October 10th, 2026. My mom would have turned 80 years old today.
It’s strange for me to even write those words, because in my mind, my mother will always be somewhere in her early to mid-forties. Time has a funny way of doing that. We get older, but the people we’ve lost somehow remain captured in a moment exactly as we remember them.
In fact, one of my fondest memories of Mom takes me back to this very day in 1986, when she celebrated her 40th birthday. I remember how I, along with just about everyone else, took great pleasure in reminding her that she was officially “over the hill.”
I myself am now 17 years over the hill. If only I knew then what I know now.
I learned a lot from my mother over the years, beginning on Sunday, October 5th, 1969, the day I entered her world. Some lessons were profound. Others were simple little things that, for whatever reason, have stayed with me all these years.
Something as simple as her handwriting.
My mother had the most beautiful penmanship. Every letter was perfectly formed in blue ink, every word effortlessly flowing into the next. Even something as mundane as a writing me a handwritten excuse for missing school (which I did a lot very little of) looked like it belonged on an engraved invitation.
In fact, I can still recite the exact same note she wrote every single time:
To Whom It May Concern:
Please excuse Jimmy from school yesterday. He did not feel well.
Joanne Wood
Short, sweet and to the point. No elaborate explanations. No unnecessary details. Just two simple sentences and her signature, written in handwriting I’d recognize anywhere.
And nearly 40 years since she wrote her last one of them for me, I still remember every word.
There are plenty of other things I remember about growing up with my mother. Little things that, over time, somehow became part of who I am. Things I absorbed through maternal osmosis, whether I wanted them to or not.
First and foremost, there was Barry Manilow.
From the time I was six years old, I don’t think there was a single afternoon when I came home from school and didn’t hear Barry’s voice coming from the stereo. His music was practically the soundtrack of my childhood.
I knew every song on Barry Manilow II and Even Now. I could recite the track listings from his 1977 live album and could sing you back both Greatest Hits albums in their entirety. Forget multiplication tables. If there had been a test on Barry Manilow’s discography, I would have graduated at the top of my class.
In later years, I even accompanied Mom to a handful of his concerts. And you know what? I loved every minute of it.
Of course, my mother’s affection for Barry went well beyond his music. For despite what everyone else had already known suspected, my mother was absolutely convinced that Barry Manilow was straight.
She also made it perfectly clear, on more than one occasion, that Barry Manilow was the only man she’d ever leave my father for.
I still laugh whenever I think about that. Not just because it sounded funny, but because I genuinely believe that if Barry Manilow had ever shown up at our front door with a suitcase and two tickets to the Copacabana, Dad would have been eating a frozen TV dinner alone that night.
One of the most special, and ultimately bittersweet, moments of my life came in July of 2022. That summer, I managed to land an interview with none other than Barry Manilow himself.
Barry. Freaking. Manilow.
The same man whose voice had filled our house for decades. The man whose albums I’d practically memorized before I was old enough to appreciate what half the songs were about. The man my mother had “jokingly” threatened to run away with. And now I was going to interview him.
There was just one problem. Mom had passed away two years earlier. But that didn’t stop me from subconsciously starting to dial her number on my cell phone to tell her before realizing she wasn’t going to answer.
I can’t begin to tell you how much I wished she could have been there that day. She would have absolutely lost her mind. I could already imagine the questions she’d want me to ask, the stories she’d want me to tell him, and the sheer excitement of knowing her son was about to speak with the man she’d adored for most of her adult life.
In the days leading up to the interview, I kept picturing her sitting beside me, biting her nails, chain smoking cigarettes, and doing her absolute best to remain quiet while I conducted the conversation.
But she couldn’t be there, at least not physically. So, on the day of the interview, I did the next best thing. I took one of my favorite photographs of my mother and placed it on the desk beside me. That way, when Barry called, she would be there too.
And in some small way, she was.
During our conversation, I made a point of telling Barry about my mother. How much she loved his music. How his songs had been a constant presence in our home. And how, even though she was no longer with us, I couldn’t possibly let the opportunity pass without telling him what he’d meant to her.
He was genuinely touched by the sentiment.
For a few moments, I wasn’t just a journalist interviewing a legendary entertainer. I was a little boy again, sitting in the living room listening to Barry Manilow records while my mother sat reading a book.
Only this time, Barry was talking to me. And Mom had the best seat in the house.
Speaking of books, my mother was a huge fan of Stephen King. And when I say huge, I mean huge.
From Carrie all the way through It, Mom bought and devoured just about every novel King published. Vampires, haunted hotels, possessed cars, killer clowns, pet semataries. You name it, she read it. Apparently, the same woman who could spend an afternoon listening to Barry Manilow sing about love and romance had no problem spending her evenings reading about unspeakable horrors.
Talk about your musical and literary whiplash.
In her later years, Mom traded the nightmares of Stephen King for the more uplifting stories found in the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. Quite a transition, if you think about it.
But looking back, I realize just how much those years of watching her read influenced me. My own love of King began with my mother. And somewhere along the way, so did my desire to become a writer.
I didn’t know it at the time, of course. I was just a kid watching his mother get lost in a good book.
Funny how something so simple can leave such a lasting impression.
All these years later, whenever I sit down to work on one of my own novels, I like to think there’s a little bit of my mother in every story I tell. I even dedicated my latest novel, “The Seventh Echo,” to her.
My mother spent nearly 40 years working at Easton Hospital. For most of that time, she worked in Central Registration on the 3-11 shift. Which meant that while my siblings and I were growing up, we generally only saw her in the mornings before school or on her days off.
It was just the way things were.
As a kid, you don’t really give much thought to the sacrifices your parents make. You just assume that’s what moms and dads do. They go to work, pay the bills, help put food on the table, and somehow manage to keep everything running. It’s only when you get older that you begin to appreciate just how much went into making it all happen.
Mom also played a big role in helping me land my first real job at Easton Hospital, working the middle shift in the housekeeping department.
A job I absolutely loathed.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with honest work, and the people I worked alongside were wonderful. But I quickly discovered that being the head garbageman hauling a cart around a hospital wasn’t exactly my calling in life.
Still, I stuck it out until a position opened up in the pharmacy department. That turned out to be a much better fit, and I wound up spending the next seven years there.
For a while, Mom and I were more than just mother and son. We were coworkers. We worked in the same building, knew many of the same people, and shared a connection to a place that had become such a big part of both our lives.
I still remember the day I finally left the hospital to begin a new career in information technology. It was a huge transition for me. After spending so many years walking those familiar hallways, I was stepping into an entirely different world.
And I think, in some ways, it was a transition for her, too. Her son was moving on.
My mother passed away in March 2020, in Easton Hospital of all places, and just as the world was beginning to shut down because of COVID.
It was a strange and frightening time for everyone. Businesses were closing, streets were empty, and suddenly the world we’d always known seemed to have changed overnight.
For me, though, the biggest change had nothing to do with the pandemic at all. My mother was gone.
It’s been more than six years now, and there are still days when something happens and my first instinct is to pick up the phone and call her.
Maybe it’s something funny I know she’d appreciate. Maybe it’s a bit of good news. Or maybe it’s nothing particularly important at all. Just one of those perfectly ordinary conversations you never think twice about having, until you realize you can’t have them anymore.
And that’s the part about losing someone that nobody really prepares you for.
It’s not always the milestone birthdays, holidays, or anniversaries that hurt the most. Sometimes it’s the little things. The everyday moments when you suddenly remember there’s someone missing from your life. Someone who was always there, and someone you just assumed always would be.
Today, my mom would have turned 80. A number I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around. Especially when I think back to 1986 and how much fun we had teasing her about turning 40.
Forty was over the hill. Eighty would have been an entirely different mountain range.
I can only imagine the grief we would have given her today. And I know she would have taken every bit of it in stride.
Looking back today, I realize just how much of my mother is still with me.
It’s funny. When you’re young, you spend so much time trying to become your own person. You want to do things your way, make your own decisions, and carve out your own place in the world.
Then one day you look back and realize just how much of the person you’ve become was shaped by the people who raised you.
I wish Mom could have seen me interview Barry Manilow. I wish I could have handed her a copy of one of my new novels and watched her read it. Most of all, I wish I could pick up the phone today and wish her a happy birthday.
But since I can’t, I’ll do the next best thing. Today, I’ll remember her.
Not as an 80-year-old woman, but as the mother I’ve always known her to be.
Happy 80th birthday, Mom.
I love you.
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