Thinking of Mom

In the spring of 2021 I was visiting family and friends in Virginia and planning on returning to work in Rwanda when we found out my mom needed surgery. Before her procedure she was resting and about to take a nap, her eyes closed, when I asked her what she was going to dream about. She said Sarasota. And those were the last words she ever said to me. In our family belief system Sarasota had always stood as a beautiful genesis - sun, beaches, parties, friends. There are many family stories from the time I and my parents lived there. My parents were young, beautiful people, living in a lovely place. They had both grown up in small towns in the south and were experiencing something new and exciting. My mother was active in various clubs and formed friendships that lasted her entire life.

Sarasota was always my mother’s happy place. A place to go to when life piled on too much. A time in the mid to late 60s when her and my father’s lives were full of hope and promise. My father was an amateur photographer and took hundreds of photos and slides of our life at that time. Once a year, for the rest of our lives, we would gather to view projected slides and reminisce on their travels and better times.

My mother always wanted her ashes to be thrown into the Gulf of Mexico off of LongBoat Key not far from where we lived. Finally, two and a half years after her death I returned again to the USA in 2023, took her ashes out of storage and drove them down to Sarasota from Salem, Virginia to fulfill her request. On the way down I talked to her and listened to music she loved - Wayne Shorter and Amad Jamal. She would have loved this trip. I pretended she was there and pointed out things to her as we moved through Florida- Spanish moss, oak trees, old motels. I remember my mother telling me she spoke to my father after his death. Initially, when she said this, I thought- that’s weird- and then seconds later I thought - I totally understand that. We grieve in ways we’ll never understand. Death is unimaginable - the entire universe is emptied and shifted.

I was lucky enough to have a fun relationship with my mom, she was my thrift store buddy. She was loving, quick witted and interested in a full spectrum of life. I left a copy of Tristes Tropiques by Claude Lévi-Strauss at her home when she was in her late 70s. She read several chapters of the book and would excitedly talk about what she had learned. She was always reading something. She loved reading about the lives of women in developing countries and connected deeply with their mystical practices. She would write notes in the margins of obscure books like The Women of Dominica.

After I reached Sarasota and walked through Armand Circle, I could still see why she loved this place and why this was her paradise almost 60 years on. The city is dotted with arts and crafts shops, restaurants and gardens - there’s a leisure lifestyle here that could help your suffering disappear. Her and my father left in 1971 for St Petersburg and later for Salem, Virginia. But Sarasota was their high point - They got life backwards- they started out on top and proceeded to complicate things.

Now, standing on this beach, about to fulfill her request I think about the history of their lives. My parents must have walked along this beach and felt such joy. Her ashes look like the beach sand as I pour them into the Gulf. They blend into the water and disappear and there’s no difference between her and the Ocean - she’s here forever - in eternity, in space, in the universe. The sandpipers sing, the waves never stop. I’m alone on the beach but for a tan woman in a chair nesting and feeding seagulls.