[img]958|left|||no_popup[/img] Dateline Boston — It’s really hard to have a dead mother. The other night I had a dream that my mom and I were making plans to go somewhere, and we had to figure out the logistics. Even though it was a pain to decide where we were going to meet and what time, I was looking forward to it. Then I woke up and realized, once again, that my mom and I wouldn’t be going anywhere. Ever. I hate knowing that.
My mom died the month before I turned 22. It’s been 20 years since we’ve done anything together. I really want to do things with her. I want to go to the Chihuly glass exhibit with her. I want her to come over and see our new apartment. I’d let her sleep in our bed, and S.O. and I would sleep on the couch.
I’d have a cup of tea with her in the morning. Did she even drink tea? When she died, I hadn’t yet begun to drink tea on a regular basis. I can’t remember if she drank tea or coffee. The only things I can remember her drinking were grapefruit juice, bloody marys, beer, and at the end of her life, gin-and-tonics. It bothers me that I don’t even know if she drank tea or coffee.
Mom didn’t know about Starbucks. Can you even imagine? She would have liked Starbucks. We would have sat together eating pastries and drinking whatever, making fun of people’s ridiculous drink names. “Venti soy latte chai!” we’d giggle.
Mom never got to hold a cell phone. She would have hated cell phones. She freaked out when ATMs first came into existence. She would make panic noises, overwhelmed by the options and the buttons. I can’t even picture what she would do with the internet. No worries about friending my mom on Facebook. She’d have nothing to do with it, thank you very much. However, she definitely would have loved saying she was going to “Google” someone. She was that kind of gal.
Sometimes I pretend that my mom didn’t die of alcoholism. I pretend that she was taken out of the hospital that day and brought to a retreat in the country, where she got sober, and started practicing yoga and eating healthily. She would keep tabs on me my whole life, and when she felt like she had been living a healthy life for a long enough time, she would write me a letter and tell me what she had been doing over the past 10 or 20 years. I wouldn’t even be mad that she had led me to believe she had been dead all this time — I’d just take her in and want to listen to everything, everything she’d been doing. And I’d fill her in on all I’d been doing. Then we’d go to the museum, and to Whole Foods and to Starbucks. We’d have a cup of tea. Or coffee. Take your time to decide, Mom, I’ll wait for you for the rest of my life.
Ms. Campbell may be contacted at snobbyblog@gmail.com
