Michael Connolly, Hieronymus Bosch, and Searching for Mom
Amazon Prime? You were not around when I was a kid. Or most of my adult life. But you are there now. Binging on entertainment is a thing now, because of availability and our own proclivities and opportunities. Supply meets demand.
I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, which is increasingly a footnote in our history books. Or, in the web pages of our existence. The annals and repositories of the world knowledge banks. Known and corroborated information. Facts.
One of the most powerful and influential people in the world, Elon Musk, was born in the 70s, and is younger than me, so he may recall less of that decade than me. But many of those things do not matter. He has lived a thousand lives as to decisions and consequence. Millions, even billions of people and our choices and possessions and existential or other thoughts have to do with his directives and at times whims. Better him than most, many seem to agree. But this is not about him.
It is about our moms. What is Elon's relationship with his mother? Does this help define him, as perhaps many of us?
While overseas about ten years ago, living away from my immediate and extended family, I experimented with quite a few books and authors. Perhaps twenty? I am not sure how many different books I read. Many of them I finished, some of them I have yet to read all of. I likely will not finish all the ones I tested during that year. One of them was Michael Connolly's Harry Bosch, fictional L.A. police detective.
I got hooked to these books, to this author. The stories were always interesting, compelling. There were enough satisfying themes and plot developments for me to stay tuned, to check out the next book from the library. Apparently President Bill Clinton was the first famous person to bring this writer and his series to light. Ah, the electorate pays it forward! Under the next democratic president, Barach Obama, I read of Connolly's world of mixed family (Bosch has a half-brother, who he discovers later in life, who is a major character in Los Angeles and the other books), and reality, where Rodney King and O.J. Simpson and a panoply of real people and things exist.
Tempting. The places are real. Southern California spots and locales, left and right, up and down. The jazz artists mentioned are real. The temptation of jazz, art, crime, and closure. Themes of pursuing meaning, and bad guys. I suppose they are foils. I think we derive a lot of our own identities based on what we perceive of the ill will and evil intentions in the world. Following the clues, discovering the hidden plans and acts, resolving the mysteries. Figuring out where and how we all fit.
His main character, Detective Bosch, seeks out the enigmas of life, with workload cases that he doggedly pursues, and his own story, like where his mom is, or was, who his dad was. He meets him once, when a young police. My own dad had a hard time meeting his biological father. These things happen.
Bosch's mother is murdered when he was twelve. This is a fictional character, I know. Then he went into the foster system. My mother moved out of my house when I was twelve. Different, in most ways. I visited with my mom twice weekly, which became a pleasant patter for me. In my adult years I would visit with her, too, until she passed when I was 43. I was 42 when she was diagnosed with her terminal illness, liver cancer. I might have been reading my first Harry Bosch novel when I found out; I never thought of that before. Mysteries abound yet things come together.
My children, especially the youngest ones, will not know my mom. Not meant to be now. My nieces and nephew will not know enough of her either, in my opinion.
Traces of her go dissipating, slipping into the ether. Her presence is less in my sons' lives than Elon Musk. But, I am still here; I will recall and present a few things.
I still seek her, like Connolly writes of characters about mothers who disappear, many of them cruelly and violently, to me reminiscent of the millions of souls lost in the Holocaust of World War II, or the awful purges of Stalin's Russia, or Mao's rule in China, and on and on.
We look for the virtuous and quirky, the artistic and enervative, the sources of our souls.
Bosch says, and the show repeats, "Everybody counts or nobody counts."
I believe that, I believe in that principle. We all count.
My mom gave me things over the years. Sometimes her gifts were things that I used, and used up. Some of the things are lost or misplaced. I cannot categorize or track all her gifts. Over time it will be less and less, and this will become of me. My presence will result in less and less. Presumedly. So, we shall all go. Move on. Some go kicking and screaming, or in my case, searching and reminiscing.
My mom dealt with a lot of health issues; much of her life that I knew that she was going to the hospital, a doctor, dealing with medicines, pains and aches. Even Weight Watchers. Health things. She was a nurse, too. So she dealt with other peoples' ills and health, and deaths, too.
I am not sure when, maybe when I was 38, or less, when she gave me a bottle of Men's Dietary Health. At least I think it was her. She was born the last of five, Ruth Muriel, in 1940. Guilty or not, I attribute that bottle to her. It is in my medicine cabinet now. End of July, 2022. I opened the bottle last night and took the last supplement. Made by Equate. "Men's Daily Health", I think it says.
I noticed the last few months when I took it a few times per week that it expired in 2013, according to the bottle label. I took it with me to the Middle East this past year, and maybe took the supplement pill about twenty times.
The bottle only has 100 pills. Tablets. It took me at least 9 years, or maybe more, to finish this bottle. Where did she buy it? Was it in our town of Bloomington? Did she in fact buy it? To me, she did. Maybe someone else did. But she would procure and gift others such things.
My children heard me proclaim that I was taking this expired product lately, mostly aghast. "Dad! How do you do this!?" They question my thinking, my intake of products. Like, say, an untouched cinnamon bun in a trash can at a church party. (It was delicious). I did not get sick subsequently.
The dietary aid would make me gag most of the time when I took it. I have a good gag reflex when I take such things. I usually would take these supplements in the morning, and I would observe my status the rest of the day. It may have affected my digestion. Sure, it probably did.
But I did it to remember, to honor, to summon my mom.
And now I write this. Thanks Mister Connolly. Thanks detectives who find the answers, fictitious and real. Thanks to our parents who left gifts, blessings, and curious mementos and products of all kinds.
Memories and laughter, smiles and fun songs. Jokes and origins. Stories and gifts, curios and pictures. Hugs and swimming through the universe.
