Legacy, Part One

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to properly mourn Mom. That probably sounds strange if you haven’t thought about mourning from a personal perspective, but from this vantage point, it makes a lot of sense. It’s really about honoring her in my mourning, rather than wallowing in the pain of it. The latter would be easy to do because after seven weeks, it still makes me physically wince when I reach for the phone and then remember that she isn’t going to be on the other end if I dial her number, and I still cry easily when I think of certain memories or regrets. But letting the pain lead would neither be best for me nor for anyone who has any day to day dealings with me. The better choice is to learn how to honor Mom and strengthen my character in the process. Just how to do that is the question, and one I’m little by little learning to answer.

One thing I’m learning is that she left her mark on me in a myriad of ways. Like her, I love my pets like they are my children, and I have a soft spot for almost every living thing, except maybe spiders, roaches and snakes. I laugh easily, love to read, like to drive, appreciate a good beer, and am easily distracted by bright, shiny objects (like gaudy jewelry!), all thanks to Mom.

She also gave me a hefty helping of vanity. One of my earliest memories is from when I was about three or four years old. Mom, who was always strikingly beautiful, had gotten a haircut and it was not to her liking. She was looking at herself in my parents’ bedroom mirror and complaining, and I was standing at her feet, absorbing every word. Later, when I was perhaps nine or ten, she taught me an explicit lesson in using my femininity to my own advantage. I distinctly remember her looking directly into my eyes and saying to me, as we stood in a parking lot beside her car with its flat tire, “Watch me.” I watched, and while she stood there looking both helpless and vivacious at the same time, a very nice gentleman stopped and changed the tire. She was charming and flirtatious with him, made him feel like he was a hero, and offered him money, which of course, he didn’t take.

That was my mom. She knew how to be a woman, even when it wasn’t for the noblest purposes. 

Although she was only seventeen years older than I, she truly was from a different era, and partly because she was, I have always felt as if I were born too late. Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart, and Marilyn Monroe remain for me as iconic images of dignity, charm and beauty, respectively. Mom loved all kinds of music, and one of her favorites was 40’s and 50’s jazz. The first thing I did when I upgraded my cablevision a year ago was find the 40’s and 50’s jazz channel. That was my soundtrack as I unpacked my moving boxes. It was a subconscious nod to my mom.

It’s important to me, as I pass from the shock of this loss into resignation, to embrace her soul as it manifests in me, and to love the ways she influenced me. That doesn’t mean becoming someone else; that’s the beauty of this mourning. It is effortless. It is being aware of the dozens of times a day that I see her in something I do, of smiling at that because it’s her, and of loving her because of it.