Tag Archives: General Hospital

These Aren’t the Droids You’re Looking For

Posted on by

For the past five months, I’ve written weekly about the catch phrases my mother commemorated in a series of cards she left in the hands of trusted family members for posthumous delivery to me. Most of the axioms were long-standing and oft-repeated with personal meanings for her, for me and for the rest of our family. Today’s headline is quite a departure from that theme.

DroidsYes, the quote is from the 1977 film Star Wars, which was a family favorite long before the first exciting blockbuster became just one in a series of three, then six and soon to be nine episodes. Surprisingly, though, the line did not make it to Mom’s list until 2012, and it wasn’t because Obi-Wan Kenobi so masterfully used it to hoodwink a team of white-clad storm troopers. It was because I practically rolled on the floor laughing when a soap opera actor unexpectedly said it.

During an episode of General Hospital, smarmy Todd Manning (dryly played by Roger Howarth) was arguing over office space with another character. In the middle of the heated exchange, Todd suddenly waved his hand à la Obi-Wan and said …

These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.

His nemesis looked shocked for a moment and the argument resumed. It tickled me so much that I replayed the exchange several times and then saved the recording to watch again later. For the next year or so, either Mom or I would sometimes repeat the intergalactic phrase, but there was no underlying meaning. It was really just about remembering an amusing moment. I’m sure she wrote it in one of her posthumous cards for the same reason. A couple of months ago that changed for me.

My daughter, her two boys and I spent a November afternoon wandering around a Wizard World Comic Con in nearby Reno, Nevada. We met actors featured in a few of our favorite films and television shows, listened to Billy Dee Williams speak about his iconic Star Wars role as Lando Calrissian and browsed through a maze of vendor booths offering everything from tattoos to toys. A poster for sale in one of the stalls stopped me in my tracks. It was essentially a satire of the scenic motivational placards that modern-day managers like to display in their offices to promote teamwork, integrity and belief in success. Truth be told, I have one myself featuring a sailboat against a red sunset with the caption “Opportunity” beneath. The poster at the Comic Con was labeled “Regrets” and pictured a white-clad storm trooper sitting at a table with his head in his hands. The tagline read …

Those were the droids you were looking for.

I laughed heartily, took a picture of it and wondered for a few minutes whether to buy it. I ultimately did not bring it home, but the image was unforgettable. The more I pondered it, the more I realized that it was not just a punchline. For me, it brought the concept of looking for something full circle. So often in life we are presented with an opportunity, dismiss it because we don’t think it is truly what we were looking for, and regret it later. The unexpected is like a seed. Given the right attention, it takes root and bears surprising blessings. I call both of my children surprises (not accidents) for that very reason.

My 12-year cohabitation with my mother, and our eventual relationship as caregiver and care receiver, was an epic surprise. In my September 7, 2014, column titled “For However Long Forever Lasts,” I recounted the events that led to our arrangement. As noted then, we hadn’t planned to live together. We hadn’t planned that I would be the daughter to assume the lead responsibility in her final years. Nevertheless, that’s how life rolled out. I was rewarded with a deeper relationship with my mother than I could have ever imagined. We both learned important lessons from our respective roles, and we parted with few, if any, regrets. It was a blessing that I recognized this unexpected gift when it was given instead of realizing it only in hindsight.

Within that larger gift were many smaller ones.  One of the most extraordinary is that I developed a deep appreciation for fine art.

Droids - HalloweenMom was always a creative soul. As children, my sister, brother and I sported some of the best Halloween costumes in the neighborhood. When I was a teenager, Mom sewed my prom dress and painted cartoon-character posters for my student council campaign that were so clever that classmates stole them off the walls. Throughout my life, I witnessed her talent in mediums that ranged from clay sculpture to macramé and from charcoal drawings to oil paintings. When she retired and moved to the Oregon coast, she happily painted big yellow sunflowers on her old metal shed, hand-painted custom sweatshirts for everyone and fancifully colored Easter eggs each year without fail. Yet, even with that up-close and personal exposure to her creative spirit, I can’t say that I truly appreciated fine art until Mom and I took a four-day vacation to Las Vegas in 2005.

We planned our mini-break to coincide with a concert featuring country singer Kenny Chesney (for me) and an exhibit of classic impressionist paintings (for Mom). The concert was every bit as good as I expected it to be, but the memory has since blended with images from dozens of other shows I’ve attended over the years.  The exhibit, on the other hand, was akin to a Divine experience. Although I wasn’t particularly interested in seeing the paintings myself, I was glad to wheel Mom through the gallery. I didn’t anticipate that gazing at original canvases by the likes of Vincent Van Gogh and Pierre-Auguste Renoir would turn out to be awe-inspiring.

The defining moment of our gallery visit was when I found myself standing breathless in front of Claude Monet’s 1886 Meadow at Giverny. Clearly seeing the dashes and dabs of the artist’s paintbrush and the vibrant color choices that captured the lights and shadows of the landscape was nothing short of surreal. I could picture myself beside him in that meadow, insects buzzing about and a soft breeze rustling through the trees, while he repeatedly touched his brush to his palette and then to the emerging canvas. To this day, I am amazed that a long-dead Frenchman could reach through time, space and the commotion of the Las Vegas Strip to touch my heart in such a profound and lasting way.

The gallery gift shop didn’t have a print of Meadow at Giverny in stock or it would be hanging on my wall right now. No matter. A print would be little more than a two-dimensional souvenir to remind me of a dazzling, once-in-a-lifetime sight. A better souvenir is that the unexpected epiphany I experienced in that indelible moment is a seed that has taken root and blessed me with new vision.

Droids - Old WomanWhen Mom left this world, she left me some of her finest artistic creations. Regardless of the mediums, they all are unique and beautiful. However, I study the paintings with a more keen eye. The subtle differences in color and the variations in brush strokes that she used to capture the contours of a face, the pattern of a housedress or the shadows on a rose petal are a genuine source of amazement. Like Monet, Mom is able to reach out to me through space and time, and I can transport myself to the moment she touched brush to canvas. With this comes an intimacy that ordinary photograph albums and mementoes can never match. Had we not visited the impressionist exhibit during our 2005 mini-break, I doubt I would be enjoying this heightened perspective.

Sometime after Mom died, I began to entertain the idea of trying my own hand at painting. Not long ago I finally surrendered to the cosmic nudge and bought a set of pastels and a drawing pad. I feel destined to dabble if only to better understand the idea of blending colors on paper. A few nights ago, my husband and I watched with interest as the film “The Monuments Men” recounted the Nazi theft and the Allied Forces’ recovery of millions of works of art; perhaps including some of the very paintings Mom and I viewed together. In recent days I’ve found myself surfing the Internet looking for the current resting place of Meadow at Giverny and dreaming of visiting Monet’s home in northern France. Ten years ago I would have scoffed at the notion that fine art would ever ignite my imagination in the way that it has. In a manner of speaking, art appreciation was never a droid I was looking for. I thank my lucky stars that my mind was open to this unexpected development because the seed took root and grew into a beautiful blessing. Indeed …

Those were the droids I was looking for.

Droids - SunflowersOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Smile With Your Bottom Teeth

Posted on by

In the early 1960s, our family learned a quirky smile from an equally quirky television comedian.  It especially tickled my mother’s funny bone.  She delighted in repeating his directive and then demonstrating the distinctive grin right up until the last weeks of her life.

If you run a search for the late Soupy Sales on the internet today, most biographies celebrate his trademark pie in the face or allege that some of the puns on his lunchtime kids’ show were not suitable for his viewing audience.  I only vaguely remember the pies.  The racy jokes, if any, must have whooshed completely over my 6-year-old head.  To my frustration, I had a harder time finding something that documented the things I do remember about him.  One was his wacky side-to-side dance that he dubbed the Soupy Shuffle.  A half-century later, I’ve seen hip-hop dancers do something similar called the Slide Side.  I wonder if they know they inherited that move from a once beloved television buffoon who regularly advised us to:

Smile with your bottom teeth!Smile - Card

Who really knows why Soupy wanted anyone to jut out their lower jaw and simultaneously try to turn up the corners of their mouth to show happiness.  As today’s feature photo (taken 13 months ago) illustrates, the result doesn’t even look much like a smile.  I can imagine, though, that he conceived it for the same, simple reason we complied – the pure, unadulterated joy of being silly.  For me, that’s certainly how it started.  I can’t speak for my sister and brother, but I gradually came to view the bottom-teeth smile as a symbol of the conscious choice to be glad in the face of disappointment, defeat and virtually any formidable challenge.  It was fitting that, in one of her posthumously delivered farewell cards, Mom wrote those words down to help me remember a tried and true weapon against melancholy and apprehension.  In the past week or so, I’ve surely needed that reminder.  In the next few weeks, I will need it even more.

This coming Thursday, November 27th, is Thanksgiving.  For the first time in my 60 years, Mom won’t be part of that cherished family holiday.  The sun will rise on her 90th birthday on December 4th, but she won’t be here to mark it.  Five days after that, it will be 12 months since she passed away.

Bereavement counselors commonly caution that the first anniversary of a death is likely to regenerate the grief that you thought was passing.  I’m here to tell Smile - The Girlsyou; that is absolutely true.  My preoccupation with Mom’s final weeks actually began in mid-September.  It was then I started pinpointing days that held certain significance.  The last day Mom left the house – for a podiatry appointment followed by a spontaneous lunch out at our favorite Mexican restaurant.  The day I knew it was time to call my sister and brother to tell them the end was near.  The weekend family from the Pacific Northwest traveled to Nevada for one last reunion.  An early Thanksgiving feast to ensure Mom could enjoy her favorite foods one last time on her mother’s China.  Her last birthday, celebrated with a single, flickering candle in a cup of chocolate-vanilla swirl pudding and three of us singing as she lay comatose.  The icy cold morning when she took her last breath.

The last, the last, the last.  It seems like an eternity ago … and like yesterday.

I sometimes wonder whether those closing images will ever fade.  Will I always be able to hear the doctor say, “Well, she doesn’t have six months,” as he paused Smile - Musicnear our front door after making a house call for a hospice assessment?  Will I always have a vivid memory of Mom’s poignant observation after most of the family musicians gathered in the living room to play all her favorite tunes once more?  “Did you feel like you were at your own wake,” I asked when I helped her into bed that night.  “Yes, I kinda did.”  Will there Smile - GHever come a day when I am able to erase the December 2, 2013, recording of General Hospital, when I talked my barely conscious Mom through the moment she’d long been waiting for – Robin’s surprise return from the dead at husband Patrick’s wedding?  And, finally, will I ever stop second-guessing how my sister, brother and I handled those last few days and nights punctuated with frequent doses of liquid pain and anti-anxiety medications?  Lord, did we do a good job of walking Mom home?

From experience, I know that most of these heart-wrenching memories of our parting days will soften.  After a quarter century, I can still conjure up images of my mother-in-law’s final weeks as she wound down a six-year battle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.  Likewise, I clearly remember the shocking phone call two months later when my father died unexpectedly during an orthopedic surgery.  And, in the still of the night, I can relive certain meaningful moments when taking care of my father-in-law as he slowly succumbed to congestive heart failure less than four years after that.

About once a year – not always in the right month – I remember their passing and am unfailingly amazed that so much time has passed since we last breathed the same air.  I’ve noticed, though, that the exact days of their departures escape me now, and instead I am more likely to think of them on the joyful days that their mothers first held them in their arms.  March 9, 1926.  October 9, 1916.  September 13, 1923.  Those were good times on Mother Earth.  Perhaps the one saving grace to come from their loss is the knowledge that many beautiful, precious recollections of Mom will eventually dominate the sorrowful ones.  Sealing the deal is that I have more than 20 bonus years of memories with her than with any one of those three dear hearts who, in such rapid succession, beat her to the pearly gates.

Understanding that the future holds more peace is comforting.  But, alas, this season the best I can really do is let the waves of sadness roll over me and Smile - Octcleanse my aching spirit.  I won’t surrender completely to melancholy, but I’m sure Mom would not mind if I sit in her favorite chair and cry for a bit while that year-old episode of our treasured soap opera plays.  She would love it if I continued to browse through photos and videos from our family’s last weekend together – images that clearly show the euphoria generated by more than a dozen hearts filled with abiding love for her.  Before drifting off to sleep at night, I can wrap myself in the warm, down comforter she gave me and pray for solace.  Every moment of every day, I can work on remembering her life rather than her death, and I can write this online column commemorating what a remarkable, priceless, completely unique mother I had.  Most medicinal of all, I can slide to the left, sidle to the right in a zany rendition of the Soupy Shuffle and …

Smile with my bottom teeth.