Mom

Today, June 16, is the three-year anniversary of my mom’s death. Since she’s one of the dead parents referenced in the title of this site, I figured I might tell you a little about her.

We’re on a boat. Mom’s in the cool sunglasses. I’m in the striped shorts. Baby sister is in Mom’s lap.

Nancy Robison, née Flaherty, was born in Wisconsin—but she was a Florida girl at heart. Her family moved there when she was in junior high, and even though she raised us in Illinois, she always pined for the beach.

She was a therapist. She and her longtime friend Phil Kirschbaum started Gurnee Counseling Group in the 1980s. The business later expanded into Gurnee Counseling Center, and it still exists today. She improved hundreds of people’s lives over the years, which is a lot to live up to.

Aside from her work and being a mom, she didn’t have a ton of hobbies. I believe that’s the biggest mistake she ever made—not making enough room for herself. She watched Jeopardy! religiously—I was relieved she passed before Alex Trebek did, which would have devastated her. For a period in the 90s, she got really into step aerobics. She read thrillers that she picked up at the grocery store.

She encouraged my sister and I to work hard, but couldn’t bring herself to discipline us. Lucky for her I was a goody-two-shoes kid anyway. She was petite, barely over 5 feet tall, and I liked to dance her around the kitchen, which made her laugh. She sang all the time, changing the lyrics to focus on the situation at hand. I inherited my magpie tendencies from her, a love for bright, colorful things.

Later in life—after we graduated and moved out, after her oldest sister died, after she nominally retired—she succumbed to depression and alcoholism. That’s how I learned substance abuse is a disease and not a choice. If anyone had the resources and support to overcome it, it was my mom, and she couldn’t do it. I can’t blame her, so I blame the tiny bottles of gas station white wine that she favored. It’s hard to think about our interactions in those years.

She died in 2020—not from COVID, but from liver failure. Fortunately, she was able to pass at home with us. It wasn’t the first time I ever saw a dead body, of course, but it was the first time I watched someone die. Hospice nurses deserve to be millionaires.

Now Mom lives in an aquamarine urn she would have loved. Currently that urn is in Florida, which she also would have loved. My dad and my uncle had plans to scatter the two sisters’ ashes in the Atlantic, but they never found the nerve to do it.

It’s been three years, and I still try to call her on the phone sometimes. I imagine she’d want me to buy better placemats, and shouldn’t I have put something decorative on those shelves already? I love her.