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Long Live Happy Bottom
By David L. Robbins
Good became even better in Mom’s mind
 When loved ones die, there’s a checklist.
Did I say goodbye? Did she know I loved her? How do I go on?
Your list may not be mine, but you have a list.
When I got the call in 1996 that my mother had passed away in the cardiac ICU at age 70, I remember an odd calm. The falling dominoes of scrutiny about my performance as a son flowed by. None carried a barb. I felt no wish to replay some episode and do better, speak more mildly, love more plainly. Nope. Mom and I were cool.
How lucky, how marvelous to feel sadness without regret. I inherited the best of her, and did not lose it when I lost her. So she was only kinda gone. She’ll be fully gone, I think, when I go.
Carol Robbin s was a full-blown nut. In the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, her nickname — a play on her middle name, Gladys — was Happy Bottom.
She didn’t graduate from high school. She lied about her age to join the military and serve at Pearl Harbor to finally meet the 28-year-old sergeant she’d been corresponding with for a year. (My father won young Carol Jacobson’s Pittsburgh address in a poker game at Schofield Barracks from her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend.) She worked for years in public schools and recreation centers. She taught me to play tetherball; to make moccasins, plastic wallets, ice cream stick mansions; and to see the world as if my mind’s eyes were crossed.
I watched her bribe a casino maid to vacuum extra around whichever slot machine had been getting the most play (and so was nearest to paying off). Mom won two grand that time. In her 60s, I found her in the Carytown Ukrop’s parking lot at a card table selling peanut brittle. She made a few hundred bucks for Atlantic City, then packed up. When I was 10, she asked me in the Thalhimers elevator if I knew where “it” was — “it” had jumped out of her pocket. I pretended to look for “it” among the fine folks’ shoes until we both exited and left a gaggle of shocked shoppers behind. She believed God spoke to her through bingo; when she won, the two of them were on good terms. When she lost, she’d call to ask if I was upset with her for any reason.
Make up some goofy stories about an old Jewish lady, and my mom either did them or could have done them. Then give her a son she never embarrassed.
At her funeral, a sunny August afternoon, my brother Jeff from Denver insisted on delivering Mom’s eulogy. Jeff was in Toastmasters. He’s a stick in the mud and of a different clan from me and Mom, but he grieved, too.
Jeff delivered his speech from 3-by-5 cards. He read his mother’s name, birth date, hometown, family, vitae, life. He couldn’t extemporize.
I agonized that these would be the last words uttered over this woman before closing her grave, this insane, wandering Jew of the imagination. I got to my feet.
I told the crowd of 200 the lies, the exaggerations, Mom always told about them. Mr. Shevitz was not 5-foot-8 but 5-4. Mrs. Gordon’s latkes were not like butter but concrete. My brother Doug didn’t play pro baseball; I was not a genius. Dozens of little lies she told her whole life with a straight face and a blind heart. She was deluded, indeed, by love for us all, so much that she could not see our real dimensions. She saw better.
Finished, I grabbed the shovel jammed into the clay pile. I tossed in the first dirt. Before I could jab again, a friend stopped my arm, took the shovel and threw clods over the pine coffin. He handed the tool to Mr. Shevitz, then old Mrs. Gordon, then the principal of Highland Springs High School, then many more, all who dropped a tear with the earth onto Carol Robbins.
I took hugs and kisses. The gathered said goodbye to me as if to Mom.
What could I say? What can I say now?
Only this: Regret must be buried early, before death seals it in place. Those we love in life will return the favor in memory.
Yes, she’s dead. Others will follow before I join the parade. But Mom I recall with a smile, at the bottom of a grave filled by her friends and mine. Forever Happy Bottom.
David L. Robbins is a bestselling author, most recently of the novel Broken Jewel. He is currently at work on a book about Somali pirates, The Devil’s Waters. The Sandston native is a founder of the James River Writers and co-founder of The Podium Foundation (ThePodiumFoundation.org). Visit him at DavidLRobbins.com.
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