I have a coworker who is a septuagenarian (in her 70s), and a sassy one at that.

She often drinks her coffee out of a steel contigo. Sometimes on the dock when we load one tour after the other, it doesn’t make sense to go back to the office in between tours.

So, we loaded a 7:15 tour and waited in passenger van Big Bertha for the 8:15 (7:45 is when we get into our posts for that one).
So we sat and talked, all facing forward in our 10 passenger van, going nowhere.

The conversation started “So how do your parents feel about you going to- where is it again?”

“Guatemala.”

“That’s right, Guatemala.”

Kristi chimed in “Her mom doesn’t like it.” (Disclaimer: my parents haven’t been unsupportive about me going to Peace Corps. I should make that clear).

“I mean, she doesn’t want me to go so far away.”

Kristi: “It’s hard because she’s here [Alaska] and then she’ll be there [Guatemala].”

“Yeah.”

Somehow our conversation turned to our dreams.

I mentioned listening to a Fresh Air episode of an interview with Barbara Cook, who was a Broadway powerhouse in her own right. Her life and career were thwarted by her relationship with her mother throughout. Barbara also talks about how her mom was likely an undiagnosed bipolar (if I remember the illness correctly).

And the story I am going to share comes from my boss, age 75, who oversees our work on the dock.
Please imagine, as I sat in the driver’s seat, Kristi in the back, and Boss in the passenger looking on that every sentence, every phrase, every thought that comes from Boss is emphatic and 100% authentic to her experience. She comes to each thought, feels it, shares it and moves on. Like she is polishing pieces of silver in her collection, and describing each piece before continuing to the next. There is a pace here that 30 year olds don’t have. It’s a beautiful pace, the pace of the body and mind of a person who has seen things I haven’t yet seen.
She raises her eyebrows in disgust, shakes her head to confirm when something was in fact real as life, and laughs at the end of it all with a release that eases your shoulders from any tension you didn’t even know was there. The most important thing is that she has an extremely thick Massachusetts accent, and she is all of 5’1″ (if that). She be short but she be mighty.

This is what Boss shared:

Boss: “Oh I wanted to be an actress, but my mother wouldn’t let me. She said ‘Everyone wants to be an actress. You need to be a Hairdresser! And I – am- a – terrible hairdresser.”

“Oh yeah.”

“We weren’t very close, my mother and I.”

“She got cancer when she was 45, and when she turned 46 she was in the hospital.” By this point, Boss has been transported to this day, to this memory completely, and Kristi and I are paying witness to what memories she can scrub clean from having filed them away for so long. “And all of the sudden, I got terrible diarrhea like I sensed that something was wrong. And my dad came and got me and said ‘If you wanna see your mother while she is still alive,  you better come in here.’ I went in and heard her gurgling and I picked her up and held her in my arms and that’s when she died.

Her voice folded in the last phrase and her eyes watered. Her beautiful blue eyes couched with neatly lined wrinkles.
If Boss is going to have wrinkles, they are going to be organized.

I was surprised by the admission of such a personal story, sacred I would say, and of all places on the dock as we waited for our next group of inattentive tourists.

“And it’s like, she finally forgave me. Because she didn’t want me, she didn’t want me at all.

She always said she wanted boys. I can’t believe I can cry about it after all these years.”

And she looked at me, like she was surprised by herself and perhaps glad.

“I went about my life and could do what I wanted finally. I had all my babies by then.”

“All 4? By the time she passed?”

“All 4.”

“How old were you when she died?”

“Um- 23.” Pause. (You’re reading this right- she had 4 children by age 23).

“Jim [Boss’s son, I’ve changed the names] was her favorite, she made that clear.”

And next she rattled off a list the way that a mother explains the way she lays out her child’s clothes and packs their lunch for school the next day. She remembered and recited these facts as if they were her duty as a parent to perform them:

“So I made sure he got the ring from my mother. My father gave it to her on their 25th wedding anniversary.”

Then I gave Debbie [Boss’s daughter] my husband’s mother’s wedding ring. Laura [Boss’s daughter] got my husband’s grandmother’s wedding ring. And the youngest got my wedding ring from his father. So I made sure all of them got diamonds.

The words settled around us like dust particles, but the shiny kind that almost seem nostalgic instead of musty. They twinkled as they fell, when the light hits the particles just so.

And then I asked about her ex husband. I wanted to hear all of her story and this is a part I only knew in title.
They must have been married for 20 years before she left him. She tells a story about when she left her husband in ’75 and said that was the year that she said “Come Alive, ’75.”
She said “What about him?”

I said “Well, where is he now?” And she said “He died.” “He died 3 years ago. June 14th. His birthday was June 18th.”

Pause. “And, you know, we remained very close.
We broke up because of the kids. We fought so much and of course they were so mad at us for breaking up because they saw we got along so well once we split and wanted to know why we couldn’t stay together.”

She furrowed her brow with expression as she said “I said ‘we love each other very much but we can’t be together because we fight.’ ”

She said “But I knew, I could call him at 3am and he’d be right there to answer the phone.”

Pause. “He was a good man. But he wasn’t willing to change. He was a fisherman and was Cape Cod and eventually I took the kids and I left.”

“But I didn’t take them too far away. You know so they could see him.”

“And his new wife was a good friend of mine before they got together! He called me once with a problem and I told him, “Why don’t you talk to my friend. And he did and he married her!”

Kristi interjected with a personal story about her family.

Boss responded: “Well, I’ve always believed that God only gives you what you can handle. “But when I lost my grandchildren,” (and she said this in the way I’m sure she says it every time she talks about this tragedy: “I said- you said you didn’t give me more than I can handle, but – – – you’re pushing it.”

She went on to tell us about her kids, that they are all spread out and it’s her fault. After all, she is the one who told them not to stay in Massachusetts.

Before you know it, it was 7:45 and time to load our next tour.

Boss slid out of Big Bertha and turned back to take one last sip out of her contigo: “Well I didn’t expect to get into all of that.”

She lifted her mug and said “It’s good. You know, for bonding” and her eyes sparkled as she heaved the door shut and paced away, wearing the matching green jacket we all wear.

It’s hard to imagine that Boss cried for the first time about her mother 50-ish years after her mom died. It’s hard to imagine that we would be the ones to be told such a story. It’s hard to imagine that her grandchildren (seemed to have) died in a fire. It’s hard to imagine that this woman is still working the docks at age 75 and does it with a smile on her face, and a heapful of sarcasm.

But what I do understand is that I simply love her and that her story was a sacred telling.

Dan Allender writes about how there are some stories in your life that have to be told and retold as you life, to get the dignity they deserve.

I think Boss has been telling the story of her loss of her mother (and how distanced they were) her whole life, but not out loud.
The fact that she would choose to share it verbally, above the surface, has significance and weight to me. I want to be grateful forever for her sharing it.