When
I was a very young child, I started playing video games. I
quickly developed a fascination with them that has continued
to this day. (I cannot deny that I'm somewhat of a geek.) Mom always
enjoyed them too, even into her elderly years, and during the
last decade, it was rare that a Christmas would go by without
me giving
her some sort of video game as one of her presents.
Way
back in 1981, for Christmas, my parents saved up their money
and gave me my first Atari 2600 game system. That
was the REALLY old one, with the blocky graphics and the repetitive
gameplay - but in 1981,
it was the top of the line, and it still remains the best Christmas
present that I ever received. Mom
and I played that thing for countless hours.
In
mid-1982, as we were out shopping, I convinced her to buy me
the "Basketball" cartridge
for the Atari. The
graphics and gameplay were TERRIBLE by today's standards, but
to me it was a lot of fun.
To
put it very nicely, Mom wasn't that good at it. It
was a very simple game, but she
could
never get the timing down right. She
was great at lots of other games, but not at this one. Whenever
we sat
down and played "Basketball," I would simply run by her, immediately
steal the ball, run down the court, and make the basket. Over
and over. I was relentless. She
never had a chance.
Even
though she was frustrated with it, she continued to sit down
and play Atari "Basketball" with
me. We
played for hours, and I don't remember her ever beating me
at it.
Well, even though I was only ten years old at the time, I still had
a vague understanding of two very important things:
1) I
knew, deep down, that she wasn't playing the game to win. She
knew that she couldn't. She wasn't even playing it to enjoy herself. She
was playing it because she knew that it made me happy, and she
was sacrificing her time so that I could enjoy myself.
2) I
knew that no matter how long played "Basketball," no
matter how long the games lasted and no matter how many times we played,
there would inevitably come a time that we would play the last "Basketball" game
that we would ever play, because eventually - whether that final game
was that very afternoon or years down the road - Mom would eventually
pass away, and we could never play any video games together again. There
was no avoiding it; I was a morbid kid, and to me, mortality
was just a fact of life.
It was that second one that really hit me hard. Obviously,
I never wanted to lose my mother, but even at ten years old
I knew that she
couldn't live forever, and neither could my dad, and neither
could I. No
matter what we did, we couldn't prevent it.
However,
there she was, taking her precious time suffering through
this stupid game
just
to make her only child smile. On
at least a couple of occasions after playing "Basketball," after
Mom left the room, I just sat there and cried quietly to myself
while I pondered
this. Until
a few days ago, she never knew that.
You see, Mom was a person who really enjoyed having fun - but she
especially enjoyed watching the people that she loved having fun. I
can't tell you how many sacrifices - of time and money - were
made by her over the years, just so that I could enjoy myself. When
I was young, she was constantly taking me out shopping, or taking
me
out to eat at Chuck E. Cheese, or just sitting down playing video
games
with me. In
my later years, she and my dad used their money to buy the sound
and light equipment to start my very own mobile
DJ business. That
was how much I meant to my mom.
I
always told her "thank you," but
I could never truly convey how much I appreciated everything she
did for me.
It is my memory of Mom's drive to make other people happy that makes
me 100% certain that she wouldn't want anyone here to be shedding a
tear for her. Mom
wouldn't want anyone here to be saddened by our loss. She
even said that while lying there in her hospital room. She
would want us all to celebrate her life, and in doing so, to
go out
and experience life for ourselves, and to share our lives with
others, and ENJOY LIFE.
Certainly,
we can all sit here and be all gloomy and sad about it, and for
a lot
of us (myself
included), we are not really "supposed" to
have any other choice. But
Mom saw things differently. She
wanted people to have fun, whether she was having fun or not. She
wanted the people around her to feel like they mattered, and
she wanted people
to enjoy themselves. She
didn't like to draw a lot of attention to herself -
she wanted to be there for others.
Today, after the service, we are asking that everyone meet up at Goldie's
restaurant at the Ne-Mar center to share some time and memories together.
Do you know what Mom would want you to do after that? She
wouldn't want you to go home and cry over her. She'd
want you to go watch a
good comedy movie, or a good horror movie - she loved both. She'd
want you to go fly a kite in the park or take the time to play
with your
kids or your grandkids. She'd
want you to call a few friends over for a few rounds of dominoes,
or Uno, or even poker. She'd
want you to
pick up the phone, call up someone with whom you haven't spoken
in a while (like your parents, or your children), and just
take a few
minutes to tell them that you LOVE them. Mom
wouldn't want you to sit around worrying about her. She
would want you to HAVE
FUN and ENJOY
your LIFE.
That was the type of person that she was, and that's why we should
all be gathered here today - not to mourn her passing, and not to mourn
OUR loss. We
should be gathered here today to CELEBRATE life. We
should be gathered here to celebrate the life that SHE lived,
and to celebrate
the lives that WE are blessed enough to continue to live.
Let there be no doubt that whatever she would have wanted, I've still
been mourning her passing every day, and I am going to miss her tremendously. When
she was out at SouthCrest, there wasn't a day that went by in
that hospital room that I didn't go visit her. Even
though her lungs were failing, her mind was still as sharp as
a proverbial
tack, and
she and I shared some great conversations and discussed some
wonderful memories.
It
was during one of her "good" times in that room, one
of the times during which we really thought Mom was going to "make
it," that she and I discussed what we would do when she got better
and went back home. I
assured her that I would come over to visit her and Dad more
often. I
knew that Mom wanted to see her grandson again, and I knew that
we had lots of movies to watch together, but
I figured - at least at the time - that I had an even better
idea than either
of those.
As I sat there at her bed, holding her hand, I told her that whenever
she got out of there, we would need to sit down again, for old times
sake, and play some old video games on the Atari 2600.
From behind her oxygen mask, weakly but still joyously, she peered
over at me and said:
"Just...
not... Basketball."
