MOM

"Mama"

When the evening shadows fall

 And the lovely day is through

 Then with longing, I recall

 The years I spent with you

 Mama, I miss the days

 When you were near to guide me

 Mama, those happy days

 When you were here beside me

 Safe in the glow of your love

 Sent from the heavens above

 Nothing can ever replace

 The warmth of your tender embrace

 Oh, Mama, until the day

 That we're together once more

 I'll live in these memories

 Until the day that we're together once more 

Every time I hear those beautiful words sung by Connie Francis I get chills up and down my spine. I think of Olympia and my formative days as her son. I think of her laugh, so infectious that it made me want to hear her laugh some more, and so I did or said things that got her to do so. Any day that she laughed was a good day for me.

Mom was a great cook and teacher demanding that we as her children respect education ourselves and to best, we could present ourselves in a light that would make people invite us back, and above all laugh. She came from a very humble background, her father abandoning her two sisters and her at a very young age, leaving my grandmother with raising her children alone in troubling times for the poor in the 20s and 30s, leaving her without money or a source of income, and leaving her with an ulcer that consumed her at the age of 47. If I were to find my grandfather’s grave we would have a long, one-way conversation about it.

Mom for her part in this sad tale was shuffled off to a boarding school for girls run by over-zealous nuns and at a very young age along with one of her younger sisters, while the youngest was left with a relative.

In 2013, she started to deteriorate rather rapidly after a very healthy life until we needed to call hospice to lighten her final burden, one that she accepted with grace and dignity, while inside my heart broke. I took solace that she was indeed 96, a long time to have her and I was grateful for that, but still, I had to face the inevitable.

The memories seem to flood by the portals of my mind, unearthing deep feelings as a child on the path of my life that I had forgotten, every night she polished our shoes, pressed white shirts for our parochial school, reverence for God, respect for elders, and be at the dinner table, on time, and no complaining.

Mom and Dad got along pretty well on the whole. Sometimes there were spats, but on the whole, they did get along, well, maybe not always.

In our driveway lay the point of contention, the major obstacle to Mom and Dad’s perfect wedded bliss.

Mom wanted to learn how to drive.

Dad wanted to watch TV.

There could only be one outcome – WAR!

Mom had enough expired Learners Permits to stack up to five feet.

Dad was not the best of teachers. He was impatient, put a lot of importance into giving you the basic to the point you wanted to walk the rest of your life. He would give Mom an order, rather than suggest, Mom would fume, and soon they were debating the proper etiquette

One Sunday Mom had enough, and as Dad laid there in bed, Mom calling him to get up to take her church, she started to fume, not an ordinary fume, but something nuclear. She decided to take things into her own hands.

Suddenly I found myself in the car, where Mom usually sat, and Mom: well she was where Dad usually sat. Off to church we went, Mom determined to get there and back, the heck with Dad.

On the way home, Mom was feeling very triumphant and even decided to take a shortcut home. I guess Jesus made her strong. Mom was defying the odds, putting it to Dad, taking care of business. If there was one thing that was faulty in Mom’s triumph, she didn’t scout the terrain.

Into the woods, she heads and on this dirt road that led to another block. Mom navigated the ruts and I loved her spunk. Suddenly, the car swayed without music! We were swaying but we weren’t moving forward. Mom was stuck. This was a no cha-cha ride.

When I was in college, I didn’t have two nickels to rub together, working long hours to pay for my tuition, books, and art supplies. One year I managed to save some money. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it but an ad on the car radio came to life telling me that Mother’s Day was a few days off. Being I was in the Westbury area, I decided to go to Fortunoff and buy mom a Mother’s Day gift. There was this beautiful alabaster and cerulean pitcher and bowl set. I bought it, I had it wrapped and was praised by the sales lady for how beautiful it was. Her praise was nothing to compare with the appreciation mom showed when she opened the box.

She was an easy person to entertain, especially if it was at Dad’s expense. I could tell her the same joke everyday and she would laugh harder than yesterday’s telling. She loved me with her meals, her understanding, and her wooden spoon. When I got older I would arrive home from the city and being it was later than Mom and Dad’s dinner time, especially on cold winter nights, she would have my dinner sitting in the oven waiting for me, her kitchen basking in the light of her care. I was home!

That last month or so during her life, she loved to watch the Mass on TV and couldn’t do so in her hospital bed we got her for my old bedroom. Every morning I would arrive and sit with her and remember the old days. I would give her my I-pad and entertain her as much as possible. It was our time, yet it was the end of time for me in away. It was during one of those visits that she relayed to me how she missed going to church and seeing the Mass on TV. The logistics for putting a TV in that bedroom with cable reception was a tough job back in 2014, but I was determined to get it done and along with my wife Ellen, we did it, she was viewing a televised Mass every morning. 

It is six years today that she passed physically; in my heart she is still here, still breathing life into my existence.