Ok Back

How do you begin something that you’ve never wanted to write? How do you encompass all that someone is in mere words? How do you paint a picture of someone that everyone already knows except maybe to tell you of the woman that only I know?

Rosaria Bucca – Rosemarie or on the rare occasion, Rosemary, may or may not have been the illegitimate daughter of a south Boston Italian father and Lithuanian mother. But the one thing for certain that no one can deny was that she was, and will always be, a mother of extraordinary strength, joy and love. She was my savior in a world full of bullies, a champion in a world full of doubters, the loudest applause in a room full of strangers and the one constant at the kitchen table in a house she made into a home.

When I decided to take her to Paris, I never dreamed it would be the first of a trio of trips across the Atlantic. The girl whose neighbors dumped wet bread on her head and who got her cross ripped from her chest by nuns who deemed her unworthy was walking through the city of lights with someone who not only saw her as worthy but also saw her as his shining star. For there would be no Paris without Rosemarie, there’d be no Rome, Venice, Florence or London. In fact, there would be no life at all. But is there a life without Rosemarie? At this moment, I cannot tell you a definitive yes, but I can tell you, like she told me when I moved in 1990, that you must follow your path and no one else’s. No matter if that path takes you three thousand or ten miles, your life needs to be lived. I thought I crushed her soul when I left but little did I know that I would give her a world beyond the reaches of South Boston, beyond Medford and beyond the backyards where wet sloppy bread was thrown on her head from a dilapidated triple-decker.

She can count so many as her friends and family - and not just those here today. There are drag queens in San Francisco, boys in Belgium, women in California and boys that grew up to be fine young men who still revel in the taste of her stuffed artichokes and chicken cutlets.

This was a woman who never gave herself credit, who always put herself down as uneducated and too stupid to understand how the world worked.But what you need to understand is she was the smart one, she knew how the world worked. It works with love and compassion and never questioning that to be a great mother meant to let her children live their lives no matter who they were or whom they loved.

I’ve wrestled for days and even months leading up to this moment if I have told her enough how much she meant to me. And then I take comfort in knowing that last week, I got to tell her over and over. And as we talked about things in her hospital room, it was obvious that I showed her, too. For whether it was a simple birthday card or a walk along the river Seine –a trip on the Provincetown ferry or the high speed train to Belgium - at a dinner in Ogunquit or the Tuscan countryside or lunch in San Francisco or at the Malibu coast, everything I am or ever hope to be is because of a maybe illegitimate daughter of an Italian and Lithuanian from South Boston.

Finally, this week, I walked by my old elementary school and it brought back the memory of when my mother dropped me off at kindergarten. She let go of my hand and didn't look back even as I screamed like a wounded animal for her to come back. It was only later, on one of our trips that she told me the principal told her to do just that – to keep walking and not turn around. That it was the only way to get me to stay and she said that it was the hardest thing she ever had to do. I now know how she felt, because these last few weeks have been the hardest thing I have ever or will ever have to face. And no matter how loud I cry - she is not going to turn around.

But I'm comforted - and I hope you all are by this last thought. In the days after social media, she got tech savvy and texted at all hours of the day, but always, always without fail - there was the evening text at 8pm pacific, telling me she was going to sleep. Ok, I would say and immediately she responded, “Ok back.” This back and forth between us would continue until I finally had to tell her to GO-TO-BED.

 

So, for the final time I wish her good night –to sleep well and not worry. Because although our hearts and lives will never be whole again, we will survive because that is what she taught us to do. Today, I get the last word and say, “okay back.”