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Sads and shoulder pads
Oct. 8th, 2018 04:09 pmThere's been a lot of 80s nostalgia around these posts of late. My last three Saturday nights have been spent at concerts by artists I, or we, discovered in that decade- and not a spot of spandex among any of them;) The news has been full of things that (uncorroboratedly but most likely) were done by a sex offender on the Supreme Court in Maryland and Connecticut in those years. And there was my biggest 80s moment of them all being remembered for the 31st time- our wedding anniversary.
So it's only fitting that we now go back to 30 years ago when I lost one of my closest relatives and best friends ever:
That was her with the bride on our wedding day in 1987. And even earlier 80s, at my 1981 college graduation:
We weren't close in age, and except for a seven-year sliver of our lives spent both on Long Island in the 70s, we weren't close geographically, either for most of the life I remember. But she got me, like few ever did or would. She understood the limitations that had been put on me (and to some extent her) by some textbook bad parenting, and she and her husband (once she had one) really tried to help me grow into and out of things I didn't realize were important.
I've done dozens of tributes to her here over the years on this day, her July birthday, her October anniversary. Her singing, her humor, her heart. The inevitability and yet the unacceptabilty of how and why her life ended so soon, in those final weeks such a fraction of her former vibrant self. The lives she left- one going on almost 20 years thereafter, two more continuing beautifully with children of their own now, and ours- still remembering her near daily in a phrase or a gesture or a memory.
There's a line in the just-aired Doctor Who season premiere, spoken by She Who Has Now Regenerated. Someone has died before their time. Sandy would have related to their kindness and their profession. Many are left to grieve. They ask the Doctor if she has family. She says no, but then she says, "I carry them with me. What they would have thought, or said and done. Made them a part of who I am. So even though they're gone from the world, they're never gone from me."
That's the kind of thing Sandy would have said. And I say, every of the many times I remember.
So it's only fitting that we now go back to 30 years ago when I lost one of my closest relatives and best friends ever:
That was her with the bride on our wedding day in 1987. And even earlier 80s, at my 1981 college graduation:
We weren't close in age, and except for a seven-year sliver of our lives spent both on Long Island in the 70s, we weren't close geographically, either for most of the life I remember. But she got me, like few ever did or would. She understood the limitations that had been put on me (and to some extent her) by some textbook bad parenting, and she and her husband (once she had one) really tried to help me grow into and out of things I didn't realize were important.
I've done dozens of tributes to her here over the years on this day, her July birthday, her October anniversary. Her singing, her humor, her heart. The inevitability and yet the unacceptabilty of how and why her life ended so soon, in those final weeks such a fraction of her former vibrant self. The lives she left- one going on almost 20 years thereafter, two more continuing beautifully with children of their own now, and ours- still remembering her near daily in a phrase or a gesture or a memory.
There's a line in the just-aired Doctor Who season premiere, spoken by She Who Has Now Regenerated. Someone has died before their time. Sandy would have related to their kindness and their profession. Many are left to grieve. They ask the Doctor if she has family. She says no, but then she says, "I carry them with me. What they would have thought, or said and done. Made them a part of who I am. So even though they're gone from the world, they're never gone from me."
That's the kind of thing Sandy would have said. And I say, every of the many times I remember.