For My Mom

I opened my blog today with the intent on writing about my Mom’s passing finally. I can literally feel the weight on my chest creeping back. The anxiety pressure in my head. But I’m pushing forward. I’m stretching myself to do the hard things. She deserves a post on my blog as she was such a classic movie fan and lover like myself and all of you.

My Mom passed away August 3rd from terminal cancer. These last few months have been indescribable. When you lose one of “your” people, the hole left in your soul is unlike anything one has felt before. I’ve been trying my best to face everything head on, stretch myself as I said. It makes for a lot of anxiety, and tears. But that’s grief right? Missing someone so much because you love them so much.

I don’t want to share too much on my personal journey (I’m on the private side if you didn’t know). It did seem right to preface this post with where I’ve been mentally and emotionally these last few months though. I haven’t posted since July because life has just been overwhelming. But I wanted to share some about my Mom’s love of the classics, some of her favorites, and things we shared in common with the classics. I hope you’ll get to know my Mom a little through this post. Doing justice to how much she loved me and my family, or exactly how special she is, is impossible and I wont try.

I feel like Mom’s love of the classics started not long after mine. She was definitely the kind of mom who loved things I did, or learned to love them because I was her child. I made her watch almost every Hitchcock movie made while I still lived at home during college. I remember us watching Shadow of a Doubt for the first time on Thanksgiving day while she made us pancakes. Truly one of those simple mornings I’ll hold on to in my heart forever. We both have loved that film since that day. She was always fondest of Dial M for Murder when it came to the Hitchcock canon. Every time I watch it I always think of her. I pushed my love of Hitchcock on her all the time =)

Mom loved period pieces. L.O.V.E.D. them. She would have been absolutely tickled to see the monthly 24 hour Tuesday line-up on TCM this month. From The Picture of Dorian Gray, Gone With the Wind, In the Valley of Decision, to The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, she would give any period piece a try. She always thought I was terrible for not liking them. She thought I was crazy because I’d watch anything creepy or weird, but would rarely try something where “the women wore hoop skirts”. That was always what I would say to her when I told her I wouldn’t try a movie she suggested, because there were hoop skirts involved. She also thought I was nuts because I do not care for Gone With the Wind, but will die on a hill for my love of Jezebel. That never made sense to her.

I know we all love the Christmas classics, but Mom loved them so much. She grew to love Christmas in Conneticut, I think because I do. The Shop Around the Corner, The Bishop’s Wife, Holiday Affair and Miracle on 34th Street were some of her favorites. Oh, and I can’t forget her obsessive love of A Christmas Carol (basically any version), and A Muppet Christmas Carol? Two staples in her house every holiday season.

A film she loved dearly, one we watched the weekend before she passed was Some Came Running. She loved that it was filmed in Madison, IN and that you could see all of the historic downtown area as it was in the 50’s. She wasn’t the biggest Frank Sinatra fan, but loved him in this. We had also watched Light in the Piazza, The Help, and The Twilight Zone in the weeks before her death. So many classics we were able to fit in while she was sick.

Between All this and Heaven Too, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Grumpy Old Men, and Vincent Price, she had so many great loves of actors and films of the classic era. She never understood my love for Vertigo, or Barbara Stanwyck, or my obsession with The Philadelphia Story and White Christmas, She loved me anyway =) She was the first person I called to tell about being chosen to be a guest programmer on TCM, and golly was she proud. We would play TCM Scene It a few times a year, and those are some of my favorite memories. She was always King Kong, and I, the Maltese Falcon (a movie she disliked very much).

I am a blessed girl, let me stress that. I had 36 years with the best mom anyone could have asked for. Given another mom, I may not have been able to flourish. I may not have had the confidence to pursuit my dreams, or chase the things I love because they’re “different”. She always loved me for who I was, and met me at whatever place I was at in life. I sincerely hope I made her proud. I pray daily that she watches over us and is near in spirit.

Every Louisville and Baltimore game I watch I think of her. Each time I turn TCM on, I think of her. Every time I see the clouds or the changing leaves, I think of her. She’s everywhere still. I hope that feeling never changes. The sadness, while overwhelming and heavy at times, is a reminder of all the love that we had, and still do.

Slow down and catch a Tuesday Matinee if you can. Think of my Mom if you will.