September 02, 2016
This is a story about a mom, not my mom, but special nevertheless. Before I get there, however, I needed to go through a passing on, a girl, and a death.
The mother of a close friend texted me at work one afternoon (I’m impressed, she’s 81). I called her and she informed me that Barbara’s father had passed away and the wake was to be the next day including directions to the funeral home and the showing times. I knew this day would eventually arrive and while I felt a sadness drape over me, I had a decision to make and I was torn. Wisdom sat on one shoulder whispering to go to the vigil, to pay my respects to the family, it was the right thing to do. Fear sat opposite, screaming. I was scared because I wasn’t sure if I still had feelings for Barbara, and if I did, well… my reactions would be entirely unpredictable, at a wake no less. In the end I chose the coward’s way out, I did nothing. Maybe I should have gone. Looking back, I am reminded of a movie quote from “Pirates of the Caribbean” when Jack Black tells Will Turner: “If you were waiting for the opportune moment, that was it.” It all started 42 years ago and it wasn’t finished yet. Not for me.
In the spring of ‘74 I met Barbara at my high school dance. She was a freshman at a different school. To this day I can remember everything about her that night and for a brief time in my eyes she was the only one on the dance floor. I was a junior, an awkward teenager that completely lacked any self-confidence. I was off the scale – on the low end. Hollywood has made comedies and millions off of guys like me. Talking with her that night took everything I had. When it comes to girls, Teenage boys, can be the dumbest creatures on the planet and I am amazed that dating actually takes place. However, I managed to call her the next week, and we went out a couple of times before the school year ended. Her parents, understandably concerned about their daughter going out with a boy they didn’t know, ended her involvement with me before it actually began. I received a “Dear John” letter from Barbara giving me the bad news. Saddened and rejected, the summer ensued with work, baseball, and football practice filling up my time.
A week before the start of my senior year my ten-year old brother was returning a baseball uniform to the league office across town. On his bike, he stopped at a set of railroad tracks to let a train pass and was killed by a second train he never saw coming from the opposite direction. It was the beginning of a grief I could never have imagined and was also the start of a slow descent of my family’s dissolution, my parent’s marriage ending in divorce a few years later. There are events in life you never recover from.
I don’t remember much of the week leading up to the funeral, the mind’s way of blocking out the pain and grief I suppose. My support consisted of a grieving family, and friends that didn’t know what to say. I was broken and looking for a lifeline, anything I could grab and hold onto, a reprieve from this tragedy. Bad news travels fast, it touches people’s hearts and souls, even when there is only a touch of familiarity. The human grapevine seemed to be alive and well, dictated by conversations and connections that seem completely random and follow no particular order. My bright spot arrived, a small glow within my darkness, as Barbara and her parents suddenly appeared from the flock of people attending the wake. For me, at that moment, we were the only two people in the room, a comfort in my heart ravaged by the death of my brother. I still don’t know how they ended up there, I only know they cared enough to be there.
My senior year began as a personal distraction from my grieving, a path taken up by classes and homework, appreciated condolences from teachers, and deafening silence from many of my classmates. Alone and sad, feeling completely lost without any real help available, I tried to let routine and rote help me in a journey to recovery. Most times I felt I was stumbling around in the dark and it would be many years before I could come to terms with a death so close.
A couple weeks later, returning home from school, my mom met me at the door with a smile on her face and said “I have some news for you”. Apparently, the grapevine was still working its magic and I had passed some sort of parental test; Barbara’s parents had lifted the ban and if I wanted, I could see their daughter. If I wanted? Where’s the phone! Barbara and I stayed together for the next four years and I fell in love for the first time We were best friends, sharing everything.
I was becoming bound to her family as well, sharing in many activities, traditions, holidays and birthdays. Barbara’s parents, Helen and Bob, treated me like a son and the kindness, thoughtfulness, and love they showed me will always remain part of me. So soon after my brother’s death, I was fragile, sensitive, my moods shifting constantly and Barbara’s mother Helen was there. She treated me as if I had a neon “Handle with Care” sign embedded in my forehead. I pitched in to help her when I could; running errands, setting the table for meals, she talked, I listened; I talked, she listened. Helen cared for me as only a mother could, my own mother still greatly suffering within and trying to take care of her own self. Helen became part of my support, she trusted me with her daughter, and in turn I trusted her with my life. She became another mother to me and my relationship gradually grew and hardened, developing naturally without my even thinking about it. Unfortunately, what you want is not always what you get. College, differing interests, and life entered the picture, Barbara and I parted, a bit on the clumsy side, but without any animosity. Our separate paths were chosen and I never saw or spoke to her or her parents again. While very painful at first, life continued, taking me with it – Peace Corps, graduate school, job, marriage, kids, divorce. Milestones and metrics in which a life is measured. I don’t dwell in the past, but when I do occasionally visit there I have only fond and happy memories of our time spent together, and I treasure them.
Barbara and I both have completely separate lives now, linked by a special time spent together long ago. She played a key role in my life, but unbeknownst to me at the time, this journey was to be mine ending many years later, in one of the most emotional experiences of my life. It took me a long time to realize that relationships come in all shapes and sizes, involve many people, all connected by a variety of complex paths, and when the key piece ceases to exist, the others connected are left there hanging, still existing; waiting.
A simple innocent call, placed by a caring mother, was the key used to open a forty-two-year-old vault containing four years of detailed memories, emotions, and feelings. Those hanging connections, a bit edgy and anxious after all this time, weren’t going to let a missed service get in their way. The more I avoided the issue, the more my memory room poured forth, overwhelming me with a flood of both old and new memories of way back when, in extraordinary vivid details. Good and bad, everything came back. It was a constant overwhelming flow and I only wanted a few glasses, what I received was an ocean. I tried to escape by endlessly streaming reruns of “24”. As luck would have it, they made 192 episodes. Try as I might, escape was impossible. After six days of no work, no play, and no sleep, which in any parlance makes for a very dull boy, I finally succumbed and faced my past of long ago.
Throughout the days and nights of this emotional cascade, I realized that Barbara wasn’t my focus. Our relationship had softly settled apart and my only wish for her, always, is to be filled with happiness and love. Who I really needed to see, the true object of my journey’s end, my Holy Grail, was Helen. I had held a heartfelt thought, kept for many, many years, that needed to be said. I devised a plan, simply show up. There was no plan B. Even Jack Bauer would have approved. My mind, ever suspicious that I wouldn’t go through with this, rewarded me with yet another sleepless night.
I rang the bell to a home that I had been to hundreds of times before, armed with a bouquet of flowers and my face streaming with tears. Helen met me at her door and we embraced for a long while. The four years we shared long ago were compressed into that single point. I truly missed her. We sat down next to each other, and between wave after wave of my debilitating emotions, I said what I finally needed to say – “You and Bob matter to me, you are important to me and had a positive impact on my life. You will always have a place in my heart.” She took my hand in hers, and told me that she always loved me, and we silently let the moment be. A mother and a son of long ago. With that, the deluge stopped and the 42-year chasm disappeared. We talked, laughed and shared all afternoon. It was one of my best days in a very long time, reconnected after a short 42-year hiatus.
Relationships become part of us, molded and shaped, hammered in, and in many cases not easily dismantled. Some run their course never to be dealt with again, leaving a trail of memories, emotions, and feelings that fade in a quiet mist over time. Some, however, are never finished and wait until a certain event, like a phone call, to be unleashed in all manner of unpredictability. I can’t run away, ever. These I will always need to face. Words, left unsaid, are like lonely fireflies lost in the night. They need to be said They need a home.