Shallow Be My Name

You’re right. I’ve been gone for quite some time. And if you were me, which you’re not, or if you think like me, which I am pretty sure most of you don’t, you would by this time have come to the one and only conclusion I would have come to. You would have concluded that the only possible reason I could have been gone this long is that I am, in fact, dead. And rightly so. I mean what other plausible explanation could be made for a more than two month absence from my blog? It would just be silly to think that I have been travelling. At least not at this time of year. Or that in my retirement I found myself consumed by some otherwise undiscovered talent/interest that subsumed all of my time leaving me little room for previously embraced activities. Not very likely. Or that somehow at this advanced age of mine I had determined that living the life of a shallow person was no longer a viable option and I had abandoned this entire operation. Not even remotely possible. So while none of these scenarios are the case, as you can plainly see, I am not dead. Unfortunately, there are a couple of other people who are (well not all are exactly “people”) which is why I have taken a self-imposed hiatus over the past few months. 

Many of you who know me also know that in August my Mother passed away and while she lived a very good and long life, we all miss her very, very much. What many of you don’t know is that exactly one month after her death our dear little Bandit, who also lived a very good and long life, at least for her feline species, crossed the rainbow bridge and needless to say, we miss her very, very much as well. So as you can well imagine, it has been a little difficult for me to get back at it, as they say. But at it I am. And what I now know for sure is there’s a lot to learn from the sadness that death brings. Not only about other people but about oneself. And let me tell you I have spent more than an hour or two over the past months thinking about just that. 

First let me say that my Mother was a wonderful human being. She was a loving Mother to all of us kids and a very smart business woman who truly cared about each and every one of her clients. She was a voracious reader and could talk intelligently about almost everything. She wasn’t much of a drinker (I could tell the story about the night she had a few too many and ended up face down in a plate of spaghetti, but I won’t) which isn’t really a bad thing if you ask me. She was beautiful and funny and, as my Auntie Fanny so eloquently described her, “a real lady”. And how lucky would any of us be to have inherited even one of these traits that my Mother possessed? Oh yeah. There is one other thing that I might have forgotten to mention. Just ask Rich. He’ll tell you in the most wonderful way that my Mother, along with all of these marvelous qualities, was a Worrier. That’s with a capital “w” because there was nothing and no one that my Mother didn’t worry about. All of the time. 

Which is interesting because, while I would never presume to have inherited any of my Mom’s other wonderful characteristics, I can say without any hesitation that this apple didn’t fall far from that tree. Let me explain how this revelation came about. At the shiva for my Mother it was brought to my attention more than a few times that there was some similarity between her and I. Not everyone, but at least some people, most of whom I hadn’t seen since the first year of my life which is, at this point, a very long time ago, commented on how they knew exactly who I was because I looked so much like my Mother. It surprised me a little, primarily since my Mother never mentioned that complete strangers stopped her in the street to tell her she looked liked Babs and I’m quite sure she would have had they done so, but I appreciated the compliment nonetheless. However it occurred to me that if I look like my Mom it isn’t much of a stretch to think that I might think like my Mom as well. And if I think like my Mom I shouldn’t be terribly surprised that I too worry about everybody pretty much all of the time.  The fact is, if nothing else, I inherited her worry gene. And let me tell you, coming to this realization took quite a load off my shoulders. 

You see, I now have a perfectly good excuse for all the times I drove myself and my family a little crazy with my worrying. I now know there’s a really good reason that I used to text the kid at 3:00 am (no, that’s not a typo) just to see where he was and when he might decide to come home. I can now justify the multiple follow-up phone calls that are a result of a text not being answered within 60 seconds of being sent. And I know why when someone isn’t where they said they would be at exactly the moment they said they would be there my first inclination is to concoct 20 of the most dastardly, although admittedly unlikely, scenarios to explain their absence. After all, no one is just late. Something terrible must have happened. Well the truth is it’s just part of my DNA. I was, quite simply, born this way. And there’s no reason to apologize for that. Quite frankly, if it was good enough for my Mom, it’s good enough for me. 

Well that’s about it for today. Now I understand that some of you are going to be moved to send me your condolences (and many of you already have) for the loss of my Mother and for the cat too. You can if you like and your warm thoughts are very much appreciated but please don’t feel that you have to. No pressure at all. Of course if I don’t hear from you in the relatively near future, I’ll be pretty darn sure you’re dead.
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*To clarify. Early in the life of this blog I penned another post titled “Born this Way” hence the need for the descriptor. It is not my intent to suggest that I have in any way been born again.