Delaware, A Scallop Wrapped in Bacon, and Driving Home with the Boss

If there's any one (well, composite) image that I shall forever and heretofore associate with receiving the news of my mother's death, it will be that. Or should I say, "these." Or, more precisely, "those."

Those images of Delaware, with a tooth-picked scallop wrapped in bacon, which, after eating, resulted in driving home with the boss.

You see, I received the news of my mother's demise while I was in Delaware, with the boss (who was only there because yet another employee's grandmother had just died). We had just finished presenting our respective quasi-infomercials to the greater Delaware Division of the Arts' representatives who were ostensibly interested in learning more about email marketing. Which is to say, we had just wrapped up our "pitches" to our then-presently assigned audiences.

We had just wrapped up our "pitches," and we were feeling quite good. Quite good about ourselves, and our product, which is how we were supposed to feel. But we hadn't yet reconnected, amidst the happiness of Happy Hour, and so I was expecting his call.

Which is when the call came.

It wasn't his call, at first. At second, yes, it was. But at first, there was a message from my father.

My father has only called me three times in my life. Once, to tell me that his mother "had passed," twice, to inform me that he would not be co-signing for me on a Manhattan apartment, and now -- now.

Now, he was calling me (as I poked at and attempted to chow down a scallop wrapped in bacon), to tell me my mother had just died. I looked up from my cell phone as I was retrieving the message and lo, and behold, there was my boss. I told him what I had just heard. That was all he needed to hear. He told me to get packed and to get into the car.

The next few hours were surreal, to say the least. We had to reschedule all the rest of my week, which was supposed to be spent touring Minneapolis and Duluth with more seminars. We had to call the Office Manager and another other Sales Rep who was on the road, to get her to cover my calendar. We had to make several months' worth of planning re-arrange itself within one night. It sucked.

But there was never any doubt on my boss's behalf that I needed to go home and take care of family business, despite my offering to find some sort of compromise. I hadn't had a good relationship with my parents since 1983, I told him, so they could wait. That didn't fly. He wanted me home as much as my father must have... So we drove back to NY together, in a Hertz rental, stopping off for family-style seafood at a cute greasy spoon somewhere between Delaware and Pennsylvania.

So, neither Delaware, nor scallops wrapped in bacon, nor greasy spoons along the way between Dover and Philadelphia will ever be able to remind me of anything but receiving the news of my mother's death.

News, by the way, that was met with immediate relief. Yes, I've grieved since then and I'm still indeed grieving, but I've always believed that the first reaction one has upon receiving the news of someone's death is usually the strongest, most "real" reaction one is going to have. So far the hypothesis holds true. Especially because it's also been my father's main reaction!

My point is this: Watch out for significant signifiers. You'll never escape them. Delaware, scallops wrapped in bacon, and driving from Dover to New York will never lose their meaning in my head...

What're the signifiers in yours?


Love,