Dear Mom,
It’s been 58 years and one day since you passed away. That’s a lot of time missing you. Although “missing” isn’t quite accurate, since I don’t really remember you. “Absence” probably makes more sense. And “absence makes the heart grow fonder” right?
But I’m not sure that “fonder” can do the heavy lifting either, since there was no return. Absence makes the heart grow heavier, for sure. But after I became a parent I gained a greater admiration for all the good parenting you packed into those few short formative years… and a greater appreciation for the hard work that your widowed husband put in after you departed way too soon.
Herb soldiered on. And “soldiering on” is completely accurate. Because every day was an uphill battle with four kids to raise all by his lonesome. And “lonesome” is spot-on too. He tried to make working (in the traditional breadwinner sense) work. I know he worked the overnight shift at the Post Office when we were still in Jersey City, and he taught elementary school for a couple of years after we moved to Arkansas. But he was a Yankee in the South. A male in a female-dominated industry. A person with high education standards in a state with low outcomes. (No shade to the “Land of Opportunity” but them’s the facts.) He was really up against it. And he was not just heartbroken, but truly broken.
So we mostly lived off of Social Security survivor benefits. Your gift that kept on giving. It wasn’t much, but somehow, some way, it was enough. Enough to get us through Catholic grade school, Catholic high school, and Jesuit universities. I have no idea how the math worked – it’s truly the 8th Wonder of the World that Herb was able to pull that off. (Although credit cards were involved too…)
And we turned out OK, your kids. Smart. Kind. Caring. We took different paths to different destinations, but we’re good, and I know you know that.
But I also look at this photo, taken just a few short months before you passed, and I wonder what you thought, and how you felt.
You probably already had the diagnosis by then. Leukemia. And in 1968 that usually meant a death sentence. Maybe you were praying for a miracle. Or, having lost your own mom and sister by then, maybe you were resigned to your lot in life… knowing that you didn’t have a lot of life left. I know you loved us as much as you could for as long as you could. That love is still in our blood, and our flesh, and our bones. Cancer took you away but it couldn’t take that away, and it never will.
People wonder why I don’t really care for the “holiday season.” November 9th, 1968 has a LOT to do with that. It’s tough being a motherless child when moms are the epicenter of the holiday traditions – the gathering, the gifting, the good food and the good times. We didn’t have that center of gravity, that “home’ for the holidays. We relied on the kindness of friends for Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations… or we had our Christmas dinner at the South Park Truck Stop in Clarksville because it was the only restaurant that was open on that sacred day.
But I try my best to put on a happy face. I really do. For my Christmas-crazy wife. For the kids. To not be such a Debbie Downer when we’re out and about. But it’s hard to spackle over that gaping void, the 58 years and one day of absence.
Sorry for the long letter – I didn’t have time to write a shorter one. (Thanks, Mark Twain!) I just wanted to say hi. And to say I miss you.
Fondly, and with all the love in my heart,
Your third child (il tuo terzo figlio)
You done said…