Maggie

August 1, 2024

I’m feeling happy, relieved, and depressed these days, and I guess it should come as no surprise. My mom died in her sleep five days ago at the age of 93.

So now I’m in the process of trying to figure out: Who was she? What was my relationship with her? How could I love someone so much who was so different than me?

Part of my appreciation of her stems from childhood memories of her taking good care of me when I crushed my finger in a collapsing folding chair, and when I had the measles, and when I had my tonsils out, and when I suffered miserably so many times from poison oak. But maybe I’m grateful to her because she never stopped loving me.

Margaret Mary Kenney was a very pretty girl and a beautiful Irish colleen who grew up in a Catholic family of 11 in Berkeley during the Great Depression and World War II. Proud of her good looks, she was popular with the boys at Berkeley High School. Her devout mother made sure that she went to confession every Saturday and Mass every Sunday, yet she got in trouble for talking back to one of the nuns who tried to rein in her free spirit. Later, when she divorced my dad and realized that Church rules now prohibited her from receiving communion, she left the Church but never lost her respect for the Virgin Mary.

My mother eventually became a good cook, but not when I was growing up. Our dinners consisted of gourmet meals such as hot dog casserole (hot dogs in tomato sauce from a can), tuna casserole, and Spam and lima beans. When my young parents invited another couple to dinner at their apartment, my mom treated everyone to spaghetti and mashed potatoes.

She was also prone to exaggeration. As a boy I came across a rattlesnake on our road, and then watched as a neighbor decapitated it with a shovel. When I told my mom what I had seen, she called up a friend and regaled the woman with a story about how the vicious snake had lashed out at me and nearly bitten and killed me.

When I was 14, my parents divorced, and at age 35 my mom began her five year frolic in the dating game. She reveled in her miniskirts, hot pants, and white go go boots, while driving her sporty Mustang, much to the embarrassment of her four kids. Fortunately for her and for us, she eventually married Norm, a fine man to whom she remained devoted for the rest of her life.

Perhaps because money had been tight in her Depression-era family, later on, in due course, when she and Norm prospered, Mom delighted in playing tennis at their country club, and was stylish and elegant in her clothing, car, and home, as opposed to my…uh…simple lifestyle. She could be a bit snobbish at times about her upper middle class status, though never with me. Norm jokingly referred to her as his Irish-American Princess. Yet she enjoyed talking with people of all economic and ethnic backgrounds, and was popular with restaurant food servers, grocery store checkout clerks, and pretty much anyone she came in contact with. She could be generous with strangers and with charities.

At my sister Laura’s wedding, I was assigned the task of escorting my mom in the procession down the center aisle to her front row seat. When it came time for us to begin our walk, I started to go, but Mom said, “Wait a moment, David.” She had us take a dramatic pause until the aisle before us was clear of other procession participants. Everyone in the church turned their heads toward the top of the aisle to see who would be coming next. At that instant she whispered, “Now!” And then we (she) made our (her) grand entrance, her beaming and resplendent in her finery. That’s when she taught me that timing is everything.

As my cousin Mary said, “Maggie was fun, with a zest for life, and she had a gift for style and flair.” My cousin Mike said it more humorously, “She was a kick in the pants.”

Mom was mostly bedridden during the last few years of her life, so she really enjoyed my occasional visits and my daily Facetime (video) phone calls. She would ask about the details of my hikes, and loved hearing about the poppies, oaks, redwoods, pelicans, and whales that I and my companions experienced. She was so fortunate to have her loyal husband Norm by her side at the end, and to be able to die in bed at home rather than in a hospital or nursing home.

Although her body died a few days ago, her spirit or soul, in my view, did not, and I have sensed her presence at least three times since her passing. One of them, a dream, featured a huge blossoming tree, with a rushing stream nearby after a recent rain, and a serene range of hills or mountains in the distance. The Irish have a name for such a place: Tir na Nog, the Land of Eternal Youth and Beauty, a mystical realm of immortality. Some might say that it is known as the astral plane, where souls go between lives. Others might call it heaven.

Wherever you are, Mom, congratulations on your new beginning. And may your tree of life continue to blossom.