My mother, Sandra Rose, died this month.
She’s the reason I’m a writer. My first memory of books is when she’d read to me from The Arabian Nights (a book that also inspired my love of fantasy and mythology and travel). Mom’s knowledge of classic films, actors, TV, and music was encyclopedic… she even had obscure Jazz Age jingles on tap. She loved The Beatles and Gilbert and Sullivan, The Twilight Zone and One Step Beyond.
It’s common in eulogies for people to opine that “all who knew her, loved her.”
All who knew my mother, loved her.
Her charisma and charm and whimsy lifted everyone around her, like pixie dust, and made us all feel–for as long as we were in her presence–that we could fly.
An example of her personality:
At my Nana’s house, the uncles and my poppy are in the living room watching the game, and my mom is in the kitchen talking with the aunts and her sister. Apropos of absolutely nothing, Mom leaps into the living room with a scrub-wand in hand, and using it like a microphone, launches into an acapella version of Frank Sinatra’s “That Old Black Magic”, twirling the scrub-wand, strutting as if she’s onstage. No one reacted… because this sort of thing was commonplace from her. When she finished, she bowed. “Thank you! You’ve been a lively bunch!” And she went right back to resume conversation with her aunts and sister. I like to wonder what she could have possibly said to them beforehand: “Excuse me girls, Broadway is calling.”
Mom was a Renaissance woman. She truly could have been a model, an actress (in her youth, she bore an uncanny resemblance to Audrey Hepburn), a singer, a painter, a dancer… I knew about the Lindy Hop and Jitterbug and Charleston by the time I was eight because of her. And in that Renaissance spirit, she fostered in my brother and I an appreciation for literature, art, theater, science, and film. She enriched our appreciation of the world. She encouraged us to pursue our dreams.
Raised in a heavily Italian household, she nonetheless had a fondness for all things British: their history, literature, and cozy mystery films. I took her and my Dad to Italy, from Rome to Venice to Florence, and will never forget her dancing the night away in Tuscany. She adored it, beaming happily in every picture. I never did get to take her to England.
Mom saw JFK firsthand, and was once kissed by Tom Jones: the singer was onstage, saw my mother in the audience, leaned down and gave her a peck. “I did look good that night,” she told me years later.
An example of what she was like as a mom:
I’m in fourth grade, sitting at home, and to the casual observer I’m doing homework. And in a way, I suppose I am: it’s the Christmas season, and my teacher has asked the students to choose holiday songs for a class recital. Not content with the traditional choices, I’m writing a bizarre parody of the 12 Days of Christmas. And when Mom realizes what I’m doing… she sits right down beside me, and helps me finish it. The best lines are hers by a country mile.
Mom worked as an X-Ray technologist for more than 30 years. As far as the neighborhood kids went, this made her the presiding medical authority on every scrape, skinned knee, and bruise. They’d consult her before consulting their own parents; she was like the village shaman.
Her and my Dad knew each other 61 years. They met at Kennedy High School when it first opened; more specifically, they met while starring (as a married couple) in the school production of Damn Yankees. In their yearbook, they were voted Class Sweethearts. Six decades later, I watched Dad kneel by her bedside to hold her hand a final time.
I will forever remember my mother as a sweet, sensitive soul who loved fairies (especially Tinkerbell), Shakespeare, Gone with the Wind, Daphne du Maurier, Conan the Barbarian (seriously), and most of all, her family. She was a gifted singer and dancer (as mentioned, she needed no stage), gifted artist (even if the only canvas nearby was a bunch of lemons), spectacular cook (her tomato sauce truly was the best in the world) and her attempts at playing video games are the stuff of legend. She sparkled with life, wit, and love.
I will miss… everything. Being able to tell her about a story sale I made; discussing history with her; seeing her smile; hearing her laugh. I will miss her informative commentaries on every actor and actress in any movie we’d watch together; she was like a living Internet Movie Database. I will miss her phone calls: “Bri, daddy and I just saw a documentary you’d love…”
I will miss everything.
The world is so much dimmer for her passing. I’m reminded of the famous line from the end of Blade Runner: “All those moments will be lost in time. Like tears in rain.” Life is insultingly short, and it shouldn’t be that way. Certain species of turtles live three hundred years. Bristlecone pines live five thousand.
All week, my mind has fixated on a childhood memory with technicolor clarity: her adjusting my clip-on tie before sending me out to the school bus on an overcast October morning, and how I knew that when I returned she’d be there to ask how my day was.
Fuck cancer, and fuck the lack of cultural and political will to invest in a cure the way we invest in war. This situation exists because we allow it, and that’s our eternal shame.
I love you always, Mom. And every day, for as long as I exist, I’ll tell you how my day was.
