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'Hey, Mom, cook that junk we really like.'

Posted by Warner Lewis on Aug 31st, 2007

In memorial: Nelle Brown Lewis, 1915 - 2007

Not that you’ve missed me but I’ve been absent from this site since early June. My mother died recently and I’m now back in the saddle ready to ride (and write) again. Boomer tribute columns to their parents are commonplace these days as almost 80 million of us have or will experience the death of parents in the near future. But I do have the power of the pen with this column, so why not use it?

Dear Mom,

Your husband died at an early age. Thanks for showing up at my football and basketball games, getting me involved in Scouts (which I hated by the way), making sure I took “Industrial Arts” in school and numerous other roles normally taken on by a father of a boomer child.

Thanks for making me and my younger brother make distribute homemade sandwiches (on a Saturday no less!) to city workers that were clearing debris from a devastating storm that hit our city. Thanks for letting us watch you weep during JFK’s funeral. Thanks for fried tomatoes (you say “toe-mah-toe), Cape Cod, trumpet lessons and neighborhood haunted houses in our basement.

Thanks for taking me and my friends to the movie Woodstock and letting me grow my hair long. Thanks for getting off your Buick station wagon kick and finally buying cool cars. Thanks for making sure we knew there was a huge world beyond our hometown waiting to be explored and understood. Thanks for teaching that differences are good things.

Thanks for the pool table & color tv (even though you didn’t get them until after I left for college!) Thanks for letting me hitchhike to Chicago, then coming to get me on the highway in freezing cold at 3 a.m. when I returned. Thanks for the wonderful study abroad program in Europe that I didn’t do, choosing lamely instead to stay close to a high school sweetheart! Thanks for only grounding me for six months when we blew up that woman’s convertible top with fireworks in junior high.

Thanks for so courageously handling & coping with the tremendous anxiety and pain my brother brought on with his difficult struggles & conflicts. Thanks for the decades of volunteer service you gave to so many, particularly to those touched by cancer and other terminal illnesses. Thanks for handling your own final illness with grace, dignity and compassion.

Thanks for modeling the way on what it means to be self sufficient, forthright and full of purpose. Thanks for being eccentric, eclectic and stubborn, yet tender and loving at the same time. Thanks for your incredible humor. Thanks for the way you loved your grandchildren & your daughter-in-law. You will be with them forever. Finally, thanks for trying to teach me to always “do the right thing.”

I know you would feel “provoked” with me because this kind of public praise made you uncomfortable. But this is my chance to share you with the world……and it is the right thing to do.

Love,

Warner