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.
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