In the late nineties my mother, with whom I was still intermittently on speaking terms, informed my that a childhood friend’s mother had died of cancer.
I had been very close with this woman when I was a kid, and thought fondly of her often, even after me and my friend grew apart and went our separate ways. I remember her empathy and reasonableness when she saw I was struggling with something. I remember her calm demeanor and patience when I got careless while babysitting my friend’s little brother and let him fingerpaint her white living room set. I remember telling my friend, “I wish she was my mom.”
Hearing of her death was hard on me, even though I hadn’t seen her in well over a decade. For the past almost twenty years there were many moments where I thought of her and mourned her passing, and felt for her husband and children who lost her too soon.
This morning I came across something that reminded me of my childhood friend, and I thought to myself, he has a pretty unique name. I wonder what he’s up to these days? After a little googling, I stumbled across something really strange: a lot of links related to his mother. Before long, I was reading a really neat article that she had written for the Chicago Tribune. This year.
Unmourning someone dear to you is a really weird experience.
I feel you. There was so much craziness from adults when I was growing up that it really makes me wonder. And it makes me really appreciate the moments I had with those few who brought a little sanity into the mix.
Ha! I always appreciated how she handled mistakes or bad behavior, but I can’t imagine how she kept her composure on that one. I never was asked to babysit again, of course.
That thought crossed my mind as well, but she really had no limits and needed no excuse to try to bring misery into my life, so who knows?
That was the inspiration for the title. And the theme song was very convenient for ridding myself of a very unpleasant earworm today.
I am thinking of trying to get in touch with her. I don’t have Facebook or LinkedIn - I am loathe to sign up for either - but I’m not sure of any other way to connect that would be appropriate these days.
Was this an article in the Tribune or something like a letter to the editor?
All of the articles in the online edition of the Tribune have “Contact Reporter” next to the reporter’s byline and most of them have an email address at the end of the article. Sending an email is completely appropriate.
Having read about your family dynamics before, do you know if your mother lied to you deliberately? Or was she merely mistaken? Did this person even have cancer?
Yes, definitely try and get in touch with her. She’ll probably laugh about the fact that you thought she was dead.
She has a number of articles in the Tribune, but there are no options for contacting her that I can find. Although most of the articles I’ve found don’t have anything but her name in the byline, a couple list her as a freelance reporter, and one had her as “special to the Chicago Tribune”. I’m guessing that’s why there’s no contact info, because I do see that sort of thing available in other people’s bylines.
So far, it seems my options are to either join Facebook and contact her that way (actually via her son’s page, as I can find his page, but not hers), or I can pay some weird company for a “report” on her - bleah. I miss the days when UsWest just had a free online phonebook.
I remember once she told me that another childhood friend of mine, this short, fat, ginger kid named Sammy Jackson, was doing really well in the movies these days.
Arguably, it is, of course, possible that my mother was merely mistaken somehow. But given her history of lying and the level of specificity in the conversations we had about it, I’ve gotta say it’s reasonable to believe that she intentionally lied to me on this one.
