Dear Michelle,

I knew your mother. We used to sit in study hall together and sometimes had lunch together. I did not know her well, but she was a very quiet and considerate person. She had ash blonde hair just above shoulder length with long bangs. I can remember being surprised at how passionate she was about her appearence. She didn’t wear much makeup at the time, but she had serious plans to become a knock-out. I was impressed with her determination. She had already achieved the figure she wanted (but never flaunted) and was planning to move on to haircolouring etc as soon as she finished high school. I always visualised her tossing aside the very plain and dull clothes she wore in highschool for gorgeous and provocative splendor. I was convinced she was a sleeping Marilyn Monroe!

Hearing of her death so many years ago makes me very sad. Now that I am older I can see that her gentleness and her pinning all her hopes on the future might have made her vulnerable to disappointment.

My biggest memories of her personality are respect for her ability to sense and consider other people’s feelings (I was more like a bull in a china shop at that point) her sense of humour about the nonsense of our high school’s rather irrational administration, and our mutual comiserations about whether or not we would ever have dates, much less boyfriends before we were 50.

I do envy her that she managed to have you. Children have eluded me but eventually I did have boyfriends and husbands. Maybe the rather schizophrenic desparation of our era to define ourselves in terms of both our desirability to men and our ability to slay dragons and change the world was a bit overwhelming to many of us.

Your mom started out to be a lovely woman, and I’ll bet she would have made a great grandma if she had gotten past the middle bit. I am very sorry that she didn’t.