Mom and Me

It was March 29th, 1987. 

It was a Sunday and my family got up and went to Mass and lunch as was our routine.  A few hours after we returned home, my mom found me and said, "Come with me."

We walked out to the car and then she began to drive.  This was strange.  At this time, we lived in a full house with my mom, dad, grandparents, and four kids.  To have one-on-one time with mom was very strange.  I asked her where we were going.  She said, "You'll see."  Her crypticness made me worried that I had some kind fo clandestine doctor's appointment that required something horrible like shots.

But then she pulled the car into the Front Row Theater where I knew they were holding a closed circuit screening of WrestleMania III live!

At this time in my childhood, I was a wrestling fanatic.  My mother would sometimes bring my brother and me to the Richfield Coliseum to see live matches of the WWF.  By this time, my older brother had grown out of it, but I still subscribed to my wrestling magazines, bought the posters, purchased the action figures, and would watch wrestling any night I could on Television. 

WrestleMania III was a big deal for me.  It was the culmination of a number of plot-lines that had been drawn out over the wrestling year.  Andre the Giant had betrayed Hulk Hogan.  Rowdy Roddy Piper was going to have his last match before retiring.  And most importantly, Ricky the Dragon Steamboat, my favorite, was going to take on Randy Macho Man Savage for the Intercontinental Belt after Macho Man crushed Steamboat's larynx with the ring bell.

Of course, my mother didn't care about any of that.  She would often bring a book to these live events.  But she knew that it mattered to me.  I honestly don't recall asking my mom to take me to Wrestlemania, though I'm sure it was all I talked about at home.  And so my mom decided to do something special with just me and her and so she spent her entire evening watching a giant TV screen of bulky men in tights hitting each other.

As Mother's Day came around this year, about a year-and-a-half after my mom's death, this is the memory that keeps coming back to me. 

It is easy to idealize the dead.  And my mom had her share of human failings, as we all do.  But that doesn't take away from all of the special things that made her my mom. 

We all have our own love languages.  That means there are particular ways that we express love and receive love.  The two most important love languages for me are quality time and gift-giving.  And for me, that Sunday night with my mom was a perfect example of both.  Anyone who has kids can understand that you never have enough time for anything.  But my mom set aside time just to spend with me in a place she almost surely detested.

But most of all, she gave me this special gift of WrestleMania.  The reason why gift-giving is one of my love languages is because of what it signifies.  It is not about the material cost to a person.  That part is irrelevant.  But the giving of a gift is an opportunity to let the other person know how well you know them as a person.  And my mom knew me.  She knew this was important to me, even if it was unimportant to anyone else.

I had a strained relationship with my father for most of my childhood.  Even though he loved me and worked his best to provide for me, he didn't know me.  He didn't understand me.  I'm glad that as I have gotten older, my father and I have gotten closer and all those old hurts have gone away.  But my mom always knew me, even if she didn't fully understand her odd son.

To this day, that Sunday in March is one of my fondest memories of her.  I don't know if I told her at the time, but it meant the world to me that she was there with me.

As I said, my mom wasn't perfect.  Those of you who are parents understand that you will make many mistakes raising your children.  There is always the fear that you have made that one big mistake that will ruin them.  My mom made a lot of mistakes, but I just wanted to say that those mistakes don't outweigh all wonderful things she did that made her my mom. 

To all the mothers reading this, please know how special you are to your children.  Even if you they never tell you, even if you end up with a weird child like me, when you die to yourself to validate your children in the things they love, it won't be forgotten.  Thirty-two years later, the memory of that night still fills me with childlike excitement for the event and warm affection for my mom.  I'm sure the car ride home with her was something else for her as I talked her ear off about the amazingly epic battles we just witnessed

I never much cared for car rides.  For me, a car is just a means of transportation and the sooner the ride is over the better. 

My mother loved car rides.  She loved looking at the sights wherever we went.  In the Summer of 2017, she began to feel sick.  Her health had never been great, so we didn't know that she had already developed stage four ovarian cancer.  I knew that she loved car rides, so I called her up and asked her if she wanted to go for a drive.  By this time she was having trouble walking on her own so I wheeled her to the car and we drove.  First we drove to the park overlooking Lake Erie.  She loved the water and found it so peaceful.  We sat there as I held her hand and we watched the waves.  Then we started taking the lake road and drove West for almost an hour.  I didn't know that this was the last car ride we would ever have together.  I don't know if she suspected it either.  All I knew was that I wanted to spend quality time doing something she loved.  I learned that these are the things you do when you love someone.  And I learned that from her.

And I will never forget what she said after about an hour on the road.  I asked her, "What do you want to do now?"

She said, "Just keep driving."

I don't know why God called her to the mother of my siblings and me.  I don't know why God called me to be her son.  Of the billions and billions of souls that God ever made, He chose us to be a family.  He knew that she was the mother we all needed. 

She was the mother I needed.

Happy Mother's Day, mom.

I miss you.