When my mother turned eighty-three last week, her friends threw her a party. If I had that many friends at eighty-three, and if I still played golf and danced and flirted and sprung out of bed at 7 a.m., I would consider myself blessed. But maybe that’s easy to say since I’m not eighty-three. Mom’s famous for looking and acting far younger that her age. She likes action. She also wants her play-friend back. What kind of deal is that? When I am brooding, I think, “Okay, God, what is the point exactly, of this born alone, die alone thing?” I don’t think may of us remember being born, but a lot of people remember life before they die.
One of the reasons I asked my therapist if, just to make it easier, if I could move in her house and follow her around all day, was because as a child my parents made it very clear—they swore they were going to shoot each other at sixty-five. This was the plan. I’ll never know what they were thinking in sharing it with their children, except they must have thought we knew they were kidding The whole plan got a little fuzzier as they grew older, kind of like Leno leaving NBC. They were joking, but inside they both felt sad about it all when an age that felt so unimaginable had passed.
With my father gone nearly a year and a half, Mom was still putting on her brave face at her birthday party. Mom and Dad’s birthday’s were two days apart, so it had always been an ideal excuse for them to whizz off with friends for a five-day celebration, and so his absence was particularly felt around this time of year, plus the holidays, plus they were married sixty-three years, plus he shouldn’t have been trying to sneak off to the golf course in the first place while the whole family sat waiting to take him out for Father’s Day, and he certainly didn’t need to have a heart attack and crash into the club tennis house.
I knew all this was on my mother’s mind as she smiled and greeted her friends, all acutely aware of how much she detested being a “widow” now, and vaguely guilty that she hadn’t been included in as many intimate dinner parties or dances or golf foursomes. Often spending Friday and Saturday nights alone, unthinkable when my father was alive, she wears this fake smile she carries around in her pocket for such occasions, since being “alone” meant “loneliness.” She never had to learn to deal with it.
As I stood beside her while she greeted an impressive array of guests, Mom whispered to me, scanning the crowd and not moving her lips, “When your father was alive, all these men used to have a crush on me. As soon as a person is single again, snap! They all disappear.” I thought this was fascinating that my mother had become such an expert at single life, since she’d only been single for sixteen months and she married my father right after her eighteenth birthday.
“Is this about getting me married again? Because I’m not going to get married again. I told you that.” No mouth movement and eyes on the guests. Excellent.
Mom shrugged. “Well, all the good ones are gone anyway. I wouldn’t be caught dead with anyone here,” and before I could utter, “Mother” she was chirping away with a newly arrived guest, with her large smile and happy voice.
My mother, being the guest of honor, was seated between two of the most handsome and witty of all the men, and although they were married, my mother flirted and played and laughed, and ended up having a great time.
There is no way I can convince my mother that it is possible to lead a fulfilling and happy life without a husband. Why is it still the prevalent view in our society that this status is the one that makes a woman complete? My mom’s friends look at me in pity (“I’ve been married, remember?” I want to shriek. “I’m not dying to jump into it right now!”)
But perhaps it’s because I have the naive view that there is always time. The idea of having no significant other when I die just is something I try not to think about.
Mother doesn’t look like she’s going anywhere, but the loneliness weighs on her, and she doesn’t want it to happen to me. Driving her home from her birthday bash, she announced, “In seventeen years I’ll be one hundred. Just try to be married by then.”