Been 35 days since my mom passed on October 30. Couple weeks since I received her ashes. Couple things are indicative of how well things are going.
In accordance with her wishes to be buried in her Alabama hometown next to her beloved Aunt Nellie Dill, I sent a letter of inquiry and introduction to the cemetery, which after three weeks came back Tuesday as undeliverable.
The reason? “No mail receptacle.”
Mind you, he name of the place is Smith Chapel Cemetery, keyword “Chapel,” so I find it hard to believe there’s no mail receptacle, but apparently whoever failed in the attempt to deliver the letter ignored any physical structures and instead fixated a bit too hard on the word “Cemetery.”
I am doing my best not to otherwise denigrate the capabilities of the postal worker, but I can’t get the image out of my head of some bumpkin mail carrier standing at the graveyard gate all consternated over how some high-fallutin’ fella from La La Land expects a letter to get delivered what don’t even have the dead recipient’s name on it!
Yesterday was another fail. Entirely mine. My favorite radio station, KUSC has a daily feature called the Morning Shout-Out, which allows listeners to submit classical musical requests in honor of someone that if selected are played on-air and a week or so after her passing I sent the following request for Rossini’s William Tell Overture in mom’s memory:
I want to give a shout-out in memory of my mother, Casey, who passed away October 30 at the age of 95. A life-long devotee of classical music, she instilled in me a love of the genre at a young age by sharing her favorites with me from her record collection, and also through many summer nights spent with her up in the cheap seats at the Hollywood Bowl where I was introduced to the Los Angeles Phiharmonic under the baton of Zubin Mehta who brought the likes of Tchaikovsky and Beethoven to my ears. Come to think of it I can even credit her with introducing me to KUSC some 45 years ago as it was almost always on her car radio during my high school years.
She would undoubtedly shake her head at my musical request because I drove her crazy playing it incessantly as a child thanks to “The Lone Ranger” reruns, but I did so in the knowledge she shared with me about the real story Rossini tells through his wonderful music.
A welcomed email response from the station advised that it had been chosen and when it would air, and it was far enough away that I got the wrong date into my head and then failed to recheck it. When I tuned in at the appropriate time yesterday, the Morning Shout-Out that occurred was someone else’s.
Because mine aired the day before.
Sigh.
The drive in to work was full of me however unfairly beating myself up because now not only wasn’t I there with her when she left, but I couldn’t even fucking be there for a remembrance.
But on my lunch break, I figured what could it hurt, so I emailed the station, explained what an idiot and how heartbroken I was to have missed it, and asked if it might be possible to send me the audio file of what was broadcast by host Jennifer Miller Hammel. Gawd bless ’em, they did.
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