Rene over to sit in the chair behind the post so Lucy couldn’t see her, then I took my place in Aunt Rene’s vacated chair next to Lucy. Being the self-appoint4ed family historian, I thought this a fine time to get some stories from Aunt Lucy.
”Aunt Lucy,” I started, “when you and Aunt Rene were teenagers, did y’all go on a lot of dates?”
”NO,” Aunt Lucy barked. “Now where’s Irene? I’m ready to go to bed.”
”Aunt Rene is at a party. When the party is over, she’ll come get you and y’all can go to bed. Now Aunt Lucy, when you and Aunt Rene were teenagers, did y’all like to go to parties?”
”NO. WHERE IS IRENE? I’m ready to go to bed.”
”Aunt Rene is at a party,” I reminded her. “When the party is over, she’ll come get you and y’all can go to bed. Aunt Lucy, when y’all were teenagers, did you like to dance?”
’NO. WHERE IS IRENE? I’M READY TO GO TO BED,” Aunt Lucy screamed at me.
That was the third strike as far as I was concerned. I whipped around in my chair and said in what my children call my meanest teacher voice: “Aunt Lucy, I’ve told you that Aunt Rene is at a party. I’m sitting here being very nice to you, and if you talk that way to me one more time, you’re going to bed all right, and I am going to be the one to take you. I’ll take you upstairs, get your ready for bed, and tuck you in. Then I’ll sit with you while you go to sleep, and when the party is over, Aunt Rene will come in and join you. You’ll already be asleep, so you can see her in the morning. How does that sound?”
In the sweetest voice I’d never heard come from Aunt Lucy’s mouth, she said, “Well, we didn’t party all that much, but when we did, we did enjoy dancing.”
“In the language of the deaf, the sign for ‘remember’ begins with the sign for ‘know’: the fingertips of the right hand touch the forehead. But merely to know is not enough, so the sign for ‘remain’ follows: the thumbs of each hand touch and, in this joined position, move steadily forward into the future. Thus a knowing that remains, never lost, forever: memory.” ~~~ Myron Uhlberg in Hands of My Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love
Twenty years.
My daddy died died twenty years ago today, and I still ache with grief, crave one more hug, long to hear him call me Doll just one more time. Every December 2 I become a cauldron of grief – sorrow, anger, pensiveness, no sense of direction. I usually spend the day doing soft, soulful things like writing,remembering, walking, but with the recent fullness of my life, I had no time to pre-plan. My waking thought was to read something written by someone else remembering and grieving for their daddy, and while that felt like a winner of an idea, what, exactly, I would read remained a question mark. Then, as Magic would have it, I went to the bookshelves in my studio this morning in search of another book for another reason, when the book aforementioned book leapt off the shelf and into my hands.
Remembering.
It’s what I do.
It’s who I am.
Stories of remembering are my oxygen.
In August 2000, two weeks after delivering the book I wrote about my father-in-law to each of his children and grandchildren, Bones woke me up whispering, “Write a book about your daddy, and do it now.”
“Are you kidding me?” I countered. “I am exhausted, depleted, worn slap out.” (I kept the father-in-law book a secret even from Andy, which meant much writing at night) The Voice of my Bones was not amused or swayed, and I’ve learned (the hard way) not to argue with Bones, so the following week I began gathering stories, photos, newspaper articles, interviews, whatever I could get my ears and hands on, about my daddy. I wrote. I scanned. I wrote some more, and the Monday before Thanksgiving, off it went to the printer and binder. Everybody in the family would receive a leather-bound copy of this 400+ page book of memories about Daddy.
Four days later – the day after Thanksgiving – Daddy fell, hitting his head. Hard.
The Monday after Thanksgiving, I called Karen, the book binder. “I hear voices, you see, and well, Daddy fell last Friday and the voices I call My Bones tell me I need to get those books back asap. Can you help?” Without a single audible sign of exasperation, Karen said, “I can have one book to you on Saturday and the rest next Monday.”
First-Book-Arrives-Saturday started with all Daddy’s bells and whistles going off, his machine creating a cacophony of alert. I called family members. “If you want to see Daddy alive, you need to get here before noon,” I told them. They came trickling in. Friends followed. Finally, husband Andy and son Kipp walked in, brown package in hand.
In a rather bold move for a Southern girl raised to respect hospitality above (almost) all else, I asked the friends to leave, gathered family around Daddy’s bed, and opened the package. I began reading at 1:05 p.m. A nurse stayed well past her shift’s end, keeping the machines shushed by holding her finger on the quiet button.
We took turns reading, arriving at “The End” at 4:50 p.m.
Daddy took his last breath at 4:55.
Though he never said a word, I know Daddy could hear his life review because from my position to the left of his pillow, I watched tears make their way down his face throughout the afternoon.
Take from this post whatever you will, just please promise me this:
~ If, God forbid, anybody you love should ever be in a coma or otherwise unable to communicate, take it upon yourself to make sure that only positive loving kindness is spoken within those four walls because I know – know to my very core – that they hear everything, and we all know that words are powerful.
~ You’ll take the time to capture your family’s stories. Start today. Record, write, ask, clip, copy, scan – gather and preserve those stories by whatever means available. You can shape them into narrative later, step one is to capture, and let’s face it: we never know. Preserving these stories will change your life (among other things, you will learn a lot about yourself) and future generations will call you good things and be forever grateful. Count on it.
47 years ago today, The Engineer asked me to spend the rest of my life with him. I’d been invited to a wedding shower and was voicing my reluctant enthusiasm about the prospect of attending. He tapped my nose with one finger and said, “You know, when we get married, you’ll have to go to wedding showers.”
“But you haven’t asked me,” I managed to blurt despite the somersaults of my heart.
Silence, 2, 3, 4 . . . then “Well, will you?”
”Will I what?” I said, turning to look him squarely face-to-face. “If you want me to marry you, you’ll have to be clear in your proposal. I request and require clarity so there’s no misunderstanding.”
He slid off the sofa, took to one knee, held my hands while looking me straight in the irises and asked, ”Will you marry me?”
”I sure will!” I said on my way to planting a big fat kiss on his mouth.
Before he left that night, we sat outside in the swing, quietly reflecting on what happened earlier. “Let’s not tell anybody just yet,” he suggested – an idea with which I fully agreed. We both wanted to sleep on it, it turns out, to be quite sure in the light of day, and besides, it was April Fool’s Day, after all.
We met on Saturday, January 27, 1973
became engaged on April 1, 1973
said “You bet I will” (a.k.a. got married_ on July 31, 1973 – six months after we met.
It all happened quite fast, our togetherness, and I haven’t regretted my decision once (although if I knew then what I know today on Day 21 of The Great Sheltering-in-Place Adventure, I’d’ve asked him to study hairdressing on the side).
If the Hong Kong flu hadn’t taken hold in the US,
If I hadn’t already spent my week in sick bay, wrestling the virus into the ground,
If they hadn’t closed the college because there was no more room to quarantine,
If I hadn’t been bored enough to go to the high school basketball game,
if my high school friend hadn’t been bored enough to go to the basketball game,
If we hadn’t gotten bored at the basketball game and decided to take our leave and head to Underground Atlanta,
If a would-be boyfriend hadn’t passed out gone to sleep early and rendering him unable to follow through on his promise to call my daddy if I wasn’t back by midnight,
If we’d had enough money between us for one drink and two straws,
If she hadn’t remembered this guy she met the weekend before who was wearing a brown, floppy-brimmed leather hat and worked in Muhlenbrink’s Saloon,
If I hadn’t been thirsty enough to shove aside my intense crowd anxiety and join her to push our way to the bar through the throngs of drunk people listening to Rosebud,
If the guy drawing beers hadn’t borrowed the brown, floppy-brimmed leather hat from the guy mixing drinks at the other end of the bar,
If she hadn’t argued with the cute-as-all-get-out beer-drawing guy when he said he’d never seen her before in his life,
If she had listened to me and we had left right then,
If he hadn’t asked us to go to a party at the bouncer’s apartment when the bar closed,
If she hadn’t said “Yes” so quickly and enthusiastically,
If we hadn’t taken her car, leaving me no choice but to go along,
If the Sweet Spirit of Surprise hadn’t put the roommate in the car with her and me in the car with the beer guy,
If he hadn’t been so cute and charming and caused all kinds of climate conditions to change with the kaleidoscope of butterfly wings he set to flapping wildly when he kissed me . . .
I never would’ve met the guy who has never – not even once – had to call on his engineer training to turn my life’s lights on.
44 year ago today, my life changed forever when I met and instantly fell head-over-heels in deep, unwavering love with The Engineer. Look at my long list called The Best Day Ever, and you’ll find January 27, 1973 at the very top.
the attorney’s father was a probate judge who never did his own will. with six children and no will, there’s trouble. hurt feelings. old hurts and memories and grudges rise quickly to the surface. they are not speaking, the children, and everybody including us, wonders why a man who dealt with wills for a living wouldn’t take the time to draw up his own. the shoemaker’s children go barefooted, and the probate judge’s children feud.
not a fun way to spend a morning – even with the story and the walk the engineer and i treated ourselves to afterwards (the source of these photos) – but a necessary expenditure of time.
here’s the thing: drawing up a will, creating a living will and powers of attorney (healthcare and property) doesn’t bring on your death. it simply means you are smart enough to know that you will die one day and that you love enough to face that irrefutable fact and show love in a way you never thought about before.
do you love yourself enough to draw up a living will so that your very existence doesn’t fall into the hands of a medical staff who don’t even make eye contact?
do you love your heirs enough to draw up a will so that all you’ve worked for and created doesn’t get divvied up and disposed of by the government?
do you love your support people, be they family or friends, enough to draw up powers-of-attorney so that they can tend to things for you without resistance and interference from strangers?
we have a God Forbid book, i tell the attorney to stop him as he launches into Creating A Will 101. i tell him about how i see this as love – living love, leaving love. i tell him about how as a personal historian and an end-of-life doula i know that people just flat out refuse to put themselves in touch with their own mortality. even the smartest among us, i’m talking about.
i tell him about the God Forbid (as in God Forbid you ever need this information) book i created eons ago for the children telling them everything they need to know – bank accounts, memberships, software, who to call lists, medical info, location of keys and important papers, and well, you get the idea. i tell the attorney how we keep it updated and have annual meetings with our children every thanksgiving (as in we’re so thankful we’re here to tell you about it again this year). he is suitably impressed and we are able to skip ahead to the changes we want made. it’s not that we have much, it’s just that i want our children to have time to grieve. yes, really.
it’s not just the heirs who have all sorts of bric-a-brac float to the surface when dealing with wills. i find myself thinking about who’s been most attentive, who makes an effort to stay in touch, who’s responsible. do i want to use a will to reward? do i want to take the easy and nice way out and just divide everything equally (which feels an awful lot like socialism to me)? some things are obvious and require no angst decision making. the child who always baked the cakes gets the bowl and spoon my grandmother used to make cakes with. the child who laid in the floor laughing as we read bedtime stories gets the books. i’m not saying it’s the right or wrong approach, i just think it’s good to be clear and clean about these things, about the motivation, even if only on the inside. or, if you want to be like me, right out in the open on your blog for the whole galaxy to see. when preparing these important documents, it’s important to bring the right amount of emotion and good sense, to be sure that decisions aren’t made solely on emotions or logic.
a note, though: probably not a good idea to give the child in prison power of attorney, and that’s not a character assault, it’s a matter of needing to have someone who can show up in a jiffy. just saying.
years ago, i began to ask the children what, in particular, they wanted when we die. even though it might be tinged with anticipation, i’m hopeful that the items will be imbued with even more meaning, memory, sentimental value knowing that they will own it one day and i’m now using it regularly.
i make a list and write letters of explanation, just in case.
this year i’ll ask if either of my chiclets want my journals or any of my hymns of cloth. it’s a question i dread asking because i don’t want them to feel obligated to say “yes” even though i deeply and desperately hope to year a quick and hearty “yes”. if you want to know the truth, i want them to argue and fight over the journals and cloths. at least a wee little bit.
will they want pieces from the My Kitchen Table series in which i create cloths for each person who’s nourished my life in some way? like this plate for my maternal grandmother. biscuits from scratch, cake contests, quilts, piano, flowers growing everywhere, feather bed, the irregular whir of the treadle sewing machine, gardens, canning, clothes hung on the line to dry, hand lotion that smelled of rose water. she never drove a car, but she had her very own riding lawn mower, and let me tell you what: she enjoyed using it, always wearing her straw hat, both hands kept on the wheel at all times. i don’t ever remember seeing her wearing pants. she taught me music and sunshine and planning for the future.
preparing for the future. preserving the past.
not a bad way to spend the present.
you met my mother here and here and here, now i know good and well that it’s mother’s day, but it’s not my mother i want to tell you about today.
and it’s not my niece who had her baby boy last night at 10:49, even though you can bet your sweet patootie you’ll be hearing about him soon. isn’t he a beautiful baby?
today it’s my cousin mary (the one who always makes sure we take plenty of pictures at every family gathering) i want to tell you about. that’s her there on the left. (then there’s my mother in the center. then there’s me on the right.)
if you pay attention to my facebook feed, you know that 14 months ago mary’s oldest boy (that’s him – billy – there with the blue oval around his handsome face and that’s mary there on the left with the pink oval around her) was diagnosed with cancer. you know that he endured everything science has in its arsenal to throw at cancer, and you know that it wasn’t enough. mary buried her oldest son today – on mother’s day.
at first i thought that was an awful, horrendous, unimaginable thing to do – i initially felt physically sick for mary. but as i talked with her over the past few days, i tell you what: i’ve never loved her more or been more proud of her. that cousin o’mine really knows how to throw a good funeral.
she didn’t opt to have billy’s funeral on mother’s day to cast herself as a martyr. she didn’t want pity or attention or people fawning over her. you see, this wasn’t about mary at all. this funeral was a tribute to billy, and mary made sure of it in every way large and small.
friends were important to billy, so mary and her husband danny decided to have the funeral today because they knew a lot of billy’s friends would be in town visiting their mothers and could attend the funeral.
during the visitation that preceded the funeral when mary spied somebody she didn’t know, she walked right up to them and introduced herself and thanked them for coming then listened to their stories about billy.
she was right there every minute. she was so present.
she made sure people had plenty to eat. she asked if they had moved their car to the line that would go to the cemetery. she thanked people. she fed people. she hugged people. she listened to people. you might think she was distracting herself with busy work, and you’d be wrong. mary was there, she didn’t shy away from the reality of the occasion, she cried – she cried plenty – she just never lost sight of the fact that today was about honoring and memorializing billy.
when danny (billy’s daddy) cried, mary put her arm around him and patted him. when the preacher came to clarify what song would be sung, she directed him to danny because danny had selected the song. when the pall bearers (some of billy’s friends from college) arrived, she took them all into her house, and when they got upset, she comforted them.
she told the preacher story after story after story to make sure it was a fitting, story-filled tribute to the multi-faceted, multi-talented young man billy is . . . was (it’s hard to use past tense). in the past few weeks and especially today, mary exhibited every trait and characteristic that made billy the fine and good young man we know him to be.
(that’s billy there with the orange oval with his hand on mary’s shoulder.)
as an actor and a managing director of a theatre, i see my fair share of drama queens, and as a woman of that certain age, i’ve dealt with a lot of women who desperately want to be seen, and i want to tell you one very important thing: mary focused that spotlight on her son billy, and she made sure it didn’t stray, not one little bit. and in her unfaltering selfless mother love, i saw her more clearly than i’ve ever seen her before.
Alison’s recovery is nothing short of remarkable.
Yesterday, her surgeon came into room 713
and sat on the bed with Alison to remove the drainage tube.
Dr. Shaw: Now sing me an “eeeeeeee”.
Alison sang an “eeeee”.
Dr. Shaw, with a big smile on her face: “That was beautiful.”
Alison: “But it was only a G.”
Art and science collide.
Dr. Shaw,
the surgeon who loves science,
speaks in terms of the particular sound
that will allow her to gauge the performance of Alison’s vocal cords.
Alison,
the professional singer with perfect pitch,
and for whom music is oxygen,
hears and responds in terms of musical notes.
~~~~~~~
Two
~~~~~~~
Three
This is a love story written by a friend and former coworker of my son, Kipp.
here ‘n there