All There Is, Mom

Elogy. The word in Spanish, I discovered while a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mexico, is a part of everyday speech.  Elogia – or elogias in the plural – are words of praise bestowed onto the beloved. Nombre, are the Latinos good at that!

Well that’s what I’m here to do today for my mother. It’s not so easy for us in this culture to accept praise.  But as uncomfortable as it may be for you mom, here goes…elogias para ti, Mama. 

To begin, just a bit of background…

Rosemary Copp was born in Springfield IL (land of Lincoln) on August 23 1931 and died in Peoria, IL (Land of Vaudeville) June 26^th, 2014. In-between, Mom lived in Washington, DC (Land of the Do-Nothing Congress) along with my dad, her late husband, Angelo Pellicciotto and their three children – myself the eldest, my sister Jane, next in line, and brother Nick.  

She and dad met in the Chem department at St Louis U in the mid-fifties, graduated, married and headed to Washington in the tumultuous sixties to join the fledgling bureaucracy - Dad working for the DOD and mom for the VA. 

Jumping ahead a few decades, my Dad, sadly estranged from the family, met his un-timely death in 1987.  At the time I was still young, just out of college, and for various reasons, I was unable to sing my father’s praises at his funeral.

I am older and (I hope) a bit wiser now.  My relationship with my mom was very different; it had a chance to evolve over the years, fortunately, beyond mother-daughter to friends. 

So I hope I am able to provide a window – only one view – into the life of Rosemary:  a Challenging, Engaged, Open-minded, Courageous, Forward-thinking, Inquisitive woman.

1.  Challenging

People say my mom was an easy-going, go along with the crowd type.  But I don’t see her that way. She was a challenging mom – a mom who challenged. She set high standards, though she was generally tight-lipped about them. You knew by a look and a feel whether she was disappointed or proud.

I’ll focus on the proud…

I think we children did our best to make her proud – in different ways of course - bringing home good report cards, stories and ideas, interesting friends. I liked to bring mom trophies, evidence of my triumphs in swimming, tennis, running. When I lost, I stomped up to my room and slammed the door, mom liked to remind me. But when it was a win…I’d walk into the house with a big smile and she knew right away. The prize hidden behind my back: which hand? I’d ask.

She liked that, up to the end.  Just two weeks before she died, I brought mom home a wood plaque in the shape of the State of Illinois – first place, 4-mile Steamboat Classic, master female category. She laughed giddily, as I perched the plaque on her dresser. You’re still winning, Anne, she said. And it STILL felt good to make her proud.

As I said, Mom was usually tight-lipped about her expectations of us.  But there was this one time she put it right on the table, delivering an unforgettable line to my husband-to-be (and now my ex, John Gerschefski): ‘I have great things in mind for my daughter and I don’t want you fucking them up.’

2.  Engaged

Yes, mom did put the pressure on, in her own usually-subtle way. But she didn’t simply set expectations and sit on the sidelines. She was engaged. I remember hours spent on the linoleum floor of our kitchen – from playing store and learning to make change when we were little – to memorizing the periodic table of elements in high school – well this WAS her forte. I had the hardest time understanding the concept of a mole, the amount of a chemical substance that contains as many atoms, molecules, ions and electrons as there are atoms in 12 grams of Carbon.  Huh? I could not accept this without understanding why? And she repeatedly begged me: ‘Please don’t ask Why, Anne?! That’s not the point.’

Mom loves to share this story about Jane who, in high school chem, after hours toiling over Avogadro's Number, attempting to calculate the rate of a reaction, said to Mom:  ‘What do I care about the RATE of the reaction? I don’t even care about the reaction!’

I imagine Mom, at that point, to be both frustrated and wholeheartedly amused. What would become of these progeny? Both of our parents were chemists – practical, rational, employable. And their three kids were heading in divergent directions:  music, art and design, writing and English lit, hmm, business.

3.  Open-minded

But thank god, Mom was open-minded. She was a great supporter of my ‘creative’ life. She managed to let go little by little over the years, encouraging me to travel where life’s road was taking me, reserving judgment, though not ample motherly concern.

‘Maybe it’s time to come home,’ Mom told me often, as I regaled her with stories of adventure and woe over Skype from the Peace Corps.  She was scared for me – the drug cartels, parasites, cross-cultural communication roadblocks. But she knew I couldn’t abandon the cause. I had something new and important to learn from my PC experience.

Mom never got in the way of learning.

 I did complete my service, landing back on US soil after a harrowing bus ride from Rioverde across the border; and mom was there in Austin, TX to meet me. Her relief was palpable. I was in one piece. We celebrated with a bottle of mescal I’d brought from Oaxaca, which had remained in one piece too!

Soon after, when I announced I was embarking on this Kickstarter campaign to turn my Mexico stories into a published book…that got her shaking her head once again in joyful disbelief.

'Kick what?' she questioned, then went right online to research this new crowd-sourcing wonder. Once convinced, she got behind me once again, as my biggest funder and moral supporter, sharing the link with her friends, and boosting me closer to my mark at the most crucial time in the campaign.

4.  Courageous

Of course we all have stories of mom the scardy-cat. Oh my god, she was terrible in the car. I remember one road-trip with my ex John out to Yosemite, and the woman was literally crouched, whimpering, in the foot well in the back seat as we drove through those expansive breathtaking mountains.

There was the raft trip down the Blackwater River in WVA.. We had to almost tie her into that rubber boat; and she was stone silent for the first six rapids, all class 2s, maybe a 3. But finally, on the 7^th , the fear broke. Drenched and delighted, she turned to the guide, grinning like a kid.  “How many more?’ she asked eagerly. Sadly, he replied:  ‘That was the last one.’

I know you all have your own stories like that. Janet I know you have many into the car for a trip from DC to NY so we could all take advantage of that Riverside Drive mansion where I was cat-sitting. You did make it; and we did have fun.  

But Mom had this quiet courageous side too.

The way I look at Mom, she was a Y2k woman raised in the repressive 50s. Her options HAD been limited. She wanted more for her daughters. And she managed to have a breakthrough herSELF!

Once she’d divorced and we kids emerged out of the nest, Mom got out of the ‘rat hole’ (she called it) of the NIH lab and into Corporate America! She landed a job with Abbott Labs as a tech rep for their diagnostics division.  Despite here directional challenges, Mom spanned the Midwest region in her Ford Taurus (company paid) – Peoria to Paducah to Kalamazoo – installing blood analysis machines in doctor’s offices and training their staff.  In 1997 she made the prestigious President’s Club for her stellar customer service, and invited me along on the no-expense-spared trip to Ireland where we had a chance to travel the Ring of Killarney, sheer sheep, golf an Arnold Palmer course on Dingle Bay, browse bookshops and gulp Guinness in Dublin, all on the company dime.

In those Abbott years mom caught the buzzing current of the technology – becoming proficient with email, reporting her progress to Headquarters via Lotus notes, uploading test results via the world wide web, researching on the Internet and even making her own e-trades.

Mom would have and did say she got lucky with that Abbott job.  She retired at 71 and her stock options had split many times.  But I say she made her luck; she took the plunge late in life; and it paid-off for her.

But where I saw my mom’s real courage in life was in the final stage. I know death is not an easy topic, but I think an important and relevant one.  As many of you know, my mom was hit unawares by this tumor in her colon and rushed to the emergency room last April 2013.  I was just back from the Peace Corps a couple weeks and still did not have a phone, so she sent me an email to alert me. 

She recovered quick and strong from the surgery; we even had an Easter brunch at her house the day after she left the hospital.  But the cancer had already spread to the liver. 

So Mom bravely took the plunge into the dark waters of chemo, and to the credit of an otherwise strong and healthy body and keen mind, she fared well through 3 different regimens of the therapy.  By all standards she had a very good year – she traveled and visited her children – hosted a Christmas gathering – got her affairs in order.  Then it hit – on Mother’s Day while mom was visiting Nick and Lauren and grandson Noel in Austin – it would be for the last time.

We never really got to know Rosemary as an old lady. As you know from real life and will see from the photos, she was always vibrant. She had a perfect brain, heart, lungs, legs, and lovely feet. She could proudly do 20 leg lifts that final week she was bedridden – it was just that darn bowel.  But it happened the way my mom wanted it to – relatively quickly and in home hospice. She received visitors graciously over those 12 days, carried on animated phone conversations with nieces, nephews, sisters and friends – voice strong and hair looking good up to the end. And she was so touched by everyone and everything.

A week into home hospice she seemed so content – conducting Vivaldi with her long, elegant fingers, watching the light change from morning to dusk, overhearing her the booming voice of Gerry, next door, chatting with neighbors, noticing the simple beauty of her variegated-leaf ivy dangling from the basket in the corner – ‘the ONE plant I’ve managed to keep alive!’, she marveled.

She said to me one of those days, between bouts of pain:  ‘I think I could lie here like this forever.’ 

She couldn’t. But Mom knew what she wanted those final days. While her body was ready to go, her spirit kept her in a semi-conscious state, conserving her energy, as she awaited Jane’s arrival, so that all of us, her children, could be by her side.  Jane arrived at 11 from Portland; and Mom passed at 1 am with a serene smile on her face, just as it was meant to be.

 
In a split second I think:  better get back inside. Then a firefly flashes, startling me, a presence bigger than that tiny light. I start to cry.

Lying back on the cool cement walk, looking up at the stars, faint on a hazy Midwest summer night, tears stream into my ears like when I was a child, inconsolable.

The firefly flickers again, in a different place, higher in the sky. And this time I smile, reach up, try to follow it in the darkness. But it’s gone.

Mom’s light was like that on earth: on, off, drifty, reach up, catch it in my fist, put it in a ball jar, carry it with me.

6.  Forward-Thinking

I want to end on a high note:  my mom’s desire for all of us, this next generation of cousins and their children, to continue to be all we can be in the world.  She is so very proud of all of us – our adventuresome and creative spirit – our kindness and open-mindedness – our accomplishments and our attempts.  We are entrepreneurs and geologists, physical therapists and artists, scientists and social workers, flyers, leaders, planners and doers.

Perhaps one of mom’s favorite stories comes from that Christmas ski reunion in the mountains of Fraiser, Colorado. We’d all assembled the first night for dinner in a restaurant, and they had to push a number of tables together to get us all 20-something of us to fit. It was musical chairs to find a seat, and my then partner, Tom, wasn’t sure where to go when he paused, took a step back, and said aloud, gazing at the group: ‘It really doesn’t matter where I sit; there’s not a dud in the bunch.’

Tom’s gone; but that moment stuck with mom. And it sticks with me too, now. 

It’s so wonderful to see all your faces out there – here for this celebration of mom’s life.  Truly, there’s not a dud in the bunch. 

8.  Inquisitive

And finally, Mom’s Inquisitiveness – or as I like to put it:  The Power of Questions.

I’m sure many of you have been grilled by mom over the years.  Strangers open up to her on airplanes and in bars because she invites them in with her questions. And she listens with presence to the answers.

I remember her drilling into us as kids:  don’t accept anything your teachers or the preachers tell you.  Don’t swallow it whole. Challenge them for different perspectives and share yours. She was raised in Jesuit schools and they taught her well, in this way. This skill has been a blessing and curse over my lifetime. I remember once being thrown out of 11^th grade pre-cal for questioning Mrs Goldman about a calculation. I sent her from the room crying, and was forbidden from the class after that. Oops, well, mom made me apologize for that one. 

On the plus side, this inquisitiveness has come in handy in my career as a change consultant and coach, and even while I served in the Peace Corps in Mexico. In fact, I was invited to speak at a conference on innovation in Mexican organizations. My topic was entitled ‘The Power of Questions’; and the first slide was attributed to mom, my teacher and role model; or as the Mexicans would call her, la preguntona, the good questionioner.

In conclusion, here’s to my mother, Rosemary Copp. I will miss her mothership. But more than that, I will miss her friendship.

I leave you all with this musical request by mom – perhaps a bit cynical (we’ve all seen that side of mom), bittersweet, and hauntingly beautiful, and asking the deep questions about life ‘til the end.  

Is that all there is? (Peggy Lee, 1969)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCRZZC-DH7M

Now it's Time to Write (or See This)

Such precious quiet this morning at Casa Parque – on the outside. Cool fall air floats through the dining room window, chills my toes.

But on the inside I sense agitation. Can't get comfortable in my chair – hard as a rock under my sitting bones. And inside my skin it feels disorganized.

9:18. I’d planned to be up earlier. Dedicating my weekends to the writing now. I’m behind on the book, I know, trying to find my rhythm again after Mom’s passing. Writing is a practice, like playing the piano. My fingers are out of shape.

I need inspiration. From a New Yorker article? Flipping through an August issue, this draws me in: ‘Finding the Words,’ the story of a contemporary poet’s elegy to his dead son.

9:29. I read the first page. Maybe it’s telling me: You’re not good enough to write this Mexico memoir or this newly brewing essay about your mother’s life and death. Such is the work of Wordsworth or Tennyson or the father, a celebrated writer named Edward Hirsch. Never even heard of him. Though further along in the article, a quote of his speaks to me:

‘Why would I have Skokie in a poem? But you become resigned. Your job is to write about the life you actually have.’

I can do that. I do do that. I’m not formally trained nor particularly sophisticated. But I’m still worthy, because I see inside, feel the texture, cherish the truth and transcribe for others the universality of experience. I try.

In a stanza of the poem to his late son, Gabriel, Hirsch writes:

Look closely and you will see    Almost everyone carrying bags   Of cement on their shoulders
That’s why it takes courage   To get out of bed in the morning   And climb into the day 

So that’s why I read that article. Because I got out of bed this morning.

9:49. Now it’s time to write.

Mom’s sleeping upstairs. I hope it’s deep, rejuvenating sleep. But how could it be. There’s nothing that could revive that broken body. It’s already abandoned her. She tells me that at night, in bed, she has visions of her old, strong self and she, who she is now, reaches out, yearning to re-inhabit that body. But she cannot reach it. She awakens, and the bloated belly that encases a cancerous liver is still there, a nightmare from which she cannot wake-up. 

Was it death that visited me at the foot of my bed that haunted night in Mexico? I dove out of my sleep and onto the cloaked monster screaming ‘Noooo,’ landing on the cold cement floor of my Jimenez hovel. Awakened from the nightmare, I crawled in the dark to my dorm fridge and found a pack of frozen peas to put between my bruised knees. I made it through a frightful night and went on to survive and thrive in Mexico.

But Mom cannot dive. She can hardly sit up. She cannot walk or eat and barely drinks, thus she cannot even eliminate. Was that the problem in the first place, pent-up toxins in the bowel? Simply that? Her brain, heart, lungs are perfect. She can do 20 leg lifts, she showed me yesterday. And she has lovely toes. 

She’s a model of health, proud to have never 'soaked the system,' the only drugs she’s ever taken a light dosage blood pressure pill and one for cholestoral. I went to the CVS today to buy her Aleve and a stool softener. That’s the least ‘Western’ medicine can do for her. 

Me, I’m taking a G&T for the pain. Fresh mowed lawn, brilliant green carpet laid out before me, sound of the CSX freight train tooting its horn in the distance, the blessed wind in the trees, brushing my shoulders. I want to cry for how beautiful this moment is. 

And mom’s asleep upstairs. 

You wish you could go through this experience like this: rub your mom’s neuropathic numb feet with the miracle cream you picked up at the running race, comb her thin hair, scrub her bathtub and wash her bed sheets, prepare a smoothie she forces herself to drink, out of the bendy straw a child drinks from. 'Just two sips, mom, no three, please, for me?'

You wish you could do this for her: reminisce quietly as BookTV blares, about the good ole days, that illustrious trip in the station wagon to Niagara Falls when we kids had just discovered the thrill of spitballs. 'Do you remember the one that landed in your ear!? And you, angry, promised that was our last trip.'

My coming home with trophies, celebrating childhood triumphs in tennis, swimming, running. Or the times I stomped up to my room, an ashamed loser. 'But when it was a win,' Mom reminds me, I’d walk into the house with a big smile, and she knew right away, the prize hidden behind my back: 'Which hand?' I’d ask.

I brought one home for her today: a wood plaque in the shape of the state of Illinois, first place, 4-mile, Steamboat Classic, Master Female.

'You’re still winning,' Anne, she chuckles with joy as I perch the plaque on her dresser, upside, the flat border side of the state down.

She gazes down at my new fast Adidas. 'When my feet get better,' she says, 'I want a pair of those.' 

You wish you could get past this together; then you promise yourself you’d REALLY live. But now is what you’ve got. The luminous summer evening, the sound of a lawn mower, the tinkle of the ice cubes. 

Mom’s resting in her bedroom. Should you go wake her up so she can see this? 

Dedicated to My Mom, Rosemary Copp, My Motivation & Inspiration

Dear Readers,

I’ve been keeping you regularly updated on my Mexico memoir progress, starting last December, upon successful completion of the Kickstarter campaign. It's been exciting to share book excerpts, get your feedback, and gain encouragement to forge ahead on the creative journey.

Unfortunately this update is not quite as bright. Sadly, I report the passing of my mother, Rosemary Copp, on Thursday morning June 26th. Cancer had been looming for over a year. In fact I’d just returned from Mexico, barely settling in to DC life last April 2013, when I got the call. Mom was being rushed into emergency surgery.

Mom fought a good fight with an arsenal of chemo and a lot of courage. She was rewarded with an almost-normal year, traveling, visiting friends and family, keeping up with politics and the stock market, enjoying life, between treatments. And, as responsible as she was, getting her affairs in order. 

But on Mother’s Day, she took a turn for the worse. The treatments had worn-off and the cancer was spreading with a vengeance. We shifted Mom into hospice care and took-on the care-giving. It was only 12 days, but seemed like we lived another lifetime before she passed peacefully at her home in Peoria, IL with her three children by her side.

My mom was a great supporter of my creative life. She managed to let go little by little over the years, encouraging me to travel where life's road was taking me, reserving judgment, though not ample motherly concern.

Mom and Me - Pre-Peace Corps Garage Sale

‘Maybe it’s time to come home,’ she told me often, as I regaled her with stories of adventure and woe over Skype from Mexico. She was scared for me; but she knew that I couldn’t abandon the cause. I had something new and important to learn from my Peace Corps experience. And mom would never get in the way of learning.

I did complete my service, landing back on US soil after a harrowing bus ride from Rioverde across the border; and mom was there in Austin, TX to meet me. She hugged me and would not let go; her relief was palpable. I was in one piece. We celebrated with a bottle of mescal I’d procured in Oaxaca, which had remained in one piece too!

When I announced I was embarking on this Kickstarter campaign to turn all my Mexico stories into a published book, that got her shaking her head once again in joyful disbelief. 

'Kick what?' she questioned, then when right online to research this new technological, entrepreneurial wonder. And she got behind me once again, as my biggest funder and moral supporter, sharing the link with her friends, and boosting me closer to my mark at the most crucial time in the campaign.

As we sat quietly in her bedroom during those last 12 days together, classical music playing in the background, I shared with Mom my progress, reading aloud one of the latest excerpts.

It’s mother’s day. My mom is far from me; but Chuya has invited me to San Miguel de las Flores for a celebration at the school with Lupita and the other village children. Lupita is tiny but strong. She easily wins the rice sack race and, glowing, brings her mother the prize. After the games we enjoy a special pizza lunch on the playground picnic tables. Each child gives their mother a handmade tissue flower to wear on her shirt. Then we walk Lupita, hand in hand, down the baked mud road to their casa.

I’m mildly surprised. Their home is dirt floor dwelling, bare of furniture and appliances. Chuya cooks on a wood stove under a palm awning; and she gets the fire going as soon as we arrive. Chickens peck around the dirt yard. The garden blooms with fruit trees and chile plants and nubby nopal. They have a milpa, a family farm plot, at the far end of the village, where they grow corn and peanuts, she tells me. She raises a bunch over her head, leafy topped and a muddy cluster of peanuts dangles.

‘Son semillas?’ they are seeds, I marvel, feeling embarrassed as the words come out.

Chuya chuckles at me. She can’t imagine my life either.

I sense she wants more. Or maybe it’s me wanting that for her. She has three sweet children, two boys and a girl; but they eat food out of bags, Bimbo and Frito Lay, and throw their trash on the ground. Her senor is only half there; the other half he’s on the other side doing construction or picking crops. When he returns home they are strangers.

He tries to make himself useful, she says as she rolls her eyes. Today he’s hanging laundry on the line. He greets me with a respectful handshake; a few minutes later he hops on his horse and rides out of site.

Chuya tells me he was a drunk for a while; after his father died it was very bad. Now he’s okay. But he’s barely there: he works the fields, she tends to the ninos and on the side makes her palm jewelry. She developed the skill while he was away; and she's very proud of it. 

She shows me the fans of palm, brightly died, hanging from a line, waiting to be weaved into jewelery creations....

By the time I finished reading, I worried Mom was bored to sleep. Her eyes were closed, the fan whirred, her beautiful long fingers were clasped across her chest which rose and fell with her breath.

Then suddenly her strong voice punctuated the silence: ‘I feel like I’m there with you,’ she said. ‘What a tough life in those villages.’ Her blue-gray eyes popped open and gazed over at me. ‘If you just keep going like that, Anne, you’ll have the book. But not too many pages, dear,’ she cautioned. ‘People don’t read anymore. That twitter thing, you know.’

She certainly wasn’t referring to herself. Her bedside table held a stack of eight books, and her TV stand another 10, and there were book collections in every room in the house – histories, biographies, books of poetry. But she’d watched the devolution over the years – participated in the technology revolution and praised it, but also acknowledged its ills.

I’d hoped to have my Mexico memoir done and dedicated to Mom before she’d passed. If I allow it, I can feel awfully sad that I didn’t. But instead I will allow Mom to be my inspiration to finish what I started and make her proud.

Readers, yes, the due dates have shifted a bit. But I remain committed to you and this book.

Sinceramente, Anne