Tag: #Mom

  • Thanks, Uncle Rene

    My uncle died this morning. It was my mom’s brother.

    He was the uncle who encouraged me to read books, write, go into theatre, and move to New York. When I graduated high school, he took me to a book store and told me to pick out whatever I wanted. And then he added other books he felt I should read. He was also the person who suggested that I get a subscription to The New Yorker. You could talk to him about anything because he seemed to know a little about everything.

    I have reached the age when I can now full appreciate the gifts God has given me, and for some reason, God feels compelled to take them all back.

    But my uncle was a priest, so I bet he’d tell me to go easy on God.

    Because no one really leaves you if you love them.

    And I know he loved me.

  • That Song Triggers That Memory

    I went grocery shopping this morning. It is one of the rare moments in my week where I can listen to music uninterrupted. I take the subway down to the Trader Joe’s on 93rd, and there is a little bit of a walk. Early in the morning, after the kids are in school, and people have left for work, there aren’t many folks on the street, so I can jam out to my music; I can get it.

    And as I was riding the subway home with my bags, my playlist randomly gave me “Bye Bye Love,” by The Cars. I have heard this song since forever, and its hints of unrequited love made it such a wonderful juxtaposition of a song, contrasting with its upbeat rock tempo.

    Not sure why, but I added it to a playlist in mid 2018, and listened to it quite heavily. In September 2018, I was visiting a friend from college and her husband in a rather cool Brooklyn apartment that was in a walkup building, and they had access to a rooftop garden. That kind’a cool apartment, you know? We were drinking, a lot, and started playing a game of finding videos and concerts on YouTube of songs we loved. I picked “Bye Bye Love,” from a club concerts The Cars played in 1979. I liked it, but not sure if it played well in the room.

    But the memory of what I was feeling in that moment is still attached with that song. I felt lonely, because my wife and daughter were 3,000 miles away in California. I felt paralyzed as I was supposed to be packing up our apartment for our move to California, but I couldn’t get myself to do it. I was about to start rehearsals for what would be the last show I worked on, which had me excited to see my friends who I love and I am amazed by. And I couldn’t shake the feeling of doom, as my mother had cancer, and I knew she wouldn’t recover.

    My college friend lost her father when she was younger, and I knew if there was a friend who could understand what I was feeling, it would be her. And I think of her as one of my close friends, but I couldn’t talk about it. I just lied. I said it was looking better, and we have to believe in hope, and all that stuff. But I didn’t mean it. I said the thing I thought was expected. I didn’t tell the truth.

    I don’t hate listening to “Bye Bye Love,” or The Cars. Sometimes that memory and feeling doesn’t settle over me when I hear it. Some days, I’m okay when I think of my mother’s passing. And then one day, I hear a song, and it all comes back to me while on a B train, heading uptown.

  • Still Dealing with the Emotions

    Today is the third anniversary of my mother’s death. It felt a little different this year. See, when I cross into October, I start to feel this change in me. I start to feel solemn and, well, just sad about everything. A blanket of sadness falls over me. I’m not upset, or angry, maybe melancholy is a better way to describe it.

    Now, I say it felt different this year because I don’t feel the weight of it on everything today. The past two years, I didn’t want to do anything, just be left alone. This year, I can function without being dragged down. I can think of my mother without feeling like I’m going to fall apart, and I can even think about the silly things she would say and do. That is different from last year. I think this day will always have a despondent feeling to it, and that’s okay.

    What I did think about today was how I knew she was going to die even though no one would say that she was dying. She was in the hospital and each day she was getting worse. Dad kept telling me that it wasn’t time to come home, that she could still improve. We all knew it wasn’t true, and I didn’t know what I should be doing.

    So, one day when I left work, and the office was in lower Manhattan, around Wall Street, I just started walking up Broadway listening to music. I walked through the Financial District, through the Civic Center, SOHO, The Village, to Union Square, to the Flatiron District, to Koreatown, the Garment District and stopped at Times Square. About two hours and three and a half miles. It was getting dark when I took the subway home.

    That was a helpless moment; walking and not wanting to get anyplace.

  • Memories of Apple Picking

    When the wife and I were dating, we never went apple picking. Around here, it’s an easy “Cute Date” you can have. You know, rent a car, go upstate, dress in flannel and sweaters, take lots of pictures that involve hugging while holding apples. We used to make fun of people who did it.

    Then time passed, we had a kid, and my parents came to visit one year in the Autumn, and as we were trying to think of things to do with them, we went apple picking. And it was fun. Holding a plastic bag, pulling apples off a tree, walking around eating them, and talking. Talking with my Mom while she held her granddaughters’ hand.

    When my parents came to visit, none of us had any idea that we had limited time left. I mean, you never really know that. You never know that, that goodbye, might just be the last goodbye. My Mom wanted to come back in the Autumn again, to apple pick, to look at the foliage. It just didn’t work out that way.

    And so, when Fall rolled around, we headed out to the farm, to pick the apples, like all the other people from the City. This year, we brought the dog, which was a nice change up. We got out the plastic bags, I put on my flannel, and the wife wore a sweater. We picked apples, and tasted them, and talked. And I took pictures, so, you know, we can keep the memories alive.

  • Vacationing in Maine

    Our family vacation last week was in Maine, and this was the second time that we have stayed up there. The first time was three years ago, and that was along the coast, south of Portland. This time around we stayed up north in Newry, not too far from the Sunday River Ski Resort. We were sort of counter programming our vacation, as most people want to be near the water in the summer, and we did get a better deal being near the mountains.

    I’m not sure when Maine showed up on our vacation radar. We had visited Vermont before, and loved it. The wife’s extended family is from Connecticut, so we have spent time there with them, as well as in New Hampshire. A few years ago, I almost got a job in Rhode Island, and we went up there to check it out, and did really fall in love with that state. (Funny how two Texans fell for the smallest state.) Yet, Maine never crossed our minds as a place to visit.

    Then three years ago, my parents were taking a full East Coast road tour in their RV, and as they came through New England, we rented a car and joined them. This was over Memorial Day and the start of June 2018, and where we all ended up going was Rhode Island, which we all had a good time at.

    But when we got up to our vacation place at Camp Ellis, Maine, just four blocks from the beach, the trip took on a different dynamic for all of us. At night, you would go to sleep listening to the sound of the waves coming in on the ocean. The kid played in the sand at the beach, I had martinis with my folks, and the house we stayed in had a lobster pot, crackers and picks, so the wife tried her hand steaming lobsters for us. It was a good time, and a great vacation.

    It was also the last time I got to spend time with my mother before she died. I know you can never recreate past experiences or memories, but it was fun being up there again – with the cool evenings, and beach days, and even going to the L.L. Bean store in Freeport.