hey mom

when your dead mother goes viral on instagram

hey mom. 

you are blowing up on instagram. i think you must know. i mean, f*%ck the algorithm and fancy reels. you’re good. oh, and happy international woman’s day.

i took that same old handful of photos i have of you and put them into some kind of auto program and added a really sad song, and boom. i woke up to 10k views and weeks later we are crossing the half million mark. social media likes you, mom. they really like you. bet you are combing through all the “she is so beautiful, what a beauty, she looks like a movie star comments. i have read all 11 thousand of them. it reminds me of the way the boys from school used to talk about you. it was never very pc, but they bandied about “hot mom”.  this was long before milf existed. thank goodness, because knowing that bob and those kids around our kitchen table wanted you that way, would just be gross.

if you were here, i imagine you checking in with all the grandkids and asking them how many “likes” this song or that post received. it would be against all that we have taught them about social media, but it would be very you. 

“hi, grandma ellen, did you see the pasta i posted from school?, quinny would ask. “bucatini with blistered tomatoes and a vegan tempeh bolognese.” 

you would have high fived her decision to go her own way on the college route. you would also be cheering for ryan in grad school. columbia you’d kvell.  emma writing her one woman show with the grant money. i think you would be way on board with the girlfriend too. the eldest, the eldest -- i know, so industrious and creative.  and marc, the only boy – a senior at penn state. already employed for next year. kvell. kvell. brag, brag. do you do that on the grocery line in heaven?  

you would be so happy we are all back on the east coast. i wonder if you would have still been a realtor at 80? my guess, is a resounding yes. 

so anyway mom, there is this new trend on tik tok. that other social media app you might stay up all night and scroll.  danna does. we are both horrible sleepers. no idea if it is a family trait or menopausal side effect, because at 50 you had the fan by your bedside and then were gone. forever 50. that seems also, so very you. 

ok, tik tok. folks are making videos to answer the questions that they think their mom’s would want to know since they died.  i want to make one too, but i am not crafty like that with editing, so let’s play here.

 1/ are you still married to eddie?

nope. it ended up being a royal mess, another woman and tricky co-parenting to say the least and he made me stay in chicago. yep, prisoner of the state of illinois. you would have been so pissed. eddie, who we measured all that was good and right with the world ended up being “best actor in a drama”. but, i could write him a thank you note on my finest, newly monogrammed blg stationary. mrs. grant. like cary grant with a b. i met alex on j-date. an on-line dating site. i only went out with him because he was seven years younger, had a sexy shaved head and well written bio. his ethics and midwestern-y ways remind me of daddy, but with an edge. he loves dad. dad with and without dementia. you know dad has dementia, right?

 2/ did you have kids?

sisters. two girls. i know you know them. i think you ordered them up for me. 

girls.

sisters.

two.

please, you tell god. she knows i deserve them.  the girls tell me they feel like they know you too. we tell so many grandma ellen stories.  do you like being called grandma? i know you might like to be called something more non-traditional, like grandy or sweetie or sweetheart. or bae. the kids use that moniker to mean babe. i remember we talked “grandma alternatives at some point” -- but this was easier for the girls to understand and connect with.

3/is your life happy?

that is not a quick and easy yes. i tried for so long for the death of you, not to define me, but of course it did – it has. i think about what life would look like with you in it.  somedays i think that would be swell and magical, and others the true pain in the neck that a mom can be when she wrangles her way into your choices and ideals.

damn, i miss you.

i have come to be content. if ever so slightly, bittersweet. i am lucky. i have a life that feels lucky. despite losing you. and bob. a divorce. and all those miscarriages. maybe it was god’s way of giving me quinn. and then alex. maybe you know up there. are they lessons you sent me?  

just think about the day that me and you and danna will all be back together. the three musketeers.

each time someone dies, i imagine they are joining you. well, just the good ones. and in your finest real estate-ease, you help them settle in and give them the name of all of the best souls and shortcuts you’ve soused out and the place you can get the best close up of your family as they continue to do great things here on earth.

i do hope you are hanging out with jackie kennedy and joan didion. i imagine you are all having salad and fries at the bergdorf’s in the sky and i do hope and imagine they are really good at scrabble too. 

and that, that makes my life happy.