Remembering Heroes
Usually we devote Memorial Day weekend to remembering soldiers, those who gave their lives in combat. Joe Posnanski wrote about other heroes, those he remembers who shaped his life.
And it occurred to me that I rarely talk about the people who shaped my life. There's one in particular who stands out. Though my mother was only part of my life for a short time, she shaped it in lasting ways.
She was an English teacher at a religious school. For a short time, she took us to church. That didn't take as well as the English lessons did. She made sure I understood the rules of English, gave me my first writing assignment (about a baseball game my team lost), and taught me to appreciate good writing and tell it from bad. She wrote short stories and even, once, a children's novel. Nothing got published. I think that discouraged her, but she never showed it.
Though church may not have taken, her view on how to live life did. She taught me to respect other people, to do the right thing, to be a good person. She understood that those lessons are not only taught in church, but by the people you live with and, especially, by the people you look up to. She made mistakes, but she never shrank from admitting those mistakes and vowing to do better.
She had courage. In the seventies, she left my father when she realized that the marriage wasn't working. For nearly a year, she lived on her own, a separated mother raising two kids (we split time between her and our father) and holding down two jobs. She made it on her own, and even if she had doubts (she did), she showed me that the first step to doing is having the courage to try.
What she left me with was all of that, and one more thing. I had just turned ten when she was killed in a car accident. She shouldn't have been driving. She'd driven up to Rhode Island to take a friend home. It was late at night and she was tired; probably she fell asleep. And she taught me, then, that people come and go in your life unpredictably, that you should cherish the ones you love while you have them, appreciate the moments you have, and--importantly--that your life can go on when they're gone.
She would've been 65 this month. I've been thinking about her more this year, not sure why. I think she's still with me, even if I don't think consciously about it most of the time. I've no idea how she would have reacted to some of the things I've done in my life to this point, but I think she would have been proud to be at our wedding this fall, and I think I have lived--mostly--the way she would have wanted me to, which is to say that I've lived in a way that made myself happy. And that, I think, is the best lesson of all.
And it occurred to me that I rarely talk about the people who shaped my life. There's one in particular who stands out. Though my mother was only part of my life for a short time, she shaped it in lasting ways.
She was an English teacher at a religious school. For a short time, she took us to church. That didn't take as well as the English lessons did. She made sure I understood the rules of English, gave me my first writing assignment (about a baseball game my team lost), and taught me to appreciate good writing and tell it from bad. She wrote short stories and even, once, a children's novel. Nothing got published. I think that discouraged her, but she never showed it.
Though church may not have taken, her view on how to live life did. She taught me to respect other people, to do the right thing, to be a good person. She understood that those lessons are not only taught in church, but by the people you live with and, especially, by the people you look up to. She made mistakes, but she never shrank from admitting those mistakes and vowing to do better.
She had courage. In the seventies, she left my father when she realized that the marriage wasn't working. For nearly a year, she lived on her own, a separated mother raising two kids (we split time between her and our father) and holding down two jobs. She made it on her own, and even if she had doubts (she did), she showed me that the first step to doing is having the courage to try.
What she left me with was all of that, and one more thing. I had just turned ten when she was killed in a car accident. She shouldn't have been driving. She'd driven up to Rhode Island to take a friend home. It was late at night and she was tired; probably she fell asleep. And she taught me, then, that people come and go in your life unpredictably, that you should cherish the ones you love while you have them, appreciate the moments you have, and--importantly--that your life can go on when they're gone.
She would've been 65 this month. I've been thinking about her more this year, not sure why. I think she's still with me, even if I don't think consciously about it most of the time. I've no idea how she would have reacted to some of the things I've done in my life to this point, but I think she would have been proud to be at our wedding this fall, and I think I have lived--mostly--the way she would have wanted me to, which is to say that I've lived in a way that made myself happy. And that, I think, is the best lesson of all.