Hi, Mom!
Call your mom, call your dad…Don’t text. Don’t email. Call them on the phone. Tell them you love them, and thank them, and listen to them for as long as they want to talk to you.
J.K. Simmons
I woke up Sunday morning to an empty house. After dragging my wooden legs down the stairs, I grabbed the remote and plopped onto the sofa like a hippo in heat. After catching up on the World According to Sportscenter, I surfed the dish until I found something besides a Carol Burnett infomercial to occupy my mind. Two Law and Order reruns later, with a pesky gnat doing kamikaze fly-bys around my face, I looked up at the clock; 5:42am.
“Good Lord,” I said to the gnat, the only other creature under my roof in possession of an actual heartbeat, “what in the name of Jack McCoy am I going to do with myself today?”
The Pretty Blonde was on a weekend excursion to Charleston, SC. The Red Headed Kid was hoisting pints in Belgium, and The Skinny Kid was buried up to his Carnegie Mellon-ed eyeballs in mid-terms inside a frozen meat locker masquerading as Pittsburgh. Being the only family member west of the Mississippi, I surmised that today would be an excellent day to take J.K. Simmons up on his advice; I decided to go visit my mother.
I shut down Geiger Mission Control and quickly showered, shaved and shined. Wanting to look my best, I nervously picked out a sports jacket to match my best pair of jeans. I checked my watch; 6:30am. Perfect. By the time I arrived in Sacramento, the cemetery should be open.
Over a dozen years had passed since my last visit. The family and I were on our way to Lake Tahoe, and I took the opportunity to once and for all introduce my boys to their grandmother. I placed an old 9×12 framed picture of Mom (taken circa 1968) next to her grave marker that had graced our family room for years. I wanted my sons to know that this photo, which meant nothing to them but everything to me, was further evidence that I also once had a living and loving mother, and the fact she was now buried six feet beneath us didn’t mean she wasn’t there. The Pretty Blonde and the boys sat cross-legged on the lawn, underneath a shady oak tree, while I stretched out next to Mom. We shared a picnic lunch, and I regaled my brood with funny stories from the dark ages, back when Mom force-fed me liver, bought me an 8-track tape player for my 16th birthday, spent hours winning back my allowance in gin rummy, dished out dating advice, and yes, occasionally chased me with a belt. The moments that day were precious, and we laughed and laughed and laughed. When it came time to go, we cleaned up our mess and picked the weeds surrounding her grave. I cried all the way back to the car.
Traffic was light, and I made good time to Sacramento. Along the way I thought how Mom would be disappointed at the current state of her family, how her four living sons rarely kept in touch or even talked to each other. After Mom died in 1986, I bought the plot next to her for Dad to one day occupy after his days on Earth were done. But he screwed that up by falling for an old high school flame and moving to Mississippi. Dad now lies somewhere in a Hattiesburg cemetery, sharing a casket with the ashes from my brother Mike. Or so I’m told.
I spent over an hour with Mom. I sat on a folding chair underneath a sun-splashed sky and reminisced over some tea and a chocolate croissant. I brought her up to speed on her grandchildren, and how she’d be hopelessly bragging about them to her friends. I also confessed to the sins I had committed since her passing, hoping she’d forgive me like she had when she was alive. The cemetery had become as crowded as a Manhattan subway, and Mom was now surrounded by souls who didn’t know her as well I did. Yet unlike my father, Mom doesn’t have someone she loved lying next to her to share Eternity. And who knows when, or if, anyone will ever come to visit her again. I became incredibly sad.
I stopped by the cemetery’s office before heading back home. I inquired about what I should do with the empty plot next to Mom, a piece of dirt I paid $600 for in 1986. The pleasant lady behind the desk told me I could sell it, and that a plot located next to a shady oak tree could fetch as much as $10,000. I told her I’d think about it.
A smile broke out while I walked back to my car. If Mom couldn’t be next to someone she loved, then at least she should have the biggest lot in the neighborhood. She’d love that.