‘Til the Stars All Burn Away

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.

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