Published: April 23, 2008 01:21 pm            

VALLEY: The sad irony of a deadline

Last week, I was working late at the computer. As usual, the column’s deadline was closing in on me. There I sat at 12:30 a.m. pounding out the weekly drivel that one has come to expect from me under the banner of FROM THE VALLEY. Suddenly, the phone rang.

The silence of the night, and of much more consequence, a fragile spirit of hope were shattered by its shrill. I knew immediately what it was about.

“Tom?” my brother, Tim, asked — putting it in question form in an unconscious effort to forewarn me of bad news.

“Mom died,” he said softly. Just those two words: “Mom died.” Two words that said so much. Just two words. He spoke only two words so that he could keep his composure and emotions in check less they seep into the importance of the message. Just two words that changed our family’s life forever. Mom died.

It’s not like it wasn’t expected. But it’s like those people who go for a swim in the icy-cold waters of winter. They know it will be cold but it still shocks and numbs.

My only other sibling is my brother, Mike. He called shortly after the initial call. Both of our parents are now gone and both will be greatly missed. Mike remarked how lucky we had been to have them for so long. And he’s right.

I started writing this column shortly after my father passed away. I lamented his loss in an article — and the fact that neither he nor I could ever sense the pride that he would have experienced in reading it.

Mom lived her final years in an assisted-living complex not far from my two brothers in northern New York. Both brothers and their wives, Diane and Debbie, were instrumental in the comfort and security afforded her as her precious life played out. And for that, I am ever grateful.

Since I started doing FROM THE VALLEY — two years ago, exactly, next week — I would buy an extra paper the day my column appeared and mail it to her. I told her that sales of the newspaper always went up the day of my article. She never knew that it was by only one paper because I had bought two on that day. She told me over and over how much she looked forward to getting it. She proudly displayed it for all to see (I lost my biggest fan).

Her funeral was yesterday. My wife and immediate family returned back home today. Before getting to our house, I stopped at the newsstand to pick up the paper and was struck by the finality of her life when I realized that my column was in that day’s edition and I needed to buy only one copy.

The paper had the same column in it that I was working on when I got the news of her passing. There was the usual picture of me alongside my article on page 4. On page 2 was mom’s picture alongside her obituary.

To be honest, I was very uncomfortable with that scenario. I felt callously flippant — as though my priorities had lost a sense of direction. I did take solace in the fact that I knew I was wrong to think that way. I knew that because I’m aware that I’m seldom right.

Another thing that bothered me was the fact that if the column DID have to be in the same paper as mom’s death notice, I wished I had done a better job with it. Ironically, it’s title was: “Time isn’t on our side.”

I can hear my mother asking me, “Was there something bothering you when you wrote that column?”

And it takes all I can do ... to explain that there was something wrong. “Mom died.”

And, sadly, that’s the way it looks from the Valley.

Tom Valley is a Medina resident. His column appears every Thursday. Write to Tvalley@rochester.rr.com.

        

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