I didn’t know quite what I wanted to say here, but as I went through my mother’s things after her passing, I came across something that I think summed up my thoughts pretty well in the form of a rare letter from 1992.

My parents loved Neil Diamond and Barbara Streisand and would stack them alternating on the big console stereo we had. I think you could stack 5 or 6 records at a time. When those were done they would flip the whole pile and start all over again. It was on that stereo that I first started dubbing music. I think my mother’s copy of “Barbara Streisand/ Kris Kristofferson – A Star Is Born” soundtrack was my first.

After a divorce when I was an early teen my Mom and I moved around a bit, but I remember out apartment in Mishawaka, where she would play Chicago 8-tracks and Billy Joel albums, and the ever present Neil Diamond on the all in one stereo we had.

When eventually we move to Ann Arbor Michigan, “we” bought a new component stereo. We were at a department store and they had stereo components and in typical Eileen fashion she asked the clerk to help us pick out a set-up. Receiver, record player, tape deck and speakers. I’ve no doubt it cost a fortune for a single mom, but our love of music was strong and I was flipping out when I helped set it up. It was the first time I had had a component stereo and the speakers were giant! Side note: I still have those speakers attached to my basement stereo. They are still kicking!

During the Ann Arbor days, my Mom funded my first record purchases. The Cars, Cheap Trick, B-52’s, Linda Ronstadt and Beatles. I had a pair of headphones with an extension and would listen for hours. Eventually the stereo wound up in my room.

It was in Ann Arbor where my Mom would go to Meijer Superstore and leave me in the record section to browse the bins of cutout records, often talking me down from the pile I accumulate while she shopped and convincing me to pick just 1 or sometimes 2.

When we moved to Roselle Illinois to share a house with my mom’s friend Rose and her son, I shared a room, and a love of music and computers with Dave. It was a good pairing and my Mom would take the train into Chicago for work. Eventually we got our own place and that stereo from Ann Arbor came with.

In the summer when I would go spend time with my dad, with whom Mom was still friendly, I would take that stereo with me. Haul it down, set it up, break it down drive it back and set it up again. It was a big deal. I NEEDED my music.

There wasn’t any kind of music she didn’t like, and she always helped my get records. Driving me to the mall, buying me a haul on my birthday and random days. She knew it was an important part of my life, and she indulged me. Quite often I suspect when money was tight and she chose making me happy over her own happiness.

Over the past 2 years, as I watched the seemingly quick decline of the once fiercely strong and independent mother I had known to a variety of diseases that were affecting her mind and body, I wished there was more I could do. The woman that gave me life, raised me often on her own, and no doubt struggled to keep us housed and fed along the way, but never forgot to make sure that there was joy to be had that I would always remember… seemed to fade from this world.

I spent an afternoon with her in the hospital when her care facility thought she was showing signs of a mini-stroke. In the end I spent 6 hours with her there and they didn’t find anything, but it turns out that my mom that day was more alert and focused and chatty than she had been for months. It was a treat to be with her and interact with her this way. When the ambulance came to transport her back to her facility I told her I loved her and she said love you too.

She passed in her sleep overnight.

As I said, as I went through the stuff we had cleaned out of her apartment when she went to the facility, I came across a letter I had written her in December of 1992. For me to actually WRITE a letter at all was rare, which may be why she kept it. It was written at a time when 2 of my kids were small and I was 28 years old. I think it sums up what I would say to now, again.

Dear Mom,

I’m writing you this letter in an effort to express something I’ve been feeling for 28 years, but have only recently begun to fully understand and appreciate.

I have such wonderful memories of my childhood and adolescent years, growing up with you and Dad, which I am reminded of daily through my absorption of Abbey and Max and their childhood. I can see myself now in a way that perhaps you saw me then. This gives me a fresh new perspective on events and times that I could only view in one way before.

The love, care and effort involved in our life together, the challenge and sacrifice you surmounted raising me, though I understood, I couldn’t really grasp at the time. Now that I feel I can come closer to knowing, it only fills my heart more and more with the love you gave to me. As if it were waiting for me to truly understand before letting itself be truly realized. Now I feel it all, though it was there all along.

Still, after knowing all that you’ve done, you come to me with concerns about things you claim to have done or put me though? Such things have long since been forgotten by me, if they were even noticed at all. When I look back I see only happy together times or times for which I an totally regretful.

Overall I’d say we fared pretty well.

Please don’t ever doubt what you’ve done for me throughout the years, or the love that you’ve poured into my life.

I felt it then, I know it now, and I will come to feel and know it more and more as each day passes.

Thank you for the gift you give me forever, your love.

I love you Mom.

Michael

Follow my blog with Bloglovin