I Miss Mom...

Me and Mom and what I call my "Forrest Gump Moment":  

"What do I do with my life, Momma?"

"I don't know, Forrest. 

You're going to have to figure that out for yourself."

South Florida circa 2001...

The night before my mom died I had fallen asleep in my recliner.  I was awakened by the ring, a long ring, of an old-fashioned telephone.

I don’t have an old-fashioned telephone hooked up.

The ringing was in my head.

“What time is it?” I asked The Lady of the House.

“10:30,” she said.

“Okay,” I said, “I want to remember that time.

The next morning I woke up to find my phone had “blown up,” as they say, with calls and voicemails.

I turn my phone off when I sleep.  Family had called in overnight.  Mom died around 1230 Eastern Time…1030 in my time zone.

In my way of thinking, that old-fashioned phone ring was Mom letting me know she was leaving.

I mean, I know my mom, the greatest mom ever, couldn’t stay around forever.

She had a good journey, 95 years worth.

She was a teacher, she taught business stuff:  Typing, shorthand and things like that.

Mom may have found her toughest student in me.  When I took a typing class in high school she wondered why I couldn’t teach myself, I reckon because she…a typing teacher…was my mom.   Why didn’t typing just come naturally to me?  She couldn’t understand why I didn’t “get” Algebra and she threw her hands up in frustration trying to teach me how to dribble a basketball.

My mom was always there for me.  One of my earliest memories is Mom sitting in the sun reading a book while I rode my tricycle round and round the base of the McKinley Monument in Buffalo, New York.  There was  the sun, the gleaming stone, the water fountains, the tall monument pointing to the sky, me riding round and round and there was Mom reading with her sunglasses on.

Where I once rode my tricycle.  

McKinley Monument, downtown Buffalo, New York.

Mom took me fishing, dropped me off for Boy Scout stuff and so much more. 

I mean I’m my mother’s son.  I’m not a “momma’s boy” but it was Mom who raised me, my dad was too busy with his career.  I don’t lament about it, my mom did what a lot of mid-20^th Century Moms did…they were in charge of raising the kids while “Big Daddy” went out and “brought home the bacon.”

Mom was all about the pushing forward in life.  She wasn’t one to linger in the past.  Nothing showed that more to me than the time I was listening to the 70’s rock band Pink Floyd when she came into my room and said, “I like that.”

Years ago I would tell her about my latest personal trainwreck.  She would laugh, say it was all part of life then repeat a line from an old song, “Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again.”

One of my favorite memories is of Mom waking me up on school mornings.  In our house my room was upstairs.  She’d stand at the bottom of the stairs and say in a loud voice, an old Longfellow quote:  “Let us be up and doing with a heart for any fate!”

Thinking of Mom I remember all the good things she did through my life. And I think about the things I did in my life. I think about the stupid things, the disrespectful things….all the things I told Mom that I was sorry for.

“Hey Mom, I’m sorry for all the stupid things I did when I was a teenager and stuff,” I told her once when I was visiting her.

“Don’t be silly,” she said and smiled. “It’s all part of growing up, part of life.”

Mom caught me swiping some change from her purse when I was 10 or 12. Yeah call it what it was, stealing. I did it and mom caught me. She didn’t say much. It was the look on her face, the disappointment. I never did it again.

There was a time I had to pay a fine and I was going to come up short by the deadline. Mom stepped up and gave me what I needed. I sat in her dining room holding the check and basically being angry at myself for being so stupid and getting a ticket. “Don’t take yourself so seriously,” she said. “It’s all part of life. Now don’t do it again.”

One time I had about given up on everything and I told that to Mom.

That’s when I made Mom cry.

Not a wailing, dramatic crying fit…no, she just got these big ol’ tears in her eyes, looked really sad and didn’t talk for a bit.

“You NEVER give up hope,” she said finally, looking at me right in the eyes.

I was so ashamed I made my momma cry I did an about-face on my attitude.

I was out for my usual morning bicycle ride a few years ago and it dawned on me to tell Mom about a thought I had.

“Hey Mom,” I said when I got her on the phone. “Thanks for bringing me here to this life, thanks for being my mom.”

She laughed. “I’m glad I did,” she said.

Mom’s “done gone on to Glory”…I miss her.  But she did come visit me in a vivid dream a few months after she died.  I was walking with her to a bus station in some big city.

“Where are you going?” I asked her.

“Montreal,” she said.

“How come?”

“I’ve never been,” she said.  “But I have something to tell you.”

“Yes?”

We stopped walking, she turned and looked me right in the eyes, there in that dream world.

“Stop taking life so seriously,” she said.  “And tell that to your oldest too.”

Then she was on the bus, smiling and waving goodbye.

Off to Montreal, I reckon.

Or as my youngest told me, “Off to the land of sunsets and rainbows.”

That’s what Mom told her.

Maybe “The Land of Sunsets and Rainbows” and Montreal are on a package tour.