07/31/2026
My mother died today.
She’s the reason I’m a writer. My first memory of books is when she’d read to me from The Arabian Nights (a book that also inspired my love of fantasy and travel). Mom’s knowledge of classic films, actors, TV, and music was encyclopedic… she even had obscure Jazz Age jingles on tap. She loved The Beatles and Gilbert and Sullivan, The Twilight Zone and One Step Beyond.
She encouraged my brother and I to pursue our dreams.
Raised in a heavily Italian household, she nonetheless had a fondness for all things British: their history, literature, and cozy mystery films. I took her and my Dad to Italy, and will never forget her dancing the night away in Tuscany. I didn’t get to take her to England.
She saw JFK firsthand, and was once kissed by Tom Jones: the singer was onstage, saw my mother in the audience, leaned down and gave her a peck. “I did look good that night,” she told me years later. In her youth, she bore a remarkable resemblance to Audrey Hepburn (check out her high school graduation photo).
Her and my Dad knew each other 61 years. They met at Kennedy High School when it first opened; more specifically, they met while starring (as a married couple) in the school production of Damn Yankees. Six decades later, I watched Dad kneel by her bedside to hold her hand a final time.
I will forever remember her as a sweet, sensitive soul who loved fairies (especially Tinkerbell), Shakespeare, Gone with the Wind, Daphne du Maurier, Conan the Barbarian (seriously), and most of all, her family. She was a gifted singer and dancer (launching into spur-of-the-moment performances), gifted artist (even if the only canvas nearby was a bunch of lemons), spectacular cook (her tomato sauce truly was the best in the world) and her attempts at playing video games are the stuff of legend. She sparkled with life, wit, and love.
The world is so much dimmer for her passing. I’m reminded of the famous line from the end of Blade Runner: “All those moments will be lost in time. Like tears in rain.” Life is insultingly short… and it shouldn’t be that way. Certain species of turtles live three hundred years. Bristlecone pines live five thousand.
All day today, my mind has fixated on a childhood memory with technicolor clarity: her adjusting my clip-on tie before sending me out to the school bus on an overcast October morning, and how I knew that when I returned she’d be there to ask how my day was.
F**k cancer, and f**k the lack of cultural and political will to invest in a cure the way we invest in war. This situation exists because we allow it, and that’s our eternal shame.
I love you always, Mom. And every day, for as long as I exist, I’ll tell you how my day was.
