My Mom Died And The People Called It Ragtime

We can never go back to before

The era of Ragtime had run out, as if history were no more than a tune on a player piano. But we did not know that then.

I’ve always been obsessed with this lyric said by The Little Boy during the “Wheels of A Dream Reprise” at the end of the musical Ragtime ever since I got the double CD Original Broadway Recording for Christmas 1998. I never really knew why, but I guess I thought it was cool that the show acknowledged that this song is the end of the story, but only so far as how the audience is perceiving that story. The characters don’t know they are in a show with a beginning, middle, and end. Fictional characters are a lot like real people in that way. 

I’ve been having trouble with it being 2023. I don’t enjoy that it’s 2023. Day to day, it’s fine, but conceptually? That it’s 2023? Hard pass. I thought this anxiety was rooted in the fact that this calendar year marks the 5th anniversary of my mom’s death, which makes sense because five years seems like a lot of years. If you’re in the five year zone, time to move on, most would say. Well, they’d never say it. They’d think it though. Wouldn’t you? Haven’t you? Aren’t you maybe thinking it right now?

But actually -- record scratch -- it’s not really the 5th anniversary of my mom’s death that’s bugging me. What’s bugging me is it’s the 5th anniversary of every day in 2018 before that because these are the 5th anniversaries of the last days of my old life. I’m five years away from my old life or just, as I used to call it, my life.

In 2018 and the preceding years, I went to work every day and then at night I’d either go to the comedy theater where I performed for 12 years or I’d go to someone else’s show or I’d be coaching, rehearsing, directing something else in some rehearsal space the idiosyncrasies of which continue to boggle the mind. I mean, there used to be a place called Where Eagles Dare: the rooms were named after birds and the room’s sizes corresponded to the size of that bird. God help you if you were a fledgling improviser who didn’t know if your troupe corresponded more in size to an egret or an ostrich because another fun fact about Where Eagles Dare is that the staff there was very mean. 

My mom was alive and though she was sick, she was probably texting me multiple times a day about some celebrity tweet she didn’t understand, asking me what clothes I needed for an upcoming wedding, or just “ok?” If I didn’t respond to the texts, she’d call, repeatedly. There was such an urgency, every text set to self-detonate if not defused with the “k” response within 10 minutes.

In the morning, I’d take the train or occasionally the ferry (on which I would listen to Carly Simon’s “Let The River Run” from Working Girl because I’m an on the nose type of gal) and then run around Manhattan till what felt like the next day. I’d run into people at these shows and rehearsal spaces -- best friends, teammates, people who were acquaintances who I always felt like I should be better friends with, people whose whole deal was always kind of a mystery to me, and even people I couldn’t stand. We’d go out for one drink which meant four. Monday felt so far from Friday. 

Now my days aren't full. My mom died and I pulled back from the world and then in 2020 we all pulled back from each other. I still get texts (I’m cool), but they are not chaotic exchanges that at least two people’s mental health hinges upon.

There’s a scene in the 1995 movie Boys On The Side starring Mary-Louise Parker and daytime talk show hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Drew Barrymore in which Mary-Louise Parker’s mom tells her “you were the only one happy in those pictures”* as MLP sifts through old family photos. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who misses the old life. What’s sad about the concept of “glory days'” is the glory days aren’t even mutually agreed upon! Bruce Springsteen did not warn us that glory days are in the eye of the beholder. 

*This movie is not easily streamable, so I couldn’t verify this is exactly how that scene unfolds, but this is how I remember it, which is a major theme around these parts.

Around 2021, a year into Covid, I started to really resent being pinned to a 625 square foot apartment with no big busy life to be living. I’d take walks and just be mad that there weren’t more places to go, people to see, rooms to reserve based on a bird’s body weight. Here in 2023, I’ve learned to live with all that. I don’t get as mad anymore. I’m still pinned to the same 625 square foot apartment, but it doesn’t bother me as much. I never know how to feel about growth like that. On the one hand, it’s better to feel better. On the other hand, you have arrived at feeling better by adjusting your expectations which feels sad, even if it’s the mature thing to do. Recognizing your limitations leads to a better life, annoying happiness studies will tell you. The Buddha said “life is suffering.” With all due respect to the Enlightened One, that’s a tough adage to adhere to when you’ve grown up with catchier slogans like “Have It Your Way” and “I’m Lovin’ It.” (The Buddha remains notably silent on the topic of whether or not anyone outpizzas the hut.)

We all used to just feel so much and it’s hard for me to let go. One time I got cut from an improv team and openly sobbed on a treadmill at a public gym. That’s high-key hilarious and embarrassing, but I like that I cared that much. Everything felt so high stakes and exciting, even when they were unfair and heartbreaking. A lot of people will never care that much about anything. They will never cry on any communal exercise equipment. Congrats to people who’ve always had perspective, but couldn’t be me. 

The truth is the tune on the player piano was already fading even five years ago from today or yesterday or the day before. My mom was really sick and I wasn’t publicly super clear about that to my friends in order to protect her privacy and also because what do you even say? “Hey guys let’s take it from the top, but this time keep in mind that my mom will die before my next birthday!” Not inspiring direction! Mentally, her illness kept me separate from best friends, teammates, people who were acquaintances who I always felt like I should be better friends with, people whose whole deal was always kind of a mystery to me, and even people I couldn’t stand. This was frustrating at the time, but I’m glad I didn’t make those days about my mom dying because they would turn out to be the last days of my old life. I wouldn’t want to tarnish all my memories of those people I can’t stand because, truly, sometimes I miss them the most. 

In the last couple months of my mom’s life I didn’t really process the whole thing as sad. I knew it was sad, but I was feeling more confused and overwhelmed than sad. I would say the words “hospice” to people and watch their faces break, see them start and stop typing messages. The tragedy was hitting the audience, but the characters didn’t see it yet. I was not an emotional mess. I wasn’t crying on treadmills. I just existed saying the lines, doing the blocking. Nothing really pierced the emotional veil in those last days but then I saw on my phone that Marin Mazzie had died. She was an actress who died September 13, 2018, the day before my mother, of ovarian cancer, the same thing that killed my mother. Marin Mazzie was in Ragtime and she originated the role of Mother. It felt a little on the nose even to me and remember: I listened to a song from Working Girl every day on a ferry to Manhattan. I leapt out of my actual mom’s hospital room and into this crummy little lounge area in the hospital and completely lost it on one of the hospital’s patented “feels flammable”-brand chairs. And that’s how I spent the last day of my old life before my mom died: literally outside my own mom’s hospital room crying about a character called Mother. The era had run out, and I was a character in the show starting to know that then.