Every tale has an opening…even a tragedy
It’s funny how much living you do before your life ever starts. Your world is measured in minutes and seconds, not days and weeks. Much is exciting and new, but still so much more feels stable and unchanging — solid like the earth itself. You have no clue that the thoughts and ideas you hold so dear are going to morph and change as time cozies up to have its wicked ways with you. Times had been rough before, but you were sure that was the worst it was ever going to get. You and yours had earned your peace — the bad days were gone, and the sweet life was yours for the taking once again.
Oh for that morning, it would be my reality. That morning….
Mom and I were driving to work in the minivan, talking about plans for the day. She told me she would be late getting home because she had a doctor’s appointment; a fact that version of me wouldn’t have inquired further about. But for some reason, the way she said it belied the fact that she had concern. The answer was going to be upsetting, and she had no desire to broach the subject. If only — she knew she must. She had found a lump.
That night, some of my friends and I had ventured out to the Seaside boardwalk, with designs on slacking and nothing of consequence. As you might expect, my mind was elsewhere. When my silence finally was pressed to subject, I told my friends. To a person, everyone reassured me. One soul even offered up a personal tale of his mother’s own triumph over this looming specter. The sentiment was comforting, though my inner cynic begged to differ, knowing this time…something was…different. Mom was always so strong, but in that briefest of moments, I had sensed how this was different by the way she told me.
I didn’t know it at the time, but that night the clock on my life had officially started.
The beginnings of ends
The fight was back and forth, with more than a few times it looking like mom was getting the upper hand. In the end, her foe was just far too relentless. I did all I could to help, but to this day I still lament those moments for not being able to do more. There is still guilt in those moments I tried to live my old life and not in the reality I was facing. But you have to be scared to learn when you can escape from life and when you have to face the music.
During her final week, she had been resting in what was once my bedroom in our little ranch style on River Avenue. I was in a basement bedroom just below it. My job had me keeping late hours, which meant a quiet house in which I heard my mom’s laboring through the floor, whether I wanted to or not. No matter if I was trying to sleep, or lost in my cyber life as I tried desperately to escape. But there were no delusions anymore. I knew what was happening now, and I knew that soon enough, I was going to have to face it all. Unfair or not, life would never be the same.
Ten years to the day, my mother passed away — surrounded by loved ones in the room of my innocence.
Her hands were still warm when I rushed to my bedroom, to mark the time in what had until that moment been my escape from that reality. I never could have dreamed how it would become the genesis of my new reality.
Riding in the wake of passing ships
Today, Shannon and I gathered to spend the afternoon together. We picked up some flowers, visited mom’s grave, and went to have an early dinner at the Squan Tavern; a place she had been named employee of the year at (while she was holding down two jobs, no less!). Just the fact that ten years on and we were sharing that meal together — still thick as thieves — would make mom smile.
I had to grow up quickly in the months that followed, but it’s amazing how little I tend to think about that these days. There are new circuses of strife and folly to face, and I can’t escape into fond memories of a once ago as often as I’d like to if I want my own personal storybook to continue. Both Shannon and I admitted to not knowing if we’d be as mature and stable as we are had mom not left our lives so soon, though I still think we would have done okay. But there’s a part of me that’s quite certain I would probably have lived quite comfortably in my basement bedroom world for years and years. There was a great deal of comfort in that life.
But my, oh my — how time does fly! The world can’t be made to wait, much as you wish you could just hit the pause button from time to time. There’s always this subtle little nudging, stabbing you in the back. A voice unheard repeats the same mantra, again and again: move forward. It was that constant pressure from the seen and unseen that led to a sense of quiet desperation, which in turn led to a career I dared not dream for, so vibrant and rewarding. You never know what the waves in life’s events will do with you once they take hold.
In the end, I have to turn to the words Shannon and I finally agreed to when we were ready to buy mom her well-deserved headstone. We argued for years about what we wanted; a testament to how mom raised two completely different individuals. In the end, it’s the simple things that tend to ring truest:
Best friend
Beloved mother
Gone too soon
I think she would have liked that.