The Show Must Go On

Well, my whisper campaign worked?

We will be hosting a Celebration of Life for my mother in October. Not quite at the year mark, but close enough, I guess. 

One interesting thing is that apparently my sister and Dad discussed it without me and then my sister just sort of informed me it was happening and on what date. And then I was expected to plan the majority of it. 

Which. Is fine.

I am currently not employed and my former job had me planning galas for 500, so this is definitely in my wheelhouse. 

However, I just felt like old patterns were being repeated and not in a good way when I was not even involved in the discussions about the event and then just told about it. I mean, maybe I had made plans for that day! Maybe I had bought tickets to a concert or something! They would never have known because they didn't ask!  Many of my friends were outraged on my behalf, and I don't blame them. My sister may perhaps have, ahem, control issues. I think part of it may come from being a teacher. Having her own personal fiefdom leads her to running many things in a similar manner, I suppose. But, I still think it was not a nice way to go about it. 

So, of course I put myself down as the person to RSVP to because I have the most time and I am in charge of the guest list. 

But what I wasn't prepared for was the dissonance of my mother's friends and how their lived experience of my mother compares to mine. I suppose I should have been, because I have known since I was a tween that my mother was a COMPLETELY different person to her friends than she was to us at home. Like, Jekyll and Hyde level of different. I distinctly remember hearing her talking on the phone to her work friends in particular, and she would have this tone of voice that was never used with me, and just this lilting, laughing cadence that was utterly and completely foreign to me. I literally never heard it outside of her bedroom when she was on the phone. Not with relatives, not with my Dad, not with me or my sister. I have no idea who that person was. 

But apparently, there were some people who thought she was great, because I got a few texts from people saying that they were my Mom's best friend (!) and how were my kids doing by name (!) despite my never hearing their name in my life. Let's not dwell on the fact that multiple people called my mother their best friend, but how did these people know so much about me and I nothing about them at all? My mother was very big on keeping her life siloed. They said, oh your mother would attend all of my kids' birthday parties and sports events and yadda yadda. And a small part of me thought, oh, well, so instead of spending time with her own grandchildren, she chose to spend it with other people's children. Well, isn't that amazing. And hey, she was her own person, she had freedom of choice, obviously, but that stings a bit. Well, a LOT, to be honest.

 I would have to beg her to babysit for us, but I would try not to do it very often because I knew she wasn't really a big fan of it for whatever reason. But she would usually say no, and even said no one time when we did have concert tickets. I guess now I know why, she was too busy attending her friend's kids' parties or something. 

But, I will press on and make this the best Celebration of Life possible. It will be tasteful, beautiful, the food will be amazing, the flowers will be on point. Because I expect nothing less from myself. My Mom must have done something right somewhere along the way.