Legacy

9/17/2021

When my mother died in 2013, I remember thinking to myself, here is a woman who never had anything. I knew she had no retirement, though she worked her entire adult life. She had no home of her own, she didn’t own pretty things, she had no husband, no lover, no savings account. She had her last social security check of 600 dollars in the bank when she died. Three weeks before she left us she finally got new eyeglasses after a decade of wearing the old ones. Even with her new eyes she couldn’t see well because cataracts were smeared across her strikingly blue eyes. She’d never ridden a bicycle or driven a car, she’d never seen a concert or gone on a real vacation. She’d never been in an airplane, she never got to see Graceland. The day after she died, I called my father. I said “Dad, she never had anything to call her own”, which made my heart heavier and I sobbed louder. My Dad said to me “No, Stace, that's not true, she had you and Ray and Stevie and Lisa” My father’s words stuck with me while I planned her funeral. I thought to myself, what a shitty legacy, four asshole kids that never gave her a day’s worth of peace.

I was her youngest. The perspective you gain from being born last is unique; I was a quiet kid and acted the voyeur to my siblings' shenanigans. Time after time after time one of us would screw up royally, and my mother, whom I thought had nothing, forgave us our trespasses without hesitation. My mother, in her grand posture of 5 foot 3 inches and 110 pounds, was tough as nails, even when she had to fake it. She had a vocabulary that would make Eddie Murphy blush, and a wit that I’ve yet to see matched by anyone. Still as I poured over photos to display at her service, I marveled at the way her grandsons looked at her in pictures. Always one of the three was at her side, trying her patience while making her laugh, as she made them laugh in turn with a practiced ease. According to my mother, there was nothing ‘sacred in our family’. She meant that there was nothing that any of us could say or do that would be considered taboo, no topic too sensitive and no joke made too soon. She would pretend to be offended, she’d chastise us, and finish by topping the worst thing that had been said with a joke of her own. She indulged my siblings and I, but for her grandsons she outright gave them permission to be true to the people they are. We didn’t have Sunday dinners at a well placed table, and children dressed in their best, saying please and thank you. We had serve yourself, pass me an ashtray, and boisterous conversations. Without realizing it at the time, I was catching glimpses of her legacy. It wasn’t money or jewelry or fancy cars, it was snapshots, inside jokes and ‘I love you Grams’. The collage I’d been working on since her death was overfilled with silliness and joy, and the patience she had for her grandsons.

Maybe that was her legacy, but I think it went a step further, she not only laughed at every horrible thing the boys said, she partook in the debauchery. And those three boys adored her for it. Gram could do no wrong and her wish was their command. I stopped thinking that my mother died with nothing to show for her life as I realized a legacy could come in many forms. She was born poor, and she died poor. She came from a family in Boston that didn’t deserve her, and cast her aside. She was courageous when she was ostracized by them. She moved to Lawrence and set down roots, making a home for her four kids. We were her priority. Everything she did in life, she did for one of us. There probably wasn’t a day that passed that she wasn’t worried about one of us.

I thought about when my boys were babies, she held them and rocked them and she’d quietly sing hymns to them. A side of Beth us kids didn’t remember for ourselves, but instinctively I could see that she had wrangled many a baby, and that this just came naturally to her.

So what was my mothers legacy? Although if she were here, she’d tell me to shut up and roll her eyes, I would still whisper to her that I knew her secret. The brazen and ballsy and mouthy woman she was, was just the crusty top layer of a woman who sacrificed and cried and comforted 4 kids who didn’t always deserve her. Some people cant’ see the value in motherhood, some people, including her sons, chose to reject this gift as they aged. But my boys will always have the hundreds of memories that they will carry with them the rest of their days. They will have hilarious stories to tell their own children. Her selflessness, her temper, her friendships, her guts, her scathing sense of humor, and her resilience, when piled on top of each other become the stuff that legends are made of. Her legacy? She was a rock star baby.

Fin.