Tag: my mom

Mom died five years ago

I felt that was operating on two levels simultaneously.

mom graduateThe interesting thing for me about my mother’s death five years ago today, from a strictly sociological standpoint, was the fact that it, in some fashion, took place in this blog.

I had written a post on Sunday, January 30 about my mother’s stroke two days earlier, and my need to trek down to Charlotte, NC. But I didn’t actually post it until Wednesday, February 2, the day she died. I was there when it happened.

When I finally got back to what had been my mother’s house and was/is my sister’s house, that afternoon, I eventually checked my email. There were several comments on the blog hoping for my mother’s recovery.

Then Denise Nesbitt, the doyenne of ABC Wednesday, emailed me and asked how I was. I told her that my mother had died. SHE must have contacted several others because I then got a wave of condolences from people, most of whom I knew but had never met.

If I ever find the need to cry, reading the comments to that post, quite possibly the greatest number of responses I’ve ever gotten on this blog, will turn on the sobbing.

The next day, I posted about her death, then the actual trip to Charlotte (written just before her death), then, after a Super Bowl post I’d written much earlier, mom’s obituary.

Three days later – thank goodness I write ahead – Mom’s funeral program. A week later, Random Post-Funeral Thoughts. Finally, the first part of my monthly rambling contained more musings.
mom and me
What was useful in the process was the fact that my niece Alex, Marcia’s daughter, did a ton of photo scanning, some for the funeral, which I used in the posts. MANY of these pictures I had never seen, and others, not for years.

All of this was very therapeutic for me. Someone wrote, early on, that I seemed “detached.” It’s more that I felt that was operating on two levels simultaneously, one as the person grieving, and one as the journalist, for want of a better term, observing the process.

Speaking of therapeutic, a couple of months later, I recommended the book The Orphaned Adult.

When we got back to Albany, we received flowers from the aforementioned Mrs. Nesbitt, which was incredibly sweet. I went to church that last Sunday of the month when we sang Lift Every Voice and Sing, which I’ve sung for years. But I can barely get through it anymore without crying, and it started that day when I knew, profoundly, that my mom, and my last living ancestor, was gone.

Movie Review: Heart of A Dog

Heart of a Dog is a documentary by artist/musician Laurie Anderson about her very deep relationship with her canine.

heart of a dog.laurie andersonIt’s Tuesday, November 17, the last day that the Spectrum 8 Theatre will be under the current ownership. Come Friday, November 20, the cinema will reopen under the control of the chain, Landmark Theaters.

The current owners insist the new company will keep it just the same. Keith and Sugi Pickard gave me that message the previous Saturday at the APL Foundation Library Gala, and Keith, who’s helping with the concession stand queue repeats the message this night to the Wife and me. I’ve been going there, or to its predecessor, the 3rd Street Cinema in Rensselaer, since 1980.

There are a number of films I’d like to see. But the one playing that seemed avant-garde, least mainstream, most Spectrum-like, was Heart of a Dog, a documentary by artist/musician Laurie Anderson about her very deep relationship with her canine, but also about her late mother, post 9/11 surveillance, and memory. Her late husband Lou Reed makes a brief appearance. It’s impressionistic and meditative and contemplative and musical, and occasionally very funny. Go read some nice reviews, 97% positive on Rotten Tomatoes.

Sugi Pickard watched that single screening. So did Cathy Frank, the legendary namesake of Cathy’s Waffles in ’80s Albany, who posted her disastrous-looking but still apparently tasty waffles on her Facebook page. It was a Smallbany event of sorts, the end of an era, like the apparent demise of Metroland after 38 years, or the closing of Bob and Ron’s Fish Fry in Albany after 67 years.

Oh, and it was my mom’s birthday, and Laurie was remembering what thing her mom said to her that most sticks to her mind. And it got me thinking some more about MY mom’s words to me. And it was…soothing to contemplate.

Mom was too nice

We thought people would act honorably, and say what they mean, rather than behave with a level of subterfuge.

roger.mom.1971If I have told this story before, I’ll tell it again anyway.

My late mother, at some point during the last decade of her life, received a telephone call at her home for a product or service – it little matters what – that she was not interested in receiving. She tells the young man this, and yet he remains on the phone with her another ten minutes or more before the call is finally terminated.

She complains bitterly – well, as resentful as she was capable of getting – that she TOLD him she wasn’t interested. Why didn’t he listen? Why didn’t he hang up? To which I said, “Why didn’t YOU just hang up?” I have nearly perfected the “Thanks but no thanks, bye” thing, upon which I disconnect the call.

But she was expecting that the unknown individual on the other end of the line would do the honorable thing, hear what she has to say, and act accordingly.

I believe that at least two of my mother’s three children, and I’ll acknowledge being one of them, have been hurt and surprised by people who we thought would act honorably, and say what they mean, rather than behave with a level of subterfuge. In retrospect, we should have seen it coming, but because we trusted their words, were not only surprised but hurt. I shan’t get into the details, but my sister’s situation was much worse than mine.

Because my late father was such a strong persona, people often compare us with him. Mom’s influence was there too, and often it is manifest in compassion and fairness. But sometimes, people take niceness for weakness, and this continues to be part of our learning curve.

Today would have been our mother’s 88th birthday. I think of her all the time, mostly with good thoughts.

A picture of two relatives

classroom.mom.malcolm
My sister Marcia posted this picture of my mother. I assume it’s Daniel Dickinson school in Binghamton, NY. Can you find her?

But it was the black youth in the back row that intrigued me. He looked familiar. Specifically, he looked like a Walker, my paternal grandmother’s people.

My dad’s cousin Ruth confirmed that it was indeed Malcolm Walker, son of Melissa Walker Jackson. Melissa was the sister of my grandmother, Agatha Green, but she died when I was very young. He is first cousin to my father (Les Green), Sheldon Walker, Sydney Bullett, Gene Walker and Ruth Lewis.

Oh, my mom is in the third row, on the far left.

So this is a surprising piece of my genealogical puzzle. At some point, Dad’s first cousin went to school with my mom. It’s not shocking, but I never knew this.

BTW, yesterday was my Grandma Green’s birthday. When she died in 1964, she was the first significant person to die in my life.

Mom was about everyone else

This is my fifth Mother’s Day without my mom.

trudy greenAs I have mentioned, my mother had a miscarriage in April 1951, I believe in the second trimester; it would have been a boy.

When Mom told the story to me, or to me and one or both of my sisters – she tended to tell her stories more than once – it was in context of her explaining why my father was at arm’s length when I was born two years later: he was afraid I might die too.

But I don’t ever recall her mentioning how SHE felt about what I imagine must have been an incredibly emotional incident.

Now that I think on it, she did that a lot, explaining my father’s feelings about his growing up, or being in the military, or dealing with being wronged. Or describing her mother’s eccentricities.

She did note that she was a lousy cook because she was spoiled from being an only child living with at least four adults (mother, grandmother, aunt, uncle) when growing up. But there was never much about how she FELT about it.

In fact, the only time I can remember her talking about her feelings took place well after my maternal grandfather’s father (who even I called Father) passed circa 1960. He was a very strict, church-going pious man, who she admired greatly. When the family discovered booze and girlie magazines hidden away, she was devastated; the underpinning of her values were a bit shaken.

I wondered how she processed things. When I asked her about her theology back in the 1980s, she declared that she should be a good person; this was a bit loosey-goosey to me. She then proclaimed she followed the Ten Commandments. OK – so what does “Thou shalt not kill” mean in terms of the death penalty or self-defense? In several conversations, she never really described this.

My mother WAS a very good person, very outwardly focused, caring about others. Everyone thought she was a very sweet woman. Sometimes, though, I wished her had been a bit more selfish, figuring out what was important to HER. Being squeezed between the dominant personas of her mother and her husband may not have left enough room for her SELF.

This is my fifth Mother’s Day without my mom, and it still makes me surprisingly sad.

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