After 87 years on this Earth, my mother has passed. At the moment, my thoughts are a jumble of sadness and random happy memories, so I thought I'd post a few of the latter here in tribute.
My mother was a good person: kind and loving. When I was a child, she encouraged me to be kind to others and to consider their feelings and not just my own. I can still remember the time she sat me down and played Joe South's 1970 song Walk a Mile in My Shoes to teach me about empathy. She also couldn't abide bigotry and racism and made sure I felt the same way. These were the most important lessons I ever learned from her.
My mother loved to read. She loved nothing more than to curl up with a good book. I saw her reading novels for pleasure regularly while I was growing up, and that influenced my love of reading. Like a lot of moms, she also read People magazine and the occasional drugstore tabloid, but I remember her having a subscription to Rolling Stone and the Village Voice, too, which I thought was pretty cool.
My mother loved movies. When I was younger, we would watch them together on the living room couch. She especially loved a good thriller. Later, when my parents divorced, I would spend weekends with her. When she picked me up on Saturday, we would usually have lunch and then see a movie. There are 52 weeks in a year, so yeah, we saw a lot of 'em. More often than not, it would be something that she wanted to see, so I ended up watching more R-rated fare than my classmates at school. The first time I ever saw The Deerhunter, Apocalypse Now, or Alien was in a movie theater with my mom.
My mother loved music. She had a special affection for Rhythm and Blues. When I was younger, I remember her playing B.B. King, Aretha Franklin and Al Green around the house, and she practically wore out her 45 of Booker T. and the MGs Green Onions. I still remember visiting her one weekend and finding the Isley Brothers blistering hit, Fight the Power, part 1 & 2, on her turntable. I was impressed, thinking it was a pretty hip tune for a (then) 42-year-old white lady.
My mother was a proud union member. For many years she worked in a hot, noisy factory, testing motors for General Electric (a company that once employed 10,000 people in Fort Wayne).
My mother was all of these things I've listed here and much more. Besides being a great Mom, she was a good, decent human being who cared about the people she shared this planet with. I can trace all of the good qualities that (I hope) I possess straight back to her.
Thanks, Mom, for everything. I love you.
There's more to come in the next dispatch.
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