Thinking About My Mother...

For those that have been out of touch for a while or those tuning in for the first time, my wonderful mother, Diane Foley, passed away after a brief but valiant struggle with cancer back in December of 2005. She was 56 years old. She was diagnosed in mid-November and died in late December. Try to wrap your head around that time frame.

She came up to see my wife, the kids, and me in mid-October. She had a noticeable limp that she was trying to have alleviated through the chiropractor. And then just like that—whoosh—she was gone.

I was thirty-one years old at the time of this event. I mean, as a realist, I knew that I would have to come to this event at some point in my life but I never thought it would be this early.
Part of me always thought that I would have to make the hard decision of taking away her license to keep her from driving, watching her hair turn silver, and be able to put my arm around her as we watched my children walk across the stage in their caps and gowns to graduate from high school.

Man, how plans change. I believe the quote is “The best laid plans are laid low by mice and men.” Or maybe, “Man plans, God laughs.”

Either way, I’ve tried to take a very Jedi approach to Mom’s passing and it is times like this where you just have to give yourself over to the divine plan. Everything happens for a reason. I have to believe that. I mean not everything. I seriously doubt that every paper cut and parking ticket is in the plan… but shaping events like this has to happen for a reason.

If I were looking for a silver lining in this cloud, it would be the fact that Mom went out swinging, she went fairly quickly (as opposed to other cancer afflictions), and she never had to suffer certain indignities brought on by old age (senility, bathroom issues, etc.). Like Dylan Thomas told us to do, Mom raged against the dying of the light to the best of her abilities… but in the end, it just wasn’t enough.

For whatever His reasoning, God called her home.

Months have passed since Mom passed away. The pain still lurks there just under the surface. It is amazing to me what will spark a memory of her. I often talk to her when things are quiet or when I have solitary moments. Commutes to and from work are often dedicated to our “conversation time.”

And the other day, I decided to watch O Brother, Where Art Thou? I admittedly enjoyed this film tremendously. It is not in my top ten of all time but I enjoyed it. And at the close and the credits, something caught my attention.

As George Clooney and Holly Hunter are walking and talking, they are dragging their kids behind them. (They’re all lashed together with bailing twine, how hick is that?) But the little kids are all singing a hymn. They cross the railroad tracks and you see the Blind Old Timer from the beginning of the movie. This “oracle” then picks up the hymn and sings it as well as he pushes on down the tracks and we fade to black.

Now, I’d seen this movie several times before Mom passed but something struck me odd so I rewound the disc and flicked on the subtitles to listen to the lyrics. Luckily as the credits roll, the background singers repeat the hymn in an official “song.”

So then I broke out the official soundtrack that I had primarily bought for “Man of Constant Sorrow.” And I had listened to the soundtrack several times… but having had Mom pass away, the last song on the CD struck me in a very emotional way. The song is called “Angel Band” and is performed by the Stanley Brothers. Part of the lyrics read as follows:

My latest sun is sinking fast. My race is nearly run
My strongest trials now are past. My triumph has begun
O Come, Angel Band, come & around me stand
O bear me away on your snow white wings to my immortal home
O bear me away on your snow white wings to my immortal home

I guess whenever you lose someone incredibly close to you—and you don’t get much closer than your mom—things change. You tend to look at life in a different light.

Mom is in Heaven. I believe it. I KNOW it. Deep in the bottom of my heart, I know it. And when I think about Mom, I know that a band of angels carried her home on snow-white wings. And while I still miss her every day, I am happy that she has gone on to an existence that is free of pain and the word “malignant cancer” is not even in the vocabulary. Hmmm… It’s funny how you can see things multiple times and then you have a life-altering event that causes you to see things in a whole new light. I guess life is just funny that way.