Mother’s Day was this weekend past. I know because every year, I get some text messages from some friends giving me some well wishes and “in my thoughts today”-type messaging. I am thankful, but for my own reasons, I mostly ignore the holiday in its entirety. Rarely do people get a response from me, and I go about my Sunday as if it was any other.
It might not be the healthiest thing to do, but it’s how I deal with it for the time being—maybe some day that will change, maybe it won’t. Only time will tell. But I do want to acknowledge those people who take the time out to think about me when they wake up and send a message. It does not go unnoticed.
Some of you who are reading this had the opportunity to have met my mother. She was an enigma. She was relentless when she wanted you to do something and would go to great lengths to get her way. If she wanted the family—and I mean the WHOLE family—in Sanibel for a week in September, you’d be there. There might be a ticket with your name on it, twenty messages on your answering machine, calls at 5:30 in the morning to remind you months in advance about the dates, or to ask you about your favorite restaurant in the area.
She was a business powerhouse: part of the senior management at Digital Equipment Corporation, owner of three businesses, seller of two… and she wasn’t even close to being done. When I was a baby, I was bounced on Ken Olson’s knee, the founder of DEC, because Mom had the balls to really bring her kid to work on “Bring Your Kid to Work” day.
She was furiously protective of her children. A battered and abused wife in a time when women were expected to keep quiet about their abusive husbands. A Woman who had the strength to get up and walk out with two children in tow and start an entirely new life without the use of public welfare. Never complaining—at least not to me—about what her days were probably like living hand-to-mouth while she juggled a toddler named David and a kid who managed to disassemble anything in his path, forgetting to put it back together when he was done.
She was determined to show the world that she could do anything she wanted to, and if you told her she couldn’t, she just might to spite you.
She was your best friend. Listening to everything you would tell her. A glass of champagne merely a cork pop away. She loved her champagne. I sometimes wonder if her mostly-exclusive use of champagne was sort of a constant celebration—a jubilation for having made it this far—toasting the minutes that were granted.
Mom was both my mother and my best friend. We could talk about anything unabashedly. We fought furiously, but we both had such high expectations of one another that how could we not? I was my mother’s son.
As we approached her last days, unbeknownst to us both, we had really come to a new place—a new bond between Mother and Son. We had discussed so many things: She was beginning to share her wisdom and lessons learned in all things, from her jaunts about the globe. We discussed future plans about how the three of us—about how Mom, David and I could really do something different together. We’d all proven ourselves competent in our respective careers, and it was time for us to do something for us. The Three Amigos taking on the world.
Her smile and laugh haunt me to this day. I can see and hear it clear as day. I have a voicemail from her that I just happened to keep because it was so her. I listen to it every now and then, and smile when I do.
My mom was a person whose life was taken from this world way before her time, in a manner so inconsistent with everything that she stood for, that I sometimes wonder if it is tragedy, irony, or comedy. Maybe it’s all three.
Regardless of the answer, she was—above and beyond anything else—my Mom. She provided, she protected, she guided and gave me two best friends, who, while I no longer get to see them on a daily basis, feel them in everything I do.
