Nanowwrite 2 / Kiss today good bye

A Chorus Line / Soundtrack

Dededicated to a good friend,
Christopher Hoffman
1964-2010







At first, my mother wanted to be buried out of the country, across an ocean in a land where I did not speak the language and where exploding bombs were not uncommon. How this was supposed to happen and arrangements to this effect made, were always a mystery.



“Ma, how …how would that work? How…How?” I would stammer when she raised the issue.


“Well, you need to figure it out.” She would answer with a great snort of contempt. “You need to take some responsibility in this world.”


This started various arguments. I was a freshman in college, working two jobs. I also tended to manage the apartment we shared as she did not. She was too busy. So, I thought my responsibility was well established.


Given it was apparently my responsibility as the dutiful daughter to make it happen, and I was not out making arrangements, other options started to be floated. It was at this time that she decided that I was unreliable and undeserving and therefore should not be in charge of the estate at all. I was stricken from the will.


This was probably the first round of “coming to terms.” I had a lot of mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, being removed from ridiculous funeral arrangements was a relief. But as an only child in a relationship that had consisted of just her and I for most of my life, it was still a slap in the face. Further, she made it clear that given this circumstance I would have no claim to the ‘estate.’


We had never been wealthy, but I was always very attached to things, silly things really, this piece of furniture, that knickknack. When my grandmother had died when I was twelve, we had not been in a position to keep much, but what we did keep represented my world. These things were my family, my history and the threat that they would be gone when she was was very effective.


I rationalized things at the time, when my mother chose our “cousin” J as the executor. He and his wife were doctors with rising careers. Well traveled, spoke multiple languages. If anyone could handle the multitude of issues of having an American body shipped out of the country for burial, surely it was him. Although J was my great grandmother’s brother’s children’s child, his family were the closest things to relatives we had. I grew up spending holidays and vacations with his family. I felt confident I could trust that he would see to it I got a few trinkets? Right? I wasn’t happy, but life went on.






A decade later I was living 400 hundred miles away and suffering through a hellish teaching job. We had moved for my job, only to arrive on my first day to be handed job ads and told it would be best to start looking. The situation had gone down hill from there. I was under contract until June, but we struggling with one income and the knowledge that after that we could be anywhere.


It was December when the phone rang.


“Hi, What’s new? You sound good.” Her voice was cheery and aggravating. I knew I didn’t sound good. For years when things were going, at least by comparison well, she had been pessimistic and negative. That year, even after several painful, tearful scenes, she was refusing to acknowledge all was not rose-y.


“What’s up?” I asked wearily, preparing to brush off the conversation, unable to stomach Pollyanna.


“Oh, I’m just calling to let you know I’ve scheduled an appointment…”


“Okay…?” A long silence followed until I asked. “What kind of an appointment?”


“It’s nothing really. I’m just going to be going into the hospital.”


Another long silence followed. I waited, but no further explanation came.


“What do you mean? What’s up?”


“I made an appointment to take a stress test. Just routine.”


“That doesn’t require going into the hospital.” I squinted into the phone.


“Well, usually. I’m going to have it done in the hospital, but if they find something, I might get admitted right away.” She said casually, the sound of her doing other things filling the back ground noise on the phone.


“Okay…. Do they think they are going to find something? Did something prompt this?”


“No. It was just a physical, I thought I would tell you is all…” She sounded truly nonchalant.


As the conversation progressed, it turned out that the day of her stress test I was to be traveling to an interview. With the interview and her appointment only seventy five miles apart, it was agreed that she would call me after her test and that the next day, after my interview I would swing by to see her on my return trip.


The next day she had triple by pass surgery. Although it had been scheduled quickly, it was already scheduled before our phone call. But when she came out of it, multiple things, including her will, changed.