After a while, when you've lost a loved one, you start noticing all the things you reflexively want to share with them and it makes those experiences just a little poignant, perhaps forever so. Mom and I shared a lot of interests and I find myself thinking, "I have to tell Mom about this," quite often. It's a bittersweet moment composed of anticipatory pleasure followed by a sometimes-brutal, sometimes just sad, reality check.
I've been sharing things I've learned with her ever since I was a kid. One of my most common memories of childhood was coming home from school and telling her what I'd learned that day, whether it was a new word or a new concept. One of our running lines was, oddly enough, about eutrophication, which I can't believe I even remember how to spell. This was sometime during my junior high years, at the height of the ecology movement. Our house is near a small, shallow lake which is gradually turning into wetlands, especially at our end of it, so it was a concept we could both see at work. Mom not only never forgot it, but we actually talked about it over the years as the north end of the lake grew more and more swamp-like, filling with ducks and phragmites, herons and cattails, beaver and muskrat.
So we have a long history of sharing ideas. It's hard to shut that off.
Music was one of the interests we shared, and since the cultural opportunites in Northern Michigan were somewhat lacking (even if you live, say, in Traverse City near Interlochen Arts Academy) and radio is pretty sketchy up there too, I was always on the lookout for new types to introduce her to. I'd gotten her into jazz when I was in college and she left behind quite a collection of vocalists, from Ella Fitzgerald to Diana Krall. I thought she'd probably like Queen Latifah's new CD, The Dana Owens Album, too. And when she was here in October, I mentioned Fado to her, thinking that she would probably like it, or at least be interested in hearing some. I've heard it but don't happen to own any, so I promised I'd find a couple of representative CDs and send them to her. I'd gotten as far as fishing around online for some but hadn't actually ordered any when she died. Now, of course, she'll never hear it.
Books were another common interest we shared. Though I never got her truly interested in science fiction, she eventually wore me down about mystery and detective fiction. I have a fondness for the hardboiled noir and classy English mysteries while she likes the psychological investigations. Occasionally, we overlapped, as we did with Nero Wolfe. On the train today, I started a new book in a detective series we both followed: Robert Tannenbaum's Butch Karp books. I think she started me on these, having discovered them in the Alcona County Library (which has a large supply of detective fiction for those long, cold, snowed-in, winter months). This was one she hadn't read yet, a really good one, and for just a moment there I was looking forward to telling her about it, anticipating her anticipation.
There are other opportunities we've missed now, too, among them travel. Mom always seemed to be waiting for me to take her places the way she'd taken me when I was kid. Though she'd live in Europe herself, in Germany, for quite some time before I was born, she complained that Dad had never taken her anywhere. I found this bewildering because I would have just gone myself, regardless of social constraints or fear. I don't know how she raised her daughter to be like that without having some of it herself, and she must have because she flew alone to Germany to marry Dad. The problem with us traveling together, as I saw it, was that she wanted to go first class and neither of us could afford that, i.e., she could afford it for herself, but not for both of us, and I couldn't afford it alone, even. My two trips to Europe in my 20s were of the "college kid abroad" sort with a backpack, though I prefered B&Bs to hostels. When she was making the reservations, it was always the best hotels: the Four Seasons if possible, a Hilton at the very least. I think she would have envied my friend Paul's set of Louis Vuitton luggage.
We never got to England together, though she really wanted to go with me. By the time I could afford to go in the style to which she was accustomed, she was too frail and too ill to travel. Going to Japan is going to be a different travel experience than it might have been because I'll be seeing it purely for myself, not thinking about what she would want to hear about. I'll be looking through the lens of my own interests, rather than sometimes searching out things that she'd find interesting. I won't be looking for souvenirs to send her, or postcards.
And there's one lost opportunity I'm regretting for her:
On Mom's last visit here, I discovered Bobby Short, her favorite jazz/cabaret musician, was playing one of his last gigs ever at the Carlyle Hotel. Tickets were $100, which meant that with dinner and transportation, we'd drop something like $350 for a night on the town. Not much for that kind of a New York night on the town, but not pocket change for people like us either. Mom decided not to go. Two months later, she was dead. What would it have hurt for us to go see him? We'd have had some really good food, some fab drinks, heard some great live music and rode giddily home in a cab. It would have been a good, fun blowout for an old lady. Her last hurrah. I regret I didn't try to talk her into it. There won't be a second chance.
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