JUST THE TELEMARKETER

4/18/07

I came home from work and was checking email and such; my normal, everyday routine.

I talked with a good friend through IM for a while; then talked with one of my sisters on the telephone for a while.

A bit later, the telephone rang and I answered it thinking it may have been either one of my sisters or my friend; or any one of my friends.

I said, "Hello."
"May I speak with Bonnie?"
"Who do you want?"
"Is the lady of the house at home?"
"Are you asking for (naming my mother)?
"Yes."
"She died in 1992."
"Oh. I'm sorry. Thank you for your time."
Hang up.

Damned telemarketers!

Okay...these are people who have NO IDEA who they are calling! I mean, MY phone number isn't even the same phone number my parents had. When I bought the family home and moved in, I brought MY phone number with me and disconnected theirs.

If I'd not been so shocked at the time, I'd have asked who was calling and for what reason. Then again, I may have also become indignant and nasty to someone who was just doing their job and had no clue.

It kills me. I still receive mail addressed to my mother, I get phone calls for her; the woman has been dead for 15 years. MY telephone number is NOT what HER telephone number was when she was living. These "call lists" really should be periodically updated and maintained; or unsolicited telephone calls should just STOP completely. Then, of course it occurred to me, what if it was somebody trying to "steal her identity?" We hear about it, don’t we? After all, I DID just confirm that she was deceased and maybe even that this had been her address. Hopefully, I’m just paranoid on this point.

She and my father would have been married 50 years this coming June had it not been for her illness and death.

The thing is, my mother became ill when I was 14 years old; I've younger sisters who do NOT remember our mother healthy. Oh, but my mother; a force of nature or motherhood or womanhood, whatever one wants to call it, was NEVER a victim. SHE was amazing. As a mother, never did we children suffer the effects of her illness. Then again, growing up with a mother with cancer was all we knew.

Regardless of how Mom was feeling; what treatment she'd had; what surgery she'd endured, it was never about HER. Many were the "holiday dinners" we had in the hospital cafeteria while she was lying in a hospital bed upstairs. At home, she may have been feeling the effects of chemotherapy or radiation therapy but we kids were foremost. She was MOTHER all the time; from clean your room to take out the garbage; clear the dinner table to unload the dishwasher; from homework, which she supervised, to insisting we were all home when the streetlights turned on.

I was 27 when she died. Many of my friends have said that I'd watched her die for 14 or so years; that may be true, but from MY standpoint, I watched her LIVE, struggle and survive for all those years.

She told me once when I was in my 20s that she prayed only to live long enough to see her children into adulthood. How poignant it was that she actually died the DAY AFTER my youngest sister turned 20 years old. My mother was my best friend; my inspiration, my advocate, my mother. When she died, in many ways I died as well. It was several years later before I was able to understand and accept that she'd NEVER want me to live the way I'd been living since her death. Unless one has experienced it, the torture one can bring upon himself is incomprehensible.

I'm no longer brought to tears at the thought or memory of my mother; in fact, I remember with happiness and pride.

So, a telemarketer who calls for my mother.... I have mixed feelings. On one hand I know that they are only doing their job; on the other hand, they have no idea of the wrath with which I could respond. Part of me wants to excuse the error; another part of me wants to rip their heart out.

The former of these two parts of myself prevails. The latter part, I deal with privately. I will always miss my mother; I will always ache for her presence in my life. However, as I begin to enter "middle age" myself, I realize and know that she IS always present in my life because she is alive in my heart and memories. I am who I am, in large part, because of her. I shudder with shame when I think of the decade I lost in my own grief and "emotional shut-down." I can’t change that now; I couldn’t change it then. THAT is the road on which my journey of life has traveled. Eventually, I did reach the proverbial "fork in the road" and I choose the road that lead out of darkness, despair, anger and bitterness.

That is actually VERY GOOD for the unsuspecting telemarketer.