One of the things I miss most about my mother is her deep belly laugh. She had a sort of gravely voice from her years of smoking. Many times when she answered the telephone, the person calling mistook her deep voice for a man. Instead of being insulted, she laughed it off, saying her voice was sexy like the movie star, Lauren Bacall or Marilyn Monroe. Mom never took herself too seriously.
Unlike her very serious and worrywart daughter – my serious view of life exasperated her.
Mom only had a high school education. She never thought of herself as an intellectual. One of her challenges was spelling, especially the word “coming”. “Suzie,” she asked, “how do you spell ‘coming’? Is it c-o-m-e-i-n-g or do I drop the ‘e’?”
As a smart aleck teenager, I’d roll my eyes and spell it for her. That deep laugh of hers would boom across the room, and she’d laugh at herself and say, “Oh, that’s right! I remember now. ” Now that she’s gone, I realize my mother was smarter than many of the most educated people who have come across my path. She had great insight into life as she proved over and over again.
When she died, we had two memorial services for her. One in Florida and one in Chicago and the number one comment people said to us was, “Your mother was so much fun!” or “Your mother made me laugh.” Her zest for life, her upbeat attitude, and her happiness despite much heartache, suffering and pain, are a tribute to her.
As I get older, I marvel at how often she did laugh. It’s hard to laugh when the people you love die of kidney failure, or find joy when your kidneys fail, when you’re in pain and sick and need surgery and dialysis, or when your quad muscles snap and you’re bedridden for six months but you have to go to the dialysis center three days a week via ambulance.
“No one wants to hear my woes,” she’d say through gritted teeth during the rough times. Not that she didn’t have her down moments when things were really bad, but there was something about her that always battled back from those times. She loved her father deeply and often mentioned how he recited, “I cried and cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet.”
That was how she dealt with dialysis. Her mother and one of her sisters didn’t have the gift of dialysis, so over and over again, when I’d visit her at the dialysis center during the ten years the dialysis machine kept her alive, I still remember her smiling up in delight when I arrived. Then her laugh would erupt from deep within her. “Don’t look so serious, Suzie, I’m so lucky to have dialysis available to me. Yep, I am one lucky woman. Now wipe that worried look off your face and smile.”