Things Change---The Grapes of Wrath, 1990

My vacation in May of 1990 started out just like the previous eight years.

After the last show of the school year was done and school was over for another year I took a few weeks off and went back to Long Island to visit my family.

As I had done most years before I came home to relax, visit with family and friends and maybe go into the City and see a Broadway show.

That May I saw The Steppenwolf Theatre Company production of The Grapes of Wrath with Gary Sinse as Tom Joad.

It was a great play but I was stupid and bought box seats on the side.

I could see backstage and saw how things worked but still I wish I had a seat more to center.

I was not impressed by the stagehands in shorts and a printed t-shirts walking on the stage at intermission.

Also while back on Long Island there were several used book stores that I liked to visit and of course I had to get some Pizza.

I am a bit of pizza snob.

I like New York Style Pizza and although I had some favorite places to go I found that almost anyplace I went on Long Island I would find better Pizza than I could back in Brockport.

This trip was different because my mother was sick.

She had seemed to have a cold or flu that had gone on for months.

My mother was in good spirits but her voice was going and she found it hard to talk.

After two weeks it was time to go back to Brockport and start work on the summer musical 42^nd Street.

When I got back to Brockport we got right to work on the play.

It was going to be a big show but we had a good crew and I was happy because I able to hire on a former student who just got out of Graduate school as my assistant.

Things on the show were going well but each time I called home my mother’s voice got worse and after a while see could not talk loud enough to use the phone.

In early June I got a call that my mother was in the hospital for tests but she was doing OK.

At first they said she had Lyme Disease. 

It seemed to fit some of her symptoms but not all of them.

After a week I got a call, my mother had cancer, but it was the “Good Kind”.

I did not know that there was a “Good Kind”.

It did not sound good so I made plans to go home.

The play could wait.

The Scene Designer and ATD said that they would take care of things while I was gone.

The day before I was leaving for home I got a call, it was too late, my mother had passed away.

She had insisted on starting chemotherapy treatment but it was too late and too much for her.

So now I was driving home for a funeral, not a visit.

Needless to say it was trip that I do not remember making.

My mother was a member of the local volunteer ambulance company and they were great in helping with everything.

There were people in uniform standing as an honor guard each day at the funeral home, EMT’s, firemen and police.

Funerals by their nature are not funny but some things do happen that can make you laugh.

I drove my father to the church and the cemetery after the mass.

Instead of a hearse the coffin rode in a box ambulance along with a police escort.

My dad smiled a bit when he saw the motorcycle cops block the entrance to the highway so that the funeral procession could get on.

As we were nearing the cemetery another funeral procession was pulled over to the side of the road so that we could go past.

The other people in the other funeral procession had seen the police with lights on and the ambulance so off course they pulled over to the side to let them by and we just drove right by them all.

This made my father laugh and said something about how my mother would have liked what had happened.

This has been hard for me to write and what makes it more poignant for me is that my mother was just 58, the age I am now.

A few days later I returned to Brockport and got back to work on the summer show.

Everyone was nice and had kind words of support when I got back and although it was hard it nice to have something to take my mind off of what had happened.

It was good to get back to work but of course my mother was still on my mind.

Somehow we all pulled together and got the show done and managed to have some fun doing it.

Unfortunately a few weeks later the mother of one of my student workers was killed in a car accident and everyone was numb for a while again.

After the show was over I went home again in August for a visit.

It goes without saying that it was hard to go home but I wanted to support my dad and sister who also lived there.

Of course this was a major milestone event in my life and these events, both good and bad,  happen on their own schedule and never seem to happen when it is convenient.

Back in college my grandfather died during the blizzard of ’77 and there was no way for me to get home for the funeral.

My one grandmother died when I was a senior in high school and her funeral was the day I was supposed to take the NYS Regents Exam, similar to the SATs, that was used to award scholarships.

After talking with my family it was decided that my grandmother would have wanted me to take the test and take care of my future and somehow I was able to do well and I even got a scholarship.

Working at a college and also in Theatre sometimes I feel a bit insulated from the real world and unfortunately it take something like my mother’s passing  smack me in the face and make me see the real world.

I am sure that everyone’s parent’s passing is hard and affects each person in a different way.

For me getting back to work was just what I needed at the time, but even today 24 years later there are times  that my minds wanders and I think of my mother and have to stop and reflect for a few moments.

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