For My Mother

I have started this speech in my mind a hundred times.  I have set to paper maybe a dozen. I have assembled sentences, compiled words, thought thoughts. There was no shortage of things to say. Mountains of words piled on top of one another like the Cascades mere miles away. Yet nothing would suffice. Nothing was adequate. Nothing could come close. Mountains of words lay useless, unable to serve.

Colleen Mabon Fox, our mother died in the early morning hours of July the 24^th in her sleep from cancer. And this is why we are here.

On behalf of Colleen’s family, myself, my father, two brothers and two sisters who survive her, thank you all very very much for coming here today.  I’m sure nobody wants to be here. And by that I mean, given the chance I believe we would all choose to undo the event that brings us together today. I know I would surely like to undo it. But I can’t . No one can. It is done.

And because it happened each of you took it upon yourselves to find the time to come here and assemble today and for that, again, my family and I are grateful.

As one of the three speakers here today it was suggested that I say something about my mother from a sons perspective, the idea being that the other two wonderful people you just heard from would be speaking about other aspects of Colleen’s life.

At the end of my last visit, a couple of weeks before she died, as we were hugging and crying and saying goodbye I told her she was the best mother ever, to which she replied, “ever. I like that”.

From a son’s perspective there is nothing I need to add to that statement nor nothing I need subtract. The best mother ever. That is, for me, absolute.

Of all the defining aspects of her life I think I’m safe in saying that motherhood was the role she held dearest. She cared for her children beyond measure, and was able to forge unique relationships with each based on who they are. She was fierce in defending her family and unsparing in her support. She was a loving and devoted wife and, as is often the case, being a woman, she was the unshakeable granite foundation supporting the family structure.

Like a house blown off its moorings by a tempest, so my family has been knocked off our cornerstone. And like that battered house we have broken to pieces and are scattered about. Perhaps we will reassemble, taking a new form, perhaps we will drift here and there as separate pieces, pushed about by the tides. Whatever the outcome, we will never join together in the same way, resting safely, upon the strength of her character.

Colleen loved the family from which she came. She loved her mother and adored her father who taught her many lifetimes worth of songs, she loved her brother, fifteen years her senior who introduced her to Art and Culture and who could not be here because of frail health, and she loved her little sister who is happily with us today.

It should not go unnoticed is that we are in the middle of a Catholic mass. My mother’s faith was very important to her. Some of us share her faith, others have different faiths, still others none at all. My mother was not born into Catholicism. She found it as a young adult and, despite difficult times, she kept it close the rest of her life. Hers was not a blind faith, nor was it a rigid faith. She had one or two lines that could not be crossed but in the main she let the spirit of compassion be her guide. When you think of her now it would be important to her that you think of her as a good person, a Christian person in the real meaning of the word. And no matter your point of view, we can all admire her intellectual curiosity, her rigor and her constancy.

I have tried to keep things on the serious side here. But lets face it. No one can think of my mother without thinking of her gloriously outsized laugh and I’ve no doubt that if she is looking down on these proceedings she is by now tapping her foot waiting for me to lighten it up.

In one of the many abandoned beginnings of this speech I imagined stepping up here, turning toward you all and seeing essentially what I’m seeing now, and saying, “looking at you all reminds me of a joke. – A horse walks into a bar. The bartender looks at the horse and says, ‘hey pal, why the long face’” Because Colleen Fox would have thought the same thing. She didn’t do gloom. She had no time for glum.

Oh she loved a good show. She loved pomp and ceremony and sentimentality, but at the end of the day she would have clapped her hands and said to us all, “alright, enough. The sun is shining, go outside and play.”

A year before my mother died, almost to the day, she gave me an envelope with my name on it. She knew at that time she had a terminal illness and I understood from the little she said that the contents were some instructions or other materials pertaining to this day. So I brought the envelope back to New York and put it in my bedside table hoping not to have to open it for a very long time. Last Christmas we were together and she said, “So what did you think? About what? About what was in the envelope? Well, I didn’t open it, I thought I was supposed to wait? Wait for what? I don’t know. Do I have to do everything for you my idiot child? Alright, I’ll open it when I get back, stop yelling, I’m not yelling! – We always ended up sounding like two old New York Jews.

When I opened the envelope there were two things in it. One was the song Bring Him Home. And the other was a speech.

It’s from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. It’s the epilogue to be precise. In it, the actor who has played Prospero all evening comes downstage and addresses the audience. My mother chose this piece I believe because like the actor at the end of the play, who is asking the audience for one final favor, so she is asking us for the same, which is to let her go. Let her leave this wooden-O, this realm, this world, this confinement, and by the power of your imagination, set her spirit free.

Now my charms are all o'erthrown,

And what strength I have's mine own,

Which is most faint: now, 'tis true,

I must be here confined by you,

Or sent to Naples. Let me not,

Since I have my dukedom got

And pardon'd the deceiver, dwell

In this bare island by your spell;

But release me from my bands

With the help of your good hands:

Gentle breath of yours my sails

Must fill, or else my project fails,

Which was to please. Now I want

Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,

And my ending is despair,

Unless I be relieved by prayer,

Which pierces so that it assaults

Mercy itself and frees all faults.

As you from crimes would pardon'd be,

Let your indulgence set me free.

One last request. A few months ago after successfully skyping for the first time from New York to home, my mother signed off with a strange farewell and began to cry. I hadn’t seen her cry much during her illness. She was remarkably free of self pity or bouts of despair. But here she broke down while saying farewell using these words. “Goodnight Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are”. I looked up the phrase. Jimmy Durante whom some of you may remember used to sign off his show with this phrase. It referred to his late wife who died suddenly of a heart ailment at age 46. It was his pet name for her. 

It was clear that in that moment my mother was in touch with her mortality and in touch with the pain loosing someone brings. That pain never goes away but in time it becomes familiar and we let it move in with us and dwell with us and we get along with it like an unavoidable roommate.

Goodnight Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are. And so I sign off now and forevermore with that phrase in memory of Colleen. Whether out-loud or silently, at the end of a performance or on the top of a mountain. While watching the setting sun or simply while turning out the lights at bedtime, I will look to the sky and say those words.

Please remember my mother well. She lives inside us now. Join with me in saying, “Goodnight Mrs. Calabash, where ever you are.”