Five Things My Mom Beat Me to When She Died in January

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hoice bless and keep you” view of religion. That she gets the answers before me is irony at its finest.2. Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone? Though it occurred more than two years before I was born, the assassination of John F. Kennedy has fascinated me since I was old enough to know about it (in my teens it bordered on obsession). Part of this obviously stems from growing up only 15 miles from where the assassination occurred and driving past the spot more times than I can count on my commute to work. I always felt a personal connection as well, because my Bostonian grandmother worked on Kennedy’s first campaign for Congress in 1946.Having read far too many books with theories about the assassination (most of them ridiculously ill-informed), I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald did indeed act alone (read Gerald Posner’s Case Closed for the best book supporting this belief). Even so, I don’t know for sure. Mom is in a position to finally ask those who would know.3. Does Jesus agree that <a href="https://paulcombs.medium.com/eight-irrefutable-reasons-die-hard-is-undeniably-a-christmas-film-55bd398bb40e">Die Hard</a> and <a href="https://plethoraofpop.com/three-reasons-the-godfather-is-absolutely-a-christmas-movie-3d5aad53cfec">The Godfather</a> are Christmas films? I am confident that he is on board with this, but mom needs to send me confirmation via a dream or a vision or an angel with a flaming sword so <a href="undefined">Eric Pierce</a> and <a href="undefined">Simon Dillon</a> will stop disagreeing with me every Christmas. Surely they won’t argue with the Savior.4. Do they serve Tex-Mex cuisine in heaven? If not, I’m not going. Seriously, can it really be considered heaven without enchiladas, tamales, tacos, and queso? I think not.5. She is hanging with my heroes. Finally, though not a question, she gets to experience some things that make me insanely jealous. Assuming that the book of Revelation is indeed allegorical and we won’t be falling down before the throne of God 24/7, mom will have time to visit the icons I have idolized since my youth. Imagine a dinner party with John Wayne, Steve McQueen, the Virgin Mary, St. Francis

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of Assisi, Ernest Hemingway, and Tammy Wynette.She’ll also get to down a pint in a heavenly pub while St. Paul, Martin Luther, Pope John Paul II, Moses, and the 11th Dalai Lama debate history’s most burning theological question: can you be saved without believing that “Born to Run” is The Greatest Song Ever? (The answer is no, of course, but those five like to argue).And consider the concerts she gets to see for free. She will obviously seek out artists like Charley Pride, Ray Price, and Elvis, but my heavenly band would be quite different. Just consider this lineup: Jim Morrison and Sam Cooke on vocals, Eddie Van Halen and Chuck Berry on guitar, Charlie Watts and John Bonham on drums, John Entwistle on bass, Danny Federici on keyboards, and Clarence “Big Man” Clemons on sax. And that’s just the first night.If all of this seems “too soon”/flippant/disrespectful to mom’s memory, you don’t know my family. The only reason we weren’t all on a three-day drunk at the funeral was because she put in her Will that there would be no funeral (along with instructions to place her ashes on the fireplace mantle alongside the ashes of her favorite dog). We buried my grandfather with a bottle of Wild Turkey, and my uncle has prepaid to have his ashes placed in a fireworks canister and fired off on the 4th of July following whenever he passes. We’re not normal.There is one Bible passage that I hope is incorrect when it comes to mom and the afterlife. In Matthew 22:30, Jesus says that at the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage. The reason I hope it’s incorrect (with apologies to Jesus) is that mom will surely meet Hemingway, and since he never met a woman he didn’t marry, the greatest American writer would become my stepfather. Which would be cool.I close most of my articles with “tramps like us,” but for this one I’ll let mom and Kinky Friedman have the final word: may the God of your choice bless and keep you.If you enjoyed this story, you can support my writing directly by leaving a tip below using the small (and kind of weird) hand icon (you tip waiters and bartenders, so why not writers?).</article></body>

Not being alive notwithstanding, I’m a little jealous

My mother passed away two days before my birthday back in January. She had a doctor’s appointment set for my birthday, but she was adamant that she was not going. In one of our final text message exchanges, I told her it was simply a routine check-up, to which she replied (all in caps) that I could not make her go and she was done talking about it. I assumed that, as with many protested appointments before, I would go pick her up and, after a bit of debate, she would relent. This time, however, she won out by developing a blood clot that moved from her leg to her heart in the time it took to brew the morning coffee. It’s not the first time in my life that she went to great lengths to have the final word, but it is definitely the most dramatic.

Besides leaving me orphaned two days before I turned 58 (I now finally have something in common with Harry Potter) and leaving my stepdad not knowing how to work the microwave, she has beaten me both to the answers to questions that have vexed me my entire life and some experiences I look forward to with great anticipation (well played, ma). Here are just a few.

1. Is there really a heaven? As you may have noticed from previous articles, I am a Christian and I believe in heaven, hell, and (to a less certain degree) purgatory. That does not mean, however, that I don’t sometimes have doubts about the whole thing; a person who never questions what they believe is a non-thinking zealot, not a saint. What’s interesting is that though she raised me Catholic, for most of her life my mom fell into the Kinky Friedman “may the God of your choice bless and keep you” view of religion. That she gets the answers before me is irony at its finest.

2. Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone? Though it occurred more than two years before I was born, the assassination of John F. Kennedy has fascinated me since I was old enough to know about it (in my teens it bordered on obsession). Part of this obviously stems from growing up only 15 miles from where the assassination occurred and driving past the spot more times than I can count on my commute to work. I always felt a personal connection as well, because my Bostonian grandmother worked on Kennedy’s first campaign for Congress in 1946.

Having read far too many books with theories about the assassination (most of them ridiculously ill-informed), I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald did indeed act alone (read Gerald Posner’s Case Closed for the best book supporting this belief). Even so, I don’t know for sure. Mom is in a position to finally ask those who would know.

3. Does Jesus agree that Die Hard and The Godfather are Christmas films? I am confident that he is on board with this, but mom needs to send me confirmation via a dream or a vision or an angel with a flaming sword so Eric Pierce and Simon Dillon will stop disagreeing with me every Christmas. Surely they won’t argue with the Savior.

4. Do they serve Tex-Mex cuisine in heaven? If not, I’m not going. Seriously, can it really be considered heaven without enchiladas, tamales, tacos, and queso? I think not.

5. She is hanging with my heroes. Finally, though not a question, she gets to experience some things that make me insanely jealous. Assuming that the book of Revelation is indeed allegorical and we won’t be falling down before the throne of God 24/7, mom will have time to visit the icons I have idolized since my youth. Imagine a dinner party with John Wayne, Steve McQueen, the Virgin Mary, St. Francis of Assisi, Ernest Hemingway, and Tammy Wynette.

She’ll also get to down a pint in a heavenly pub while St. Paul, Martin Luther, Pope John Paul II, Moses, and the 11th Dalai Lama debate history’s most burning theological question: can you be saved without believing that “Born to Run” is The Greatest Song Ever? (The answer is no, of course, but those five like to argue).

And consider the concerts she gets to see for free. She will obviously seek out artists like Charley Pride, Ray Price, and Elvis, but my heavenly band would be quite different. Just consider this lineup: Jim Morrison and Sam Cooke on vocals, Eddie Van Halen and Chuck Berry on guitar, Charlie Watts and John Bonham on drums, John Entwistle on bass, Danny Federici on keyboards, and Clarence “Big Man” Clemons on sax. And that’s just the first night.

If all of this seems “too soon”/flippant/disrespectful to mom’s memory, you don’t know my family. The only reason we weren’t all on a three-day drunk at the funeral was because she put in her Will that there would be no funeral (along with instructions to place her ashes on the fireplace mantle alongside the ashes of her favorite dog). We buried my grandfather with a bottle of Wild Turkey, and my uncle has prepaid to have his ashes placed in a fireworks canister and fired off on the 4th of July following whenever he passes. We’re not normal.

There is one Bible passage that I hope is incorrect when it comes to mom and the afterlife. In Matthew 22:30, Jesus says that at the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage. The reason I hope it’s incorrect (with apologies to Jesus) is that mom will surely meet Hemingway, and since he never met a woman he didn’t marry, the greatest American writer would become my stepfather. Which would be cool.

I close most of my articles with “tramps like us,” but for this one I’ll let mom and Kinky Friedman have the final word: may the God of your choice bless and keep you.

If you enjoyed this story, you can support my writing directly by leaving a tip below using the small (and kind of weird) hand icon (you tip waiters and bartenders, so why not writers?).