a thousand furnished rooms

The meaningful details of my mother's life will not end up in the Boston Globe. Instead, they will be in the hearts and minds of the people whose lives she touched, and will continue to touch for many years to come. Consider a neighbor of mine who happened to grow up with me in Winthrop and had my mother as a teacher. A chance encounter here in Melrose had us catching up years later, and in the course of the conversation he told me he was retiring from his current job, returning to school, and becoming a teacher.

"And you know, Billy," he said, reverting to the name only my mother still called me, "It's because of your mother."

That he said this was heart-warming enough. What was even better was that he was a wonderful guy--smart and big-hearted, a great student and athlete in high school and certain to be a great teacher and coach in this new phase of his life.

I had a similar conversation that same year at a high school reunion. A classmate of mine had gone into teaching, and had done her student teaching under my mother's supervision. She couldn't say enough about my mother as a mentor, and how she had valued that formative time in her career.

These encounters were a new lens into my mom's life, and a welcome one. They came at a time when multiple sclerosis was overtaking her, forcing her to retire from teaching, and--over time--to give up many of the things she enjoyed so much. Fortunately for my mom, she had her health long enough to enjoy time with her second husband. Together, they traveled to Canada and Ireland, visited the grandkids in Florida, and did many of the things older couples do. If it weren't for my mother's illness, they would have had long and happy golden years.

I can't possibly speak for my mother and speculate about her feelings about her illness. She no doubt had her regrets and her frustrations, but she rarely voiced them. Especially early on, she found ways to adapt and accept. When she lost some of her hearing, she learned to read lips. When her balance suffered, she knew to take the arm of the person walking with her.

For my part, my deepest regret was that the worst years of her illness began when my sons were babies. They never got to know her as fully as I would have liked. They have seen pictures of her holding them as babies, and they have heard all my stories about what kind of mom she was--how she never missed a thing, and how her network of friends and neighbors was so complete she would know what I had done wrong even before I got home and could act guilty.

And they know her sense of humor, even if they didn't hear it nearly often enough directly from her. I inherited a few things from my mother--her love of reading and storytelling, her penchant to worry too much, and her quirky sense of humor. (Hey, someone has to keep puns alive!) I often remind them when they are rolling their eyes at my jokes they also have their Nana to blame. They know too how much my mom valued education, and I hope they feel her pride too when they bring a good report card home and show it to me.

I am mindful that when my family gathers this week to say goodbye there won't be a teacher among us. We all chose different paths--lawyer, engineer, nurse, writer. I discovered in graduate school that I didn't have the stamina for teaching. I also discovered that I didn't have the nerve to take on the stakes involved--the success or failure of so many young minds. It takes someone like the two schoolmates who were so influenced by my mother. People with big hearts and the energy and the commitment to look out at that sea of faces every day and see a world of hope and potential. It takes someone like my mom.