serendipity

Things she left behind

 

Love letters

An unsent suicide note

Her squishmallow

A happy buddha statue

An elephant side table

Her kalimba and tamborine

The Clavinova

Pounds of sheet music

VHS tapes and DVDs of lifelong favorites

CDs - Meticulously organized 

Vinyl - Less meticulously organized

Vicodin

Transcriptions of phone calls

Dozens of micro-cassettes stored in purple Crown Royal bags

Treasured 35mm cameras

Scores of 35mm negatives

A bronze baby shoe

A bronze ballet slipper

"I love New York" posters, postcards, t-shirts, magnets

NYC subway maps

T-shirts from TKTS, Bloomingdales, Godspell

Stacks of Playbills

Suede leather poncho with matching hat

Peace sign keepsakes

Temporary tattoos of butterflies

Syringes of liquid Oxy

Pop-tarts

Peach yogurt

A dozen clocks - all working

A dozen watches - none working

Tiny plates painted by tiny hands "I love you"

Seashells from Sanibel 

Shalimar-scented powder

A&D ointment, portioned into tiny balm containers

Baby books - hers and ours

Wedding pictures - hers and ours

Bessemer high school yearbook - a parade of southern girls with identical hairstyles

Newspaper clippings of her published photos 

Pictures of her children

Pictures of her children as children

Pictures of her children as parents

Pictures of her grandchildren

Pictures finger-painted by her grandchildren

Pictures of a life that was uniquely hers

Margaret Corinne Vail Raas Kacsmar

July 17, 1944 - March 7, 2022

Of all the things that threatened her health, cancer was the one we didn't see coming.

 

This picture is how I want to remember her. Smart, pretty, pensive, clever, and ridiculously talented. She gave me her eyes, her eyebrows (which took me years to appreciate), and her love of music. She taught me how to sing. She taught me how to breathe, how to hear harmony. She taught me when to be loud, when to blend in, and how to sing softly to a distant audience. She believed I was born for Broadway and spent a good amount of her time pushing me in that direction. Every other ambition I had was secondary, in her mind, to a career in musical theatre.

 

If she had a life mantra it was "Reality is an option."

 

She would sit at her piano for hours while I lay on the carpet underneath. Just listening. "What do you want to hear next?" she would ask. "Bach! " I would answer. "Play the Inventions." And her fingers would fly, transporting us.

 

She could be so much fun. And funny. She knew all the words and how to play on them. She would edit the New York Times and find error. She would bemoan the decline and incorrect use of the apostrophe. Words mattered. Grammar mattered. So much so that I'm sure she's looking over my shoulder right now, telling me to add an Oxford comma somewhere. It's making me a little nervous, that somehow I'll get this wrong. But mostly I'm sad.

 

My sister and I were with her when she left. Amanda was in mom's apartment, I was on the nannycam. It was such a quiet leaving it took us a few minutes to believe it had actually happened. But she wasn't saying "ow" anymore. Nothing hurt.

 

She just flew away.