on saturday, i learned about the unfortunate news about my friend's (aimee) mother who passed away in the early hours of morning. interestingly enough, it seemed like all my friends knew about the news well before me thanks to the social networking known as facebook. (for anyone curious, i am not a frequent user of facebook.)
needless to say, i was pretty surprised by the news because i had spoken with aimee a few days ago asking about her mom. at the time, aimee mentioned that her mom was doing great. so you can imagine my surprise when i received a text message from aimee with the unfortunate news.
losing someone is always tough. when i actually spoke with aimee on saturday, she seemed to be doing as well as she could... given the turn of unfortunate circumstances. i can not even imagine what it would be like to lose a parent. i have trouble as it is with losing a child.
anyway, i've never been good at saying goodbye. in fact, i suck at goodbyes. one of my fondest memories of aimee's mom is when i was younger. growing up, i used to call and talk on the phone with aimee a lot. we were both young and silly... well, i was silly... aimee was more devishly evil.
i think when we were younger, there may have been a time when aimee's mom hoped that aimee and i would end up together. if aimee and i had gotten together, that would have been weird... like brotherly-sisterly weird. whether aimee's mom did or not, i never really knew for sure. i just got that impression a few times when i was over their house.
regardless, there was this time when i ended up spending the night at aimee's parents. i had come over to hang out... and have some dinner. as it turned out, there was a snow storm. rather than head home in the dangerous driving conditions, i ended up staying over.
aimee's mom was great. she always treated me as though i were one of her own children. consequently, i joked around in return as though she were my mom. the night of the snow storm, i remember aimee's mom trying to dispense some words of wisdom to me.
her words of wisdom had to do with friendship. sadly, i don't remember what she said verbatim. the gist, however, had to do with the circle of friendship. basically, she said that when a person is younger, their circle of friendship is large. but as the person gets older, slowly but surely that circle of friendship gets smaller... whether it is from growing apart, death, whatever.
of course, at the time i was just yessing aimee's mother as she dispensed her words of wisdom. but for some reason, that memory has stuck in my mind probably because there is some truth in her words. hence, i have always been grateful, and still am grateful, to have such a large number of people in my life to call my friends (and i don't mean the facebook term). i actually consider myself quite lucky to have a bunch of friends, considering i instigate things.
naturally, the image of aimee's mother dispensing words of wisdom inevitably led me to joke with aimee a few months back. growing up, i used to joke a lot about aimee's vertically challenged base. well, if you have ever met aimee's mother, you would know that aimee's mother is equally challenged... vertically.
now, aimee's husband (jim) is... among being the deadliest warrior/friend... tall. jim also likes star wars. as a fan of star wars myself, i had joked with aimee that jim should throw aimee's mother on his back and run through the woods of dagobah. i had likened the image to the scene in "star wars: the empire strikes back"... where luke trains to be a jedi with master yoda on his back.
hence in this case, jim would be luke... and aimee's mom would be master yoda. it was a comical image to me, and it had aimee smiling. aimee even joked that she would tell her mom that i called her yoda. but to me, it made somewhat sense because jim was... well... a deadly warrior... and aimee's mom dispensed words of wisdom. plus, aimee's mom was tiny.
i don't know if aimee ever did tell her mom that i likened her to master yoda. i'm sure that is the farthest thing from aimee's mind right now. but if there is anything that i know, it is that friends are important because the circle does not last forever.
anyway, i will probably always remember that tidbit of wisdom. so thank you and goodbye master yoda.
2 comments:
thank you, mike, for writing this. as one of the recipients of her words of wisdom, i think that she would have found it amusing to be referred to as "master yoda," as, not only was her wisdom insightful, it also held life lessons that would prove useful later on.
i am very glad that you have such a fond memory of her, and that the particular one you wrote about is on that you won't soon forget.
thank you for writing this, mike. you had me laughing and crying at the same time.
i actually did tell her about your referring to her as yoda. she didn't know who he was at first, but after i explained it she thought it was pretty funny.
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