Dear Mom Mom Rae,
Happy 100th Birthday, Raphaella Tomaino DeWire.
I wish you would have told me that all the people you ever love, and that have loved you most, never leave you. That they dance in your heart, in and out of your dreams, on your mind, and visit in quiet memories when you expect it least. And that they stay, vivid, but painfully out of reach, loving you always.
I wonder if you too just went on loving your losses, swimming in a constellation of memories, pulling them down like books off of a shelf, for a visit.
I wonder if it was like this for you, with all the love and loss you had. And if under your fiesty, forward, funny, lovable self, you kept all of your people there. Stored quietly, under the surface. I often contemplate the depths of your strengths.
I want to know about your mother, who traveled here from Italy, on a boat alone, with three small children, looking for a new world, and created one. What kind of wife and mother did she become, and how deep was her strength?
I want to know about Pop Pop, and how he loved you, and how you carried on after he left you in his sleep at such a young age. I was too young to understand the depths of this agony, too untouched yet by the realization that you, all of you, carried on, from this. Mom and I talk about this now. I just want to hug you.
I want to know about your dear siblings, all of whom lived with you, next door, or just down the way a few houses, your entire life, and left you slowly, one by one.
I want to know what exactly you would 'whisper' in broken Italian with Aunty Mary, about us when we played off in the distance, or entertained you with our antics. It meant love to me...I never told you that.
Each day walking home from school, I would will your car to be in the driveway. A hope for a quick conversation, anticipating you'd come home, to have a coffee with Mom at the kitchen table, to talk about nothing and everything all at once. In this, you established a 'for no reason ' visit as a way of life, for visiting wasn't required, everyday was meant for being with family. Didn't everyone live in the same neighborhood as their grandmother, aunts and uncles? I didn't know that then, for only when I become a mother, did I realize this innate need of family rituals for me and how much I value 'for no reason' visits.
I should have told you your visits were my favorite. I see you and Mom there at the small table. I hear you. I hear you now, in Mom and I, as we do the same, with kids and loudness all around. I savor every bit of it.
You were there for everything, until your weren't. Birthdays, all the sports, all the dances, all the proms, all the holidays, beaming in the pride you had for us all. Savoring your beautiful legacy. We softened you, and we knew it.
Your Rival Pizzelle iron, well Mom and I still will it to work each Christmas. I restored your barn chairs this year, the old red ones, from the 1940s, as they still told me stories of your house, and I couldn't part with them. Your curio cabinet still smells like smoke, and I open it to be with you.
When you looked at the 21 year old version of myself and told me you were sick, well, that moment is time capsuled in my mind. Your white keds, golf skort, polo shirt, light shining in our small sunroom on Wayne Avenue, your honest heart, piercing, wet, blue eyes, and your reality. It was unfathomable to me you wouldn't be here for all of the things to come. We made light of the diagnosis. We hugged. We carried on. I relive that moment, and all the things I should have done differently in it, in a special place where I keep all of my deepest heartaches.
I would go back to college that fall, and miss finals, to lay you to rest in December.
I would stay lost then, wander, break and mend hearts and be broken myself, as I worked my way back to my roots to find myself. And in all of it, I kept you on my heart.
I wish you would have told me that all the people you ever love, and that have loved you most, never leave you. That they dance in your heart, in and out of your dreams, on your mind, and visit in quiet memories when you expect it least. And that they stay, vivid, but painfully out of reach, loving you always.
But a younger version of myself wouldn't have understood. I do now. You knew that. I'm here loving you always, and thank you for the gift of your love and rituals. Enjoy your distinguished company on your 100th birthday, Mom Mom. Give Aunt Mary an extra kiss.
Keep dancing in my heart and stay vivid. I love you, always.
