Seven years ago standing on a porch on Presidents day morning, listening to the sound of the Market-Frankford line in the background of Kensington waking up to meet the day, would just mean a late night coming to an end.  Pacing back in forth watching the procession of people from every period of my life as far back as I can remember I can only find myself wishing it was one of those mornings. This morning though, the Market-Frankford el isn’t loud enough to drown out the things I don’t want to hear. The massive amounts of condolences being offered by a parade of mourning neighborhood residents, former co-workers, family, and people who I couldn’t even begin to guess how my mother knew them. In a line, one by one I am forced to stand and thank them for coming. But I should be thanking them, I have to, she would have wanted me to thank them, she would have. Don’t look left, don’t look left. The chair behind me might as well be in the next room, there’s no way I can sit down. As the proverbial rock of the family, I can’t show weakness. Don’t look left.

            I never was very accepting of people; I could find a flaw and use it to manipulate my opinion of anyone or anything. My mother had the same ability, but she chose to ignore flaws in general, even her own.  I lack the ability to ignore things and rather than ignore I find myself overcome by ignorance. I choose to focus on flaws, even my mothers.  I can be the worst kind of human being, lacking compassion and understanding. I know our relationship was turbulent but that was my mother, and I just ignored all of the “you only get one mother” comments people would give me.  I guess in my eyes my mother was immortal, we always made it through whatever problem we had no matter how big the issue was, eventually we would get through this. Fuck, why am I so fucking stubborn? Why was she so stubborn? We could have gotten past this. And we almost did. I didn’t know I had a time limit. But she was invincible, isn’t everyone’s mother in their eyes? Especially my mother. I watched her survive years of problematic and often abusive relationships with my biological father, and some with my stepfather (even though he ultimately proved to be the love of her life) as well as a lifetime of abuse that she put herself through with her own issues. My mother could not be beaten, everyone knew her as the strongest woman around. Yet I was always so hard on her, her own son was her biggest critic. All I ever wanted was her to be stronger than anything that could have plagued her, she could survive anything any man could do to her but she would war with herself for her entire life.           

            Standing in the front of that funeral home shaking hand after hand thanking everyone for coming, all I found myself doing was struggling to cope with the guilt I never knew I was capable of feeling. In the final two and a half years of my mother’s life I launched a personal campaign to give my mother the catalyst she needed to get herself on track. I stopped talking to her, and kept my daughter from her and when we saw each other at family gatherings (the few that there were) it was either awkwardly quiet as we struggled to stay away from each other, or it ended in a heated conversation usually with me saying something far too extreme. The entire time when I stayed away from my mother, and kept my daughter away I argued with everyone to understand my reasoning, and practically forced my daughters mother going along with my plan, but internally I struggled to maintain the ability to keep my life and my mothers life separate. I missed holidays, birthdays, summers at the campground, and most importantly the potential relationship between my mother and my daughter who my mother was probably more excited than anyone when she was born, all in order to coerce my mother into becoming the person everyone knew and loved, but as I said earlier I unfortunately I let the negative aspects of something or someone overshadow the beauty and good within a person. Over the years I have created an identity of someone impervious to emotion, someone who has been easily able to cut ties with anyone regardless of how close or the type of relationship, and everyone fed into it, especially me. So much so that when my sister called me this week to inform me that my mother had passed, I initially felt nothing, and that scared me. I knew I should have been upset, but the first thing I could think of was the negatives yet again, possibly as a defense mechanism or because I have become such a cynic that I could make Ebenezer Scrooge look like Clark Gable in the final scene of Casablanca. Again my blinders have made me seem far more cold than I should ever be or hope to be perceived.  God, I have always prided myself in being a great friend and someone who loves his friends and can be counted on but I have never put even a quarter of that effort into being a somewhat decent family man. My mother loved having her whole family together, and you could tell how happy it made her yet my inability to forgive and my callous persona deprived her of that and the rest of my family from seeing her that happy.

 Seeing old faces from yesteryear, I felt like a door was opened in my memory bank. All I could think of was memories of before my brother and sister were born, and even after my sister was born. My mother was my best friend; it was always she and I. The never ending amount of quarters she would give me for whatever arcade game Schmidt’s deli had in that month, or the never ending supply of dipsy doodles and Hershey’s popsicles she would let me buy from there. When my sister came home from the hospital after she was born, all I could talk about was how purple her face was. My mother laughed hysterically, but I was five years old and dead serious.  I’m 27 years old with a daughter of my own, and still have no idea how a baby can come home that purple, and still think about it often. Christ I cant believe I have been so focused on feeling nothing and only being able to focus on the negative experiences with my mother that it took up to the 24 hours before her funeral to think of the good. Standing on that funeral home porch I was overcome with the happier memories. Seeing my friends faces and all the memories and relationships she had with them. Joe Mchenry stands on the top step, but in my mind him and I are at my family’s campground burning the various decorations that watch over the campground at all times, would you ever think to put a life size Santa Claus in a fire pit in the middle of August? We did and you’d think a 40-year-old mother of three would find this childish, especially from a twenty-two and twenty four year old. But she laughed, and planned on telling my dad when he asked what happened to his campground flare pieces “ I guess the kids from other sites stole them”.  Joe and I arrived at the campground that day with a cold case of Yuengling, which seemed more appealing on a ninety-degree day after sitting in the lake for forty-five minutes to an hour. My mother apparently figured it would be ideal to consume the case within that time it would take for Joe and I to swim and walk back to the campground site. We talked about drinking the whole walk back from the lake, but what we found was a case of beer three quarters of the way polished off. The soundtrack to that day was my mother in the enclosed porch three sheets singing Rod Stewarts greatest hits and laughing at us wielding Pottsville’s finest. Joe and I could only laugh, as stiff jabs to our shoulders and kisses poured from my mothers inebriated, high-spirited body. They say it’s the little things that count, well Joe and I can’t talk about my mother without bringing that day up.

It’s cold and rainy, but neither Ken nor I want to go inside so the conversation stays outside and neither of us are complaining. Ken has been like my brother since I was ten years old, and like a son to my mother ever since.  This week has shown that more so than ever, as if he had ever questioned his importance to my family. On Friday, in the city papers in print was the unfortunate reminder that this was all becoming real, my mothers obituary. The section that read “mother to” ended with a name that she had not even known at birth, but somehow established a significant relationship with that it did not make an ounce of difference, Kenny’s name was the final child. I didn’t know anything about him being in the obituary nonetheless I thought he earned a place in there and I am sure my mother would agree.  Countless Christmas Eve nights at my mothers house sitting in my kitchen eating and drinking run through my head just sitting there talking to him. But I am sure if we were to ask him what he would think of, at least to take a shot at me would be a New Years eve night rather than a Christmas eve night. On this particular New Years, Kenny and I would pass out being the teenage lightweights that we were, my mother would continue her own party alone at the dinner table emptying bottle after bottle yet again singing Hot Rod and John Lennon songs at the top of her lungs trying to wake people to sit with her. It didn’t work. She took an aggressive approach and came into the living room and started running her fingers around my mouth trying to annoy me enough that I would wake up and come back to the table. I merely told her to knock it the hell off and let me sleep. After many failed attempts she moved on to trying to wake Kenny with the same finger around the mouth maneuver. Several hand swats later Kenny finally woke up, only to find my mothers ever-present rooster haircut, glazed over from drinking all night eyes, and ear-to-ear smile over his head. Just about the time Kenny realized what was hovering over his still half drunk head, my mother went for the kill. She planted the biggest kiss possible without it being considered adultery on Kenny’s shocked and disbelief filled half drunk mouth.  As he and I tried to put together what we had just seen and what he just went through, my mothers cackle and laughter filled body shook the house. That night will never leave Ken and I, as I am sure ken likes to throw it in my face that he kissed my mother.  But as previously said, they say it’s the little things. There are stories like this for every face on this porch and inside in the minds and hearts of everyone here paying their last respects, and I find myself taking comfort in that. How could I have focused on the negativity for so long? I go back to the head of the funeral home to thank more people for coming with a new mindset, all the negativity and bad memories that I focused on are a distant memory and I just feel guilty. Now more than ever I tell myself “don’t look left”.

            “Now the family can come up and pay their final respects”, the words echoed through the now vacant funeral home. I finally turn left. Standing in front of my mother laid out, fumbling in my heads for the words to come up with.  How can someone sum up three years of animosity and turbulence in a relationship, never thinking this would be how our relationship would end, without the chance to reconcile. Guilt ridden, I try to apologize because I never hated her, I just wanted her to be the person everyone knew and loved. I wanted her to overcome her demons. I knew she had the strength, but all I can do at the time is apologize, explain how I never wanted it to be like this and hope that some how my mother who is lying in front of me understands.  Somehow walking away from that casket I felt a peace that I have never felt. Maybe that’s a sign to some people, but for me it just made me feel better. I am not this crazy paranormal spiritual fanatic, nor will I be ever. Those people are delusional and need hobbies.

“I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round…” John Lennon sings in the background as they close the casket but all I hear is “Instant Karma is gonna get you”.

But following the hearse as we passed through Kensington in the precession, I kept thinking about being a kid watching MTV when Biggie was driven through Brooklyn, and thinking that my mother was that relevant and important enough to Kensington so this is fitting.  Saying goodbye to the mayor of Kensington, driving through the heart of Kensington.  As the Market-Frankford Line passed by overhead, the lyrics “you can’t get to heaven on the Frankford El” ran through my head putting a smile on my face.

On that day the Hooters were wrong, someone finally did.