Grief 4 - Tacos and Tiaras

The Oberoi, Bangalore, India. 119-year-old raintree. My first pic in the light on 7 December 2018. My final pic in the dark on 10 December 2018.

EDIT: This post ended up being Part I of a series of however many it ends up being.

So here it is. In some of my posts, I’ve referred to a business trip in India in December 2018, but I felt like it was too much to go into…

…and it still feels like so many points making lines…

…so many lines of thoughts and experiences…

They all converged to the one pivotal point… or place (as I currently view it)…

India.

I tried to figure out ways to make it a linear story, but that isn’t even the way it happened. If you have watched M. Night Shyamalan films, then you know how “the big reveal” shows you bits from the past that were “clues”… how the characters’ remember things that were seemingly insignificant or didn’t make sense at the time… that’s how it feels for me sometimes when my experiences bring about the moments of “OMG, why didn’t I see that?” or “Oh daaaaaaaang, this all makes sense now” or all I’ve been saying here lately, “Every. Fucking. Thing. Clicked”.

I let go of trying to make this recollection fit and am allowing it to flow. I’m not even going to look back at journals or other things I’ve written. I trust that whatever flows are the pieces that matter most and are the ones that need to be shared and seen/heard at this moment for this post. Later I’ll review it and add pingbacks to related pages and posts if they don’t come to me while typing. For now, it’s time to flow.

What felt like a loss at the time ends up being a gain in the big picture – the journey.

How the Trip Came to Be

On 5 December 2018 I left North Carolina to travel to Bangalore, India (Bengaluru) on business. When my leadership team planned the trip, I was not originally part of the group that would be going onsite, but by November, my manager determined that she needed me to be there. I had been helpful as a go-fer and tension breaker through October’s cybersecurity awareness month, usually from just trying to be a light and make it fun during some very busy days that spilled into working outside of regular business hours.

Honestly, I resisted at first because I felt ill-prepared to travel out of the country. For one thing, my passport had expired; but we had enough time, the company would pay for my passport fees including the rush to process it, and they would also pay for me to receive the vaccines recommended for traveling to India. What the company couldn’t buy a cure for was my own inhibitions from feeling guilty that October and November took away a lot of time from my family and now I was facing a week out of the fucking country to be there for my work family.

I reminded myself that it was happening for me intentionally and to feel grateful for the opportunity… traveling outside of the USA again, gaining experience in hosting a cybersecurity awareness boot camp that would help me grow in my career, experiencing the culture and seeing the sights in another country… Not that I really “bought it” at the time, but I surrendered to the positive or inspirational messages that I had been influencing me to change my mind and heart and building a daily attitude of gratitude since 2012.

Getting There

Leaving for Bangalore still wasn’t easy because of all the things to do at work and at home. I would be gone for a week and half of it would be spent traveling and out of pocket while we were in the air. That morning I had to make time to run to the office and pick up a few items that we didn’t ship in advance because we were finding that the packages we shipped were met with issues at customs.

While I was packing my final items and making sure I didn’t forget any of the essentials that others recommended to me in order to avoid getting sick in a different country, I called to check in with my mom. We didn’t talk long, but as always, we ended our call with “I love you”. That was the last I heard my mom speak to me without whispering.

I was running late to get to the airport, so my manager and I scrapped the idea of me swinging by to pick her up instead of her getting an Uber. We talked on the phone while I was en route, and she advised me that our chief officer was still in a meeting and not even on his way. How’s that for adding to her stress level?

I drove up to where she was waiting by the curb, dropped off the items from the office, then went to park my car. When I got back to the curb, we loaded all of the event swag into the extra dufflebag she brought, then made our way to international flight check-in.

Guess who didn’t have her travel visa printout with her. I had my passport but could only guess the paper visa was still sitting where I left it. And at this revelation, I could feel my manager’s anxiety like everything that could go wrong was going wrong (and yes, we just had to give it time for, “But wait! There’s more! to rear its head); however, the agent suggested I visit the USO office and ask if they could print it for me.

My manager went to the gate to wait for our leader, and I headed up to find someone in the USO. Short story – they were helpful with not only allowing me to use a computer and printer but also with putting me at ease. I got through security quickly then joined my team at the gate where boarding had not yet begun.

Arrival

Off the top of my head, I remember little about flying to Bangalore other than I think we went from RDU to Atlanta to Paris to Bangalore. I think I spent around 24 hours traveling if you count getting to and from airports, layovers between flights, and all the pieces in between those points. Even with the excitement, I managed to sleep on the flights to and from Paris. If you know me, you can verify that I can fall asleep anywhere.

We arrived in India around midnight local time on 7 December. We had to figure out which line for customs we needed to be in, go through the process, and find baggage claim. Even though we thought the process took longer than expected, we still had to wait for our luggage before we could meet our driver and head to The Oberoi in Bangalore.

On the ride to the hotel, if it wasn’t lit, I didn’t see it, and believe me, I was trying to see as much as I could. I had no expectations of the sights or the time it would take to get to our hotel. I didn’t even know we had arrived at our destination until I saw “The Oberoi” sign on the gate.

The Oberoi’s staff was the most pleasant in helping us check in and get settled.

THIS is the place where I took a break to take Chief Daddy to visit the cemetery.

And this is what happened.

Arrival Continued

The wonderful staff at The Oberoi saw me to my room, and for “the cheap room” it was much nicer than the discounted rooms I’ve stayed in at various Marriott locations in the USA. My bed was turned down, and slippers were beside it. They left a cup of hot cocoa and biscuits (cookies) for me, but I was being all germaphobic and left them alone for a bit.

I opened the door to the balcony and met “my tree”, a 119-year-old raintree. I didn’t realize how much time I would spend with my tree between Friday and Tuesday.

First selfie with the raintree at The Oberoi, Bangalore, India

We needed to be up and on our way to the office in a few hours, so I sent my mom a message on Facebook messenger to let her know I arrived safely. I didn’t have an international plan for making calls from my phone, so Facebook via WiFi was how I planned to stay in touch with my parents while I was in India. [Note: I could still use text messaging on my phone to stay in touch with everyone else, but Mommy had a flip phone and rarely used it for text messages.]

For the sake of not boring you and for the security of the work we did, I’ll skip over everything about work except for one thing. At lunchtime, I stepped outside with one of my colleagues who works at the location. While we were standing on the street, a stray dog was trotting along, saw me, started to come towards us, but retreated after I acknowledged it and continued to wherever it was heading.

I snapped this pic because this baby was so similar to Tucker, my first dog. I mentioned to my colleague about the resemblance but even though it came to mind, I refrained from telling him about how much my mom loved Tucker because of a time when she passed out and woke up to Tucker licking her face. She gives him credit for getting her to come around and keeping her from lying on the floor longer than she had been.

Of all my Tucker stories, that one felt odd for being the first one to come to mind. It only took until the end of the workday to realize the reason behind it.

When we arrived back at The Oberoi, and I connected my phone to the WiFi, all of my Facebook messenger notifications loaded. One was from my cousin’s wife, asking about my mom’s condition and if she was still in the hospital.

I need a break…

More to come in another installment.

Luceat lux vestra.

Chief Daddy visiting Mommy on their 53rd wedding anniversary

When I spoke about Mommy at the funeral home, I really wanted to talk about my parents’ marriage, their love story. I spared everyone in attendance by sharing only about her as my mother, of which I had a lot to say. I feel like the delay is another divine orchestration because this past year has given me a deeper appreciation of my parents’ relationship and marriage in general. Because of this, I feel assured that I recognize the essence of love, its purest form, whether it’s romantic or platonic, whether it’s the love between partners or between parents and children.

When we first moved to Virginia, Mommy was a stay-at-home mother, and I was preschool age. I witnessed her daily lineup of programs (soap operas and talk shows), including a lot of long-defunct television shows – soaps like Search for Tomorrow and The Edge of Night, other favorite soaps like All My Children, Days of Our Lives, and One Life to Live, and Dinah Shore’s talk show.

When 4:00 p.m. arrived, WJLA broadcast The Four O’ Clock Movie. THIS was the beginning of my fear of the Zuni fetish doll in the third story that made up the Trilogy of Terror, but one of my better memories of The Four O’ Clock Movie is one of my mom’s most beloved films, Love Story, starring Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw, adapted from the novel by Erich Segal, and musically scored by Francis Lai. Please click here for the official trailer.

Leenie’s Quick Points About Love Story

“What can you say about a twenty-five year old girl who died? That she was beautiful and brilliant. That she loved Mozart and Bach. The Beatles. And me.” The opening line of Erich Segal’s novel, Love Story. I got sucked into the tragedy, but Jennifer Cavileri definitely influenced me through her snark and directness.
The film and novel is credited as the reason for the surge in naming daughters Jennifer/Jenny during the 1970s, but I managed to escape that trend because my parents wanted my name to begin with E. (Please visit the main page for a quick blurb about my name.) To know Jenny Cavileri is to understand why parents wanted to have a Jenny in their families.
“Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” These are Jenny’s words to Oliver. This quote has seemed to fade except with an “older crowd”, and I hope this film is never remade into an “updated” story. I feel like it’s best left alone in the way their love existed in 1970. Oliver’s later use of the same words is anticipated, but nonetheless a way of immortalizing Jenny. This may have been my earliest influence in being kind to others so that apologies aren’t necessary, but realistically, we all make mistakes. Sometimes we unintentionally cause hurt to those we love. Therefore, the spin of turning “I’m sorry” into “Thank you” or “I appreciate” statements helps me to claim responsibility for my words or actions and get on a positive track.
The score by Francis Lai yielded music boxes with the theme from Love Story. Christmas 1975 is when I received my first jewelry box, which had a music box and the tiny ballerina twirled to the Love Story melody. However, the finale variation of the theme is my longtime favorite of any film’s score. Please click the link to hear it. The way it escalates and evokes the feeling of tragedy as well as finality. I have never been able to put into words how Francis Lai mastered scoring a film brilliantly and accurately; you just have to hear the finale for yourself.
Carl Sigman wrote lyrics to the theme, and Andy Williams recorded it. In fact, I still have my parents’ 45 rpm of Andy Williams’s recording. Vikki Carr also recorded a version in Spanish. It’s not a word-for-word translation, and I may love the Spanish version more. I grew up listening to Vikki Carr En Espanol, Los Exitos De Hoy y De Siempre, and I managed to find an NEW, UNOPENED LP at a used bookstore in Raleigh almost 15 years ago and paid a dollar for it. Back to the English lyrics, it’s a song about romantic love, but a few lines also ring true about my love for my mother.

“I reach for her hand; it’s always there”

When we first moved to Virginia, I don’t know why my mom felt better with me sleeping in the same room as her and Chief, but she put the crib mattress on the floor next to their bed. Now and then I would wake up in the middle of the night and reach up to the bed to find my mom’s hand. I honestly don’t remember the comfort I felt from holding her hand, but I do remember thinking of this line from (Where Do I Begin?) Love Story.

So many lines from the lyrics can easily express the love I feel for my mom because she filled my heart and soul with her love, making it easy to reciprocate back to her. I am grateful to have the wisdom that no matter how many disagreements we had, her care came from a loving heart.

I am not moved to call my mom my best friend; she wasn’t even the “friendly mom”. Mommy was my mother, and she did her best to raise me to eventually be a mother too. She helped me to be a person who would choose best friends that would be like family and would be there for me when the time came for me to carry on without her.

“There’d never be another love another time”

When my parents got married, it was two weeks after they met.

They.

Just.

Knew.

My father was deployed a lot during the first dozen years of their marriage, and the following four decades, they were rarely ever apart from each other for more than a few hours. They even endured a DC-area commute together to the same place of employment for almost 20 of those years after my dad retired from the United States Navy. To me it seemed that they were making up for lost time, but even so a couple who spends that much time together couldn’t do so without a sincere commitment to each other. I also attribute their honor to the gift of the Holy Spirit they received in the sacrament of Holy Matrimony as the sacred Krazy Glue between them.

In the first few years that we lived in Virginia, Chief Daddy was working at The Pentagon. He would often get home before The Four O’ Clock Movie was finished, and my parents would begin cooking dinner together. Somehow my toddler brain was comparing my parents to Love Story. Sometimes my dad would sing along to the theme, or my mom would go over to the piano after the film ended. I’m not even sure anymore if Love Story is so ingrained in me because of watching it so many times in my early years or because every piece of it seemed so cherished by Mommy.

The closing scene is distant shot of a lone Oliver, sitting on bleachers during a New England winter. No words are needed to convey how he feels.

I have a photo of my father standing at my mother’s grave after I went back to the car to give him time alone. In that moment, I see Oliver and Jenny if she lived to be 87.

Luceat lux vestra