A Son, a Mother, and the Lessons of a Lifetime
SCOT T SI MON
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unforgettable. Copyright © 2015 by Scott Simon. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address Flatiron Books, 175 Fift h Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010. www.flatironbooks.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data (TK) ISBN 978-1-250-06113-3 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-250-06115-7 (e-book) Flatiron books may be purchased for educational, business, or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or write to specialmarkets@macmillan.com.
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To all those kind, tough, and loving souls in hospitals who do so much for those we love and see us through to the end
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Author’s Note Mother called: “I can’t talk. I’m surrounded by handsome men.” Emergency surgery. If you can hold a thought for her now . . .
I have covered a lot of wars, and try to be careful about comparing combat to anything else. But wars and final illnesses both have moments of panic spaced between hours of tedium. There can be a lot of waiting and staring off into space. It was in these times, during what turned out to be the last days of my mother’s life, that I began to post messages on Twitter. I think I wrote these 140-character lines for distraction, for companionship, and because although my world had pretty much shrunk to the confines of a single room in an intensive care unit, what I heard, saw, and felt there touched on the universal experience of life and death (an overworked phrase that’s apt for once). My mother was also just so funny and interesting. I wanted to share what she said to make people laugh and think, especially as I began to feel that my mother was giving a last great
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viii • AUTHOR’S NOTE
performance. It was certainly a last great show for our small family. She was also an old showgirl who had been married to a comedian and had a son who is a broadcaster. My mother was not a shrinking violet. She knew she was giving us great material. I don’t believe anything I wrote, then or now, violates her privacy. I hope it reveals, for others to enjoy, my mother’s humor, spirit, wisdom, and the pleasure of her company. I have left the Tweets unchanged, including whatever typos I thumbed at the time. I have sometimes rearranged where they appear in the timeline of events, as I often did not post a Tweet for hours after whatever prompted it. I am one of those people who, in fact, walk around with a notebook. But when I flew to join her in the hospital, I did not know my mother would die there; in fact, I hoped my arrival might help spring her from the ICU. I did not know I would write this book. I did not take reportorial notes, and often a few scrawled words would represent a conversation of many minutes. I rely on the intensity of those days, a practiced memory, and a son’s love to reconstruct here what my mother said with accuracy and clarity. I have kept a lot of names, but resorted to just first names in many cases, and changed a few where it seems wise or kind. I have changed the names of all doctors. All mistakes are mine and mine alone. My mother worked hard to rear a son who can say that.
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1 Our children want to know if you’re dead forever. I tell them yes. But I wonder about that too.
Death makes life worthwhile. It gives each moment meaning. I hope I live to one hundred and fift y, and that our daughters can make it to at least two hundred. But death drives life. It frightens and inspires us. Do away with death, and we’d have no reason to get out of bed (or into it), grow, work, or love. Why would we do much of anything if we had the time for everything? It’s the certainty of death that moves us to sing and write poems, fi nd friends, and sail across oceans and skies. It’s because we know that we don’t have all the time in the world that we try to use the uncertain and unknowable time that we have to do something that endures. Death is sad, grim, unwelcome, and invaluable. But it’s why we try to make something of life. It’s why we have children. I don’t know what becomes of us when we die. But I believe I will go on to a place (which will probably look a lot like Chicago and Normandy) where I’ll find my mother and my father, my stepfather, and all of our beloved cats, dogs, horses, turtles,
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2 • Scott Simon
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and fish who predecease me. I’ll get to take a walk with Gandhi, have a glass of D’Yquem with Mr. Jefferson, and a glass of just about anything with Sir Winston. I’ll get together over tea and an asp with Cleopatra. I’ll have a catch with Jackie Robinson (and hope that celestial climes improve my infield skills). I believe that I’ll get to look out over the world and behold my daughters. They’ll feel my love, hearten to hear my gentle instruction, and miss me; but not so much that they won’t spend most of their time giggling and enjoying life in full measure. In time, I believe I’ll be reunited with my fabulously kind and beautiful wife, even if she runs away with a Hollywood star or an Italian race car driver as soon as my ashes cool. I will count on heavenly powers of understanding to look down at her happiness and nobly smile, and if he expects to be with her, too, I rely on God to work that out. I do not know if God will reveal Him, Her, or Itself to me as a craggy old African man with a long white beard, or a mature, Rubenesque woman barely concealed by clouds, or as some kind of mollusk. I am undecided on the essential questions that can make theologians stammer: if there is a God, how does He or She or It let little children suffer? What kind of Heaven can there be if innocents have to share it with scoundrels? Do gnats have souls? But when I spent the last days of my mother’s life alongside her in the intensive care unit, our talk about death and whatever follows grew real. The hereafter was no longer hypothetical. It was the stop just ahead, and the next place I knew my mother would be (and the rest of us, too, in too short a time.) My vision of the hereafter has no scientific, religious, or even much mythical foundation. But I just can’t get by, day after day, thinking that we go on to nothing when we’re done here, and never again see those we love. I don’t worry about being right.
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UNFORGETTABLE • 3
I just want to wrap myself in a belief that gets me through the long nights of life.
I am getting a life’s lesson about grace from my mother in the ICU. We never stop learning from our mothers, do we?
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