Ever since Mom’s diagnosis in May, Eva and Maya and I have been coming up to visit almost every weekend. We were trying to get in as much time with her as possible while taking some of the load of care off of my brothers and my dad. In that time, I had an interesting trip through my life with her.

My Mom, as she said herself, was Ally Sheedy’s character in The Breakfast Club. She was sweet and bitter, bright and moody, smart, cuddly, and insightful, balancing uniquely orchestrated learning opportunities with giving us the freedom to experiment and screw up.

She used to raise hell at our elementary school, reluctantly playing the part of the angry black woman, when the staff at the almost-all-white school were treating us like dumb little black kids. Not that we weren’t dumb.

When we turned 11 and 12, Mom made Mikey and me man baskets to go along with our Christmas presents. I won’t list everything that was in there, but it did have shaving cream, razors, and a few other things that we weren’t quite ready to use, either.

We came home from school one day calling crayons “crowns” and calling snow “snew.” She wasn’t having that and nipped that Balmorese right in the bud. For years later people would swear I had an accent but couldn’t place it.

Mom bought us a used set of encyclopedias. It was from 1975 and contained some… let’s say outdated ideas. It was also missing a few important letters, but I still read practically every article in them while everyone else was playing baseball.

We asked for an easy bake oven as kids because, in the commercials, kids got to make their own cakes and cookies. As it turned out, we also liked eating cakes and cookies. My Mom got some advice that such a gift would turn her boys into poofs. She countered that 1) her boys would be able to feed themselves and 2) a woman loves a man that can cook.

Mom used to bring home waste paper with state office letterhead on it for us. I used it to draw and write and fold and make puppets with it. It was with that paper one summer that I invented my stealth fighter paper airplane and flying Superman.

Most Christmases, Mom would prank us, hiding toys in clothes boxes, repackaging things we thought we’d seen so they looked like something else, or hiding a present inside of a box inside of a box inside of a box inside… you get the idea. Let’s just say that the tradition continues.

She made a big four course meal for us one day and taught us how to dine like gentlemen; lessons I still use today.

When she found out we were thinking about dropping out of school early like she did, she told us how she went back and got her GED. Even though I had seriously considered dropping out, I decided not to because of that.

Every year on my date of conception, even into adulthood, Mom would tell me, “We made you today, boy. Just remember that it’s your father’s fault.”

Whenever she needed a break from the constant barrage of us boys and who or whatever else we’d brought home with us, she’d take a much needed self-care vacation at her Mom’s house, who would treat her like she was a kid again… with booze and Pinochle. Dad would put us to work so that she’d come back to a nice house.

I remember getting a pretty bad report card. I actually got a LOT of those. I was supposed to take this report card home and get it signed, before bringing it back to school. I had seen other kids sign their own and one kid suggested that I do the same. I knew it was wrong but I really didn’t want to get in trouble.

So I signed it, which was stupid. Of course my parents found out and I was in even more trouble. I imagine my dad had a solution to this in mind but my Mom tried something different. She showed me the report card with the signature that was clearly not hers.

She sat me down and explained to me that trust was an earned and fragile thing, that could be lost or broken easily. She said that if I were dishonest, even once, even a little, it would make her doubt everything I ever said or did. This went both ways if she ever lied to me.

I never forged a name, never stole, never cheated… and almost never lied after that. The truth, even when it sucks, is always better.

When I was a kid, the world and I were not getting along. I was angry at the world and the people in it for being so impossible to understand. And I was angry at myself for being so incapable of adapting to it. I could not, at that time, resolve the two and didn’t see any way that they ever would. That darkness ate away at me in a very dangerous way.

Mom was convinced that I was of some benefit to other people. She would not let the darkness win. She worked at me, and not in a preachy or patronizing way. Rather she stated and then repeated some things that took a long time to stick.

She said that life was probably going to keep being hard for a while. It might even get worse. But she said I should stay with it, learn from it, and be better for it. Because life would get easier. It would get better. Eventually much better. And this little part of my life would be a distant memory. Of course she was right. She liked to point out that she was always right.

I had to accept a very difficult truth, that the world was better with me in it. I tried as often as I could over the years to pass Mom’s lessons along, that people everywhere have a place in the world and that they have the power to improve it, by working on themselves and helping those around them. I guess that’s a mom’s job, or maybe it’s the job of a community, to remind people that they are valuable and have a place in the world. To teach people to look inward to fix themselves and look outward to fix their world.

I gotta be honest, I don’t get anything from the religious or spiritual talk. It doesn’t matter what you quote, how passionately you say it, or how many times you repeat it. I just don’t get it. I’ve spoken decent bits and pieces of at least nine or ten languages and people using spiritual talk are speaking English. It just sounds like the adults in Charlie Brown to me. The only thing it does is take me out of whatever moment I’m experiencing. I don’t understand it and it doesn’t make me feel better.

But… it doesn’t make me feel worse, either. I know that when you direct religion at me, it comes from a loving place. I can see that religion does for other people what my Mom did for me… teaching, helping, giving… and so I’m willing to hear the words, participate in the ceremonies now and again, or occasionally sit a witness if it makes you happy. Because I love you. And I like seeing the people I love happy.

So you might want to know what I think; what I believe. Or you might not. It doesn’t matter. I’m still gonna tell you, turnabout being fair play, and all.

You can imagine that my thinking on this is complicated but I’ll try to keep it simple.

I think that we are, fundamentally, the universe’s desire to reconnect with itself, exchanging energy, and balancing it’s need for order and for chaos by compelling subatomic particles into atoms, atoms into molecules, molecules into complex molecules, complex molecules into simple life, on and on and on… until us; an organism so complex that it can come a pretty long way in trying to understand itself and the mechanics of its own world. Our minds, our identities, my Mom’s identity is more complex and unique than a galaxy of hundreds of billions of planets and stars. It is more complex than the pattern of gravity between them.

I think being alive is like you’re a particle orbiting inside the Schwartzschild radius of a black hole.

(Don’t groan. This is how it sounds to me when you all talk about Jesus.)

The Schwartzschild radius is the distance at which you can’t escape the gravity of a black hole. Outside of it, as long as you’re going fast enough, you can still escape and go on your merry way. But inside, you are forever trapped an orbit that will ultimately descend into the dark core. Some particles fall straight in while others orbit slowly toward the center. No matter how long you can manage to hold out (unless you happen to be able to travel faster than the speed of light… which you can’t), eventually you’re going to fall in and dissolve into the anonymous collective. And absolutely no one knows what happens when you get there. We can speculate. We can use our intuition or our dreams as guides. We can hope that what our predecessors said is true. But no one really knows. And no one can.

I’m not telling you all of this to win you over to my philosophy. That would be just super but unrealistic. I’m telling you all of this so that you will understand why I’m not as sad as I could be. I love my Mom. I am going to miss my Mom. But I got to know my Mom, and that is such a special thing.

When Mom’s identity dissolved into the ether, her uniqueness was lost forever. Given all of the time that there has been and will be, of all of the people that could have filled this place in our lives, that we were fortunate enough to experience her uniqueness, even for the brief time that we had with her, is incredible and should not be wasted. We should learn from that time, sear those lessons into ourselves so that we too can leave the world so moved. Because, as far as we know for certain, this life is all we have.

I’m not afraid of not knowing. I am inspired by not knowing. I am inspired by learning. And I have learned from all of you.

I learned how to treat other people by watching my Dad love my Mom, seeing him treat everyone like a celebrity, and from seeing how I hurt him when I ruined one of his paintings.
I learned to shut up and listen to experienced people from my grandparents, aunts, and uncles, who’s stories, jokes, and advice were way better if I didn’t keep trying to interrupt with my own.
I learned to appreciate simple things and the work needed to maintain them from my great grandmother, while hand-polishing silver for her every thanksgiving and Christmas.
I learned to be patient from my older brother, arguing while speaking almost completely different languages it seemed, and realizing that his perspective was just as valid as mine.
I learned to watch over others from my younger brother, who I always felt the need to protect and care for, even as he grew into someone who protects and cares for other people.
I learned to appreciate how good I had it from every wonderful stray that we took in who had been through so much more struggle than I ever had, all while retaining their positivity and decency.
And I learned to be “me” from my Mom. The irony that I am only just now really coming into myself just as she has left is not lost on me.

But I also learned from my Mom not to take life so damned seriously, even when life is as serious as cancer.

My Mom was a perfect balance between sweet and rude, elegant and crass, quiet and cranky, giving and… whatever the opposite of giving is. She didn’t want a big sad gathering. She didn’t want kids sitting down glued to their seats, fidgeting in misery. She wanted people laughing and telling stories. She wanted kids up, walking around, and playing… quietly, in the back. She wanted this to be a celebration of her life, not a mourning of her death.

So I don’t picture her here.

I picture her sucking her fingers watching Patrick Swayze shake it in Dirty Dancing telling us that it’s okay to look as long as you think twice before you buy.

I picture dancing with her at my wedding, nervous until I got her laughing her head off.

I picture her cussing Phil and me out after carrying her upstairs in her wheelchair, swearing we were going to kill her before the cancer did.

And I picture her making us wait every year to open presents on Christmas morning until everyone was up, had eaten breakfast, and was sitting in front of the tree, because my Mom loved torturing her all of her children.

I love you, Mommy. I miss you.