__________________________________
500 Words
by Stephanie Kemp
500 Words
by Stephanie Kemp
This was the suggestion of Father Chris.
I didn’t like it.
500 words?
Who is this guy?
But then it saved me. Structure is good when:
Your heart is broken.
Life is scary.
You’re not sure where to step.
Your mom dies.
________________
It has been a year and a half…….505 Days since she Moved On.
Passed Away?
Died?
Left?
Hit the High Road?
Yes, let’s go with that last one, for our little Lead Foot Lynnie.
She would like that last one.
________________
For once, I truly don’t have any idea where to begin.
She is probably worried that I might start to swear…I won’t.
Maybe.
And, I have now already used up 114 words.
________________
I have before me two invisible hats. A heartbreak hat and a happy hat. While it is not always on my head, the happy hat is starting to make more and more appearances.
Mom would obviously want me to wear my happy hat today. Not only because she was the World Champion of Happy, but also because she is probably worried about my hair.
She is still my mom.
This is still my hair.
I am wearing my happy hat.
________________
Anyone who knew Mom shares a shorthand.
A shorthand of laughter, and mischief, loyalty and fierce determination, friendship and fun and magic and cookies and cocktails and romance and family.
Always first and always foremost, family.
________________
It is an impossible thing to lose your mom as the world is falling into a pandemic.
Or at least it used to be an impossible thing. As we have all learned in the last year and half, nothing is impossible.
Tracy and Ginny and I will be forever grateful that we got to be with her until the end, just as we will be forever grateful that we got to be with her through the story and stories of her life.
Her friends and family were the stories of her life.
She loved and missed you all so much, on both the days she remembered everything and the days when she struggled to hold on through the fog.
This fog did not break her.
To the very end Mom remained a firm believer in quality, not quantity.
________________
The end was, in many ways, a blessing. She said goodbye just as we were all hurdling into the pandemic shut down.
Through a grown up lens, it was a blessing that she wouldn’t suffer or be scared of what was happening to her and to this world that she loved so much.
Through a kid lens, it was also a blessing. When you lose your mom with a capital M, the world stops spinning, everything shuts down, you can’t make sense of a day or a year or a thought or a future.
We were almost invisible as we walked.
Wept.
Sat still when we were too sad to stand.
Wept more.
Walked more.
Wrote 260 poems hoping to tackle a new world and make peace with a most ferocious form of grief.
We slowed down as we tried to help people and each other.
We asked:
What can we do?
What neighbor can we check on?
Who needs cookies or a tetrazzini to be delivered?
Mom was still with us.
Every day.
Reminding us to keep going.
To take care of each other.
To clean a closet.
Call your sister.
Call her brother.
________________
I have never been able to imagine the landscape of my life without my mom somewhere on its horizon. Waving, winking, playing in the sand, splashing in the waves. Sitting in a beach chair with a straw hat on her head, a book in her hand and the world’s most ridiculously tall ice water by her side.
I have come to realize in the 505 days since she took her last breath, that I don’t have to.
She is still inviting and reminding me to do all of those things.
She is still warning me of the rip tides and sharks.
She is still with me.
And while she taught us how to live, she also taught us how to die.
This was important to her.
She saw it as part of her job - to teach us how to move on from here.
She let us in.
Talked to us about it.
Let us see it.
The moments of fear and anger (these were only moments, she was not fearful of angry), the confusion, the beauty, the humor.
At the very end, she was on a journey back and forth through time. Real time, with us and her best friend, Lynnie the Trouble Maker, by her side, and a past where she was searching for:
“Mom. Dad. Virginia. Frannie. Buck. the Dealership.”
“Bob?”
She was searching and she didn’t let go until she was ready. We knew this because she said so. Either as she enjoyed a private bedside harp concert that Lynnie arranged for her, or as she sprang up out of her hospice bed when we’d asked the chaplain to come, and cried “Boo!” (It was Friday the 13th. She thought this was very funny. It was.) Up until two days before she took her last breath, Mom sat with us on her balcony wearing her fur coat, holding a Canadian Club she didn’t drink, basking in the glow of us all being together.
She always knew what she was doing.
And while she didn’t pretend to know where we went from here, she was pretty sure that wherever it was, we went together. She thought this was a beautiful system - this idea that each time someone we love moves on, it makes it less scary for those of us on this side of the sea, knowing that they will be there waiting for us, when it is our turn to make the journey.
I will be forever grateful for what Mom showed us as she prepared to go and I will try to pay it forward when it is my time, should I be lucky or brave enough to be able to do so.
________________
One of my favorite memories (besides all of the other favorite memories) is a recurring one:
We are sitting on her back patio, surrounded by her garden and angels (and guardian angels), having a cocktail and talking about everything and nothing and everyone we love and miss…
Her life and my life, and her husband and my boyfriends and finally (much to her relief and beyond her delight), my husband, Adam…
…Books and the world and the news and any/everything we could think of in between.
Once my daughters, Olivia and Frances arrived, they joined the party usually as hostesses and waitresses and Italian restaurant owners that would serve us plastic food and refill our (real) drinks.
Mom could’ve won an Oscar for her performance as a Grandma who loved that plastic food.
“Oh, this is to DIE FOR!” She would proclaim as they beamed, then brought more plastic pizza and breadsticks and the token, unrecognizable vegetable.
“DELICIOUS! HOW DID YOU MAKE THIS?”
(These are some of Olivia and Frances’s favorite memories, too…)
One of the last books we talked about was David Brooks’s, “The Road to Character.” Without going into too much detail, it is about the very human struggle between what David Brooks defines as our “Resume Virtues” (our external self - “How can I succeed in the world?”) and our “Eulogy Virtues” (our internal self - “How can I serve the world?”).
I was ready to do a deep dive into discussion, when Mom cut me off mid-sentence and said, “That is the whole problem!” (She used VERY different words for this - the best of the worst ones I have promised not to use here.) “There shouldn’t be a battle between those two things. They should be the same thing! And people better start realizing that before it’s too late!”
She was on fire from the inside and I was glad for David Brooks that he wouldn’t be joining us for plastic cakes and cookies with a side of plastic grapes that might have been olives.
While it was a short discussion, it has never left my thoughts, and continues to inform both my big life decisions and my day to day living.
________________
I have not checked the word count, but I am pretty sure I’ve crossed the line.
There will never be enough words, or the right words, anyway, to accurately describe our little mama.
But not to worry - because most of the truth and the beauty in life lives between the words we use when we try to define it.
Shhhhhhh………
(My mom taught me that).
________________
I will wrap it up here and share the poem I wrote on the very first day my happy hat appeared.
________________
1579 words.
But, really……..who’s counting?
________________
ps. I didn’t say these words. I mostly winged it. Don’t worry. I had stolen a Mary Oliver poem to have on hand to save the day in case I biffed it. I didn’t. Mom would’ve been proud of me, at least on this day. (Plus, she taught me mostly never to steal.)
pps. Thank you, Father Chris. We are grateful that we got you to help us through (and do) this. We are also glad that that you and your family had a good time in Waikiki. Mom would have loved that you are a surfer, as she grew up to be a swimmer with and of the dolphins. This is the truth. (She also taught me mostly not to lie.)
![]()
I didn’t like it.
500 words?
Who is this guy?
But then it saved me. Structure is good when:
Your heart is broken.
Life is scary.
You’re not sure where to step.
Your mom dies.
________________
It has been a year and a half…….505 Days since she Moved On.
Passed Away?
Died?
Left?
Hit the High Road?
Yes, let’s go with that last one, for our little Lead Foot Lynnie.
She would like that last one.
________________
For once, I truly don’t have any idea where to begin.
She is probably worried that I might start to swear…I won’t.
Maybe.
And, I have now already used up 114 words.
________________
I have before me two invisible hats. A heartbreak hat and a happy hat. While it is not always on my head, the happy hat is starting to make more and more appearances.
Mom would obviously want me to wear my happy hat today. Not only because she was the World Champion of Happy, but also because she is probably worried about my hair.
She is still my mom.
This is still my hair.
I am wearing my happy hat.
________________
Anyone who knew Mom shares a shorthand.
A shorthand of laughter, and mischief, loyalty and fierce determination, friendship and fun and magic and cookies and cocktails and romance and family.
Always first and always foremost, family.
________________
It is an impossible thing to lose your mom as the world is falling into a pandemic.
Or at least it used to be an impossible thing. As we have all learned in the last year and half, nothing is impossible.
Tracy and Ginny and I will be forever grateful that we got to be with her until the end, just as we will be forever grateful that we got to be with her through the story and stories of her life.
Her friends and family were the stories of her life.
She loved and missed you all so much, on both the days she remembered everything and the days when she struggled to hold on through the fog.
This fog did not break her.
To the very end Mom remained a firm believer in quality, not quantity.
________________
The end was, in many ways, a blessing. She said goodbye just as we were all hurdling into the pandemic shut down.
Through a grown up lens, it was a blessing that she wouldn’t suffer or be scared of what was happening to her and to this world that she loved so much.
Through a kid lens, it was also a blessing. When you lose your mom with a capital M, the world stops spinning, everything shuts down, you can’t make sense of a day or a year or a thought or a future.
We were almost invisible as we walked.
Wept.
Sat still when we were too sad to stand.
Wept more.
Walked more.
Wrote 260 poems hoping to tackle a new world and make peace with a most ferocious form of grief.
We slowed down as we tried to help people and each other.
We asked:
What can we do?
What neighbor can we check on?
Who needs cookies or a tetrazzini to be delivered?
Mom was still with us.
Every day.
Reminding us to keep going.
To take care of each other.
To clean a closet.
Call your sister.
Call her brother.
________________
I have never been able to imagine the landscape of my life without my mom somewhere on its horizon. Waving, winking, playing in the sand, splashing in the waves. Sitting in a beach chair with a straw hat on her head, a book in her hand and the world’s most ridiculously tall ice water by her side.
I have come to realize in the 505 days since she took her last breath, that I don’t have to.
She is still inviting and reminding me to do all of those things.
She is still warning me of the rip tides and sharks.
She is still with me.
And while she taught us how to live, she also taught us how to die.
This was important to her.
She saw it as part of her job - to teach us how to move on from here.
She let us in.
Talked to us about it.
Let us see it.
The moments of fear and anger (these were only moments, she was not fearful of angry), the confusion, the beauty, the humor.
At the very end, she was on a journey back and forth through time. Real time, with us and her best friend, Lynnie the Trouble Maker, by her side, and a past where she was searching for:
“Mom. Dad. Virginia. Frannie. Buck. the Dealership.”
“Bob?”
She was searching and she didn’t let go until she was ready. We knew this because she said so. Either as she enjoyed a private bedside harp concert that Lynnie arranged for her, or as she sprang up out of her hospice bed when we’d asked the chaplain to come, and cried “Boo!” (It was Friday the 13th. She thought this was very funny. It was.) Up until two days before she took her last breath, Mom sat with us on her balcony wearing her fur coat, holding a Canadian Club she didn’t drink, basking in the glow of us all being together.
She always knew what she was doing.
And while she didn’t pretend to know where we went from here, she was pretty sure that wherever it was, we went together. She thought this was a beautiful system - this idea that each time someone we love moves on, it makes it less scary for those of us on this side of the sea, knowing that they will be there waiting for us, when it is our turn to make the journey.
I will be forever grateful for what Mom showed us as she prepared to go and I will try to pay it forward when it is my time, should I be lucky or brave enough to be able to do so.
________________
One of my favorite memories (besides all of the other favorite memories) is a recurring one:
We are sitting on her back patio, surrounded by her garden and angels (and guardian angels), having a cocktail and talking about everything and nothing and everyone we love and miss…
Her life and my life, and her husband and my boyfriends and finally (much to her relief and beyond her delight), my husband, Adam…
…Books and the world and the news and any/everything we could think of in between.
Once my daughters, Olivia and Frances arrived, they joined the party usually as hostesses and waitresses and Italian restaurant owners that would serve us plastic food and refill our (real) drinks.
Mom could’ve won an Oscar for her performance as a Grandma who loved that plastic food.
“Oh, this is to DIE FOR!” She would proclaim as they beamed, then brought more plastic pizza and breadsticks and the token, unrecognizable vegetable.
“DELICIOUS! HOW DID YOU MAKE THIS?”
(These are some of Olivia and Frances’s favorite memories, too…)
One of the last books we talked about was David Brooks’s, “The Road to Character.” Without going into too much detail, it is about the very human struggle between what David Brooks defines as our “Resume Virtues” (our external self - “How can I succeed in the world?”) and our “Eulogy Virtues” (our internal self - “How can I serve the world?”).
I was ready to do a deep dive into discussion, when Mom cut me off mid-sentence and said, “That is the whole problem!” (She used VERY different words for this - the best of the worst ones I have promised not to use here.) “There shouldn’t be a battle between those two things. They should be the same thing! And people better start realizing that before it’s too late!”
She was on fire from the inside and I was glad for David Brooks that he wouldn’t be joining us for plastic cakes and cookies with a side of plastic grapes that might have been olives.
While it was a short discussion, it has never left my thoughts, and continues to inform both my big life decisions and my day to day living.
________________
I have not checked the word count, but I am pretty sure I’ve crossed the line.
There will never be enough words, or the right words, anyway, to accurately describe our little mama.
But not to worry - because most of the truth and the beauty in life lives between the words we use when we try to define it.
Shhhhhhh………
(My mom taught me that).
________________
I will wrap it up here and share the poem I wrote on the very first day my happy hat appeared.
It’s called “RITA.”
(That’s a story for another day.):
Despite how it looks, this is not about me,
It’s about my beautiful mom, who taught me to be:
Happy.
Kind.
Fiery.
Proud.
To hit life with smiles -
They’re more fun and they’re loud!
She didn’t just give me my kick off and start.
She taught me that living is the highest fine art:
Shrimp cocktail on Tuesday!
Fast driving is fun!
Great job on your haircut!
You can’t get too much sun!
I still hear her laugh - it’s (almost) the same…
And I still feel her hand, holding mine, out of frame.
(That’s a story for another day.):
Despite how it looks, this is not about me,
It’s about my beautiful mom, who taught me to be:
Happy.
Kind.
Fiery.
Proud.
To hit life with smiles -
They’re more fun and they’re loud!
She didn’t just give me my kick off and start.
She taught me that living is the highest fine art:
Shrimp cocktail on Tuesday!
Fast driving is fun!
Great job on your haircut!
You can’t get too much sun!
I still hear her laugh - it’s (almost) the same…
And I still feel her hand, holding mine, out of frame.
________________
1579 words.
But, really……..who’s counting?
________________
ps. I didn’t say these words. I mostly winged it. Don’t worry. I had stolen a Mary Oliver poem to have on hand to save the day in case I biffed it. I didn’t. Mom would’ve been proud of me, at least on this day. (Plus, she taught me mostly never to steal.)
pps. Thank you, Father Chris. We are grateful that we got you to help us through (and do) this. We are also glad that that you and your family had a good time in Waikiki. Mom would have loved that you are a surfer, as she grew up to be a swimmer with and of the dolphins. This is the truth. (She also taught me mostly not to lie.)
