In Memoriam

A few weeks ago, I rewatched The Howling a 1981 horror movie I hadn't seen in over 40 years.

The film featured the most amazing werewolf transformation sequences I had ever scene, although I'm sure they are now woefully out of date.

Moonstruck

I had first seen movie at the Lowe's Alpine theater, which was right around the corner from our house, with my brother, Peter, and our mother.

Yes, our mother came with us.

Like us--and very unlike our father--Mom was a fan of the old Universal horror movies—Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy—the whole gang of ghouls.

Of course, horror movies had changed a bit since those 1940s fossils.

In addition to new and improved special effects, the modern flicks were much more violent and good deal raunchier.

My mother learned this lesson the hard way a few years earlier when I took her to see The Exorcist.

Nevertheless, she wanted to see this movie and Count Dracula would sooner be sunbathing on the steps of the Vatican before my father would ever take her to a monster movie.

The Howling feaures a scene where the heroine's philandering husband gets jiggy with a lupine lady in a roaring hot campfire sex scene.

Don't Look Now

Now watching cinematic sleaze with one's mother is always a bit awkward, even when you're officially an adult.

But Mom, who was sitting between us, injected a bit of humor into the situation by putting her hands in front of our faces when The Howling really started to howl.

We laughed about the moment months after we saw the movie and it comes back to me now as we marked the 20th anniversary of our mother's death on Saturday.

Twenty years since that awful day when my mother’s doctor called me from the hospital and told me that she had gone into cardiac arrest.

Twenty years since I raced over to Staten Island from lower Manhattan; twenty years since I stood outside St. Vincent’s Hospital crying in my sister’s arms when I learned that our mother had died.

Like so many memories, that day is both distant and clear in my mind. It feels ancient and fresh at the same time.

I remember telling my brother the news when he called me at the hospital.

"She's gone," was all I could say.

And I remember my father crying—something I had never seen him do.

The Silver Bullet

It was such a terrible time as we struggled with the agonizing truth that we would never see her again.

My mother had been in failing health for a long time, and I had tried to prepare myself for the worst, but when it finally happened, I fell apart.

I think about her every since day. Sometimes it'll be a movie that reminds me of her, or a song, or nothing at all.

It doesn't take much to bring her back.

And, of course, there's the guilt, my favorite food group--ingratitude, selfishnes, cruelty--this gang of ghouls comes rolling back to me because there's a part of my mind that wants me to suffer.

I think 20 years of this self-abuse is enough. My mother was always quick to forgive, so the best way to honor her memory is stop tearing myself down.

It's going to take a lot of work, but I'm ready to take on this monster.