A Life Well Lived
Posted on May 30, 2008
Filed Under Relationships | 8 Comments
Always center stage, the star of all life’s dramas and comedies, a 5’1” package of fire and lightning, sharp edges and razor wit, my mother was theater to her fingertips. Today is the first anniversary of her death, the yarzheit, and the complications of our relationship arose from the dichotomy of our being at once too different and too much alike; it has taken the space of a year to gain the perspective needed to begin to see and appreciate who she was, and the gift she was to me.
An inveterate believer in the future, her personal mantra was “I must go on trying!” So much a part of her was this unwavering sense of determination that, upon her death, my sister and I immediately agreed that this line would be engraved on the tombstone. As a lifelong atheist who viewed death as the last act, and one without encores, Mama would be the first to laugh at the irony.
She had a good run, 88 years, in which she lived as she wished, was adored by two good men, enjoyed either the love or the loathing all those who knew her (there was very little gray area where she was involved), and died on her own terms, with her nearest and dearest racing from points around the world to reach her in time; she was not to be rushed at her final curtain.
As an actress, writer, and composer who could tear a Shakespearean passion to tatters, deftly manipulate public opinion, and pen both a lyric and melody filled with either poignancy or laughter, she was sure of her strengths and disinclined to acknowledge her weaknesses.
Ardent in her beliefs and staunch in her opinions, she could never be described as “middle of the road”. A card-carrying Hollywood communist at 17, by the age of 30 she was a true believer in Joseph McCarthy. When she wed my stepfather in 1985, she teasingly referred to theirs as “a mixed marriage”– not because she was an intellectual Jew and he a devout Irish Catholic, but because he was a Democrat and she a Republican…
Never hesitant to back a cause or candidate with her time and talents, she didn’t know how to back down, and had no interest in doing so. She taught me the importance of giving the full measure of one’s devotion to those people and ideals in which one believes– and she taught me well, as I find myself constitutionally unable to do less.
She also ingrained in me the love of language. While other three-year-olds were being read tales from Mother Goose and Dr. Seuss, I felt the flames and heard the voices as she performed for me Shaw’s “Saint Joan”, and trembled at the rage and pain in her voice as she transformed herself into Shakespeare’s Queen Margaret, inventorying the crimes of Richard III and calling for revenge on
“…A hellhound that doth hunt us all to death:
That dog, that had his teeth before his eyes,
To worry lambs and lap their gentle blood,
That foul defacer of God’s handiwork,
That excellent grand tyrant of the earth
That reigns in gallèd eyes of weeping souls,
Thy womb let loose to chase us to our graves…”
Not the usual stuff of early childhood. But nothing about her was usual. And while there was no doubt that she loved her daughters, motherhood did not come to her naturally or easily; instinctively, she was more inclined to train us, as would a director, and perceived us not so much as children, but as unreasonably recalcitrant actors who would not follow her notes and stage instructions.
By her own admission, she could only see her children as extensions of herself, rather than as separate and unique individuals, and could not entertain as possible—let alone credit as being valid— anything in us that she did not first find true of herself.
My sister, Moira, blessed with a strong sense of self-preservation and natural gifts in an area far removed from our mother’s spheres of expertise and bone-stripping criticism, knew by the age of nine that she would become an architect. My own passions, however, were too much the same as Mama’s, and while I pulled away early from performing, knowing that I couldn’t survive being torn apart and then remade in her image, writing was an inescapable part of me.
It was unfortunate that, despite having much in common, there existed between us an essential, fundamental difference– something very simple, but impossible to overcome—that set us on a permanent and unyielding collision course with one another: whereas she could only feel something after first consciously thinking it, I have always been the opposite, and can only consciously think something after first feeling it. For her, logic would always triumph over emotion; for me, the former never stood a chance against the latter.
So simply stated, this hardly seems sufficient to act as the ongoing catalyst for a lifetime of miscommunication, but there it is, and that it did; every experience, every relationship, every desire, every regret, was, for each of us, filtered through a perspective 180-degrees in opposition to that of the other. And throughout my life, she steadfastly insisted that my perspective was a nonexistent delusion, an impossibility; no one could be put together in that way.
From habit born in childhood and an aching need for her stamp of legitimacy, I spent the first forty years of my life asking for her validation of who I was, and the next ten years gradually coming to terms with the painful fact that it was something she would never grant me. And she never did.
Instead, she did other things. She taught me not to believe anyone who said “you can’t…” She taught me that it’s not arrogance if you can deliver. She taught me to take risks, and to not be afraid of working without a net. She taught me that anyone who believes death is the worst thing that can happen has absolutely no imagination. She taught me to give my heart unconditionally, without measure or limitation, but to walk away from any man who didn’t fully appreciate what he was getting in me.
And it wasn’t that she taught me to think outside the box, but rather, to her way of thinking, there was no box…
On the night she died, my stepfather advised me the local newspaper would need her obituary in the morning, and he asked me to write it. It was not my finest piece of work, but it was the toughest assignment I’ve ever had. As I wrote, I felt her watching over my shoulder and, when it was finished, giving me a wry smile and the slightest nod of approval.
What I wrote that night one year ago was a piece of the story, a fragment, as is what I’ve written this day; I suspect that throughout the remainder of my life I’ll continue to ponder and work through other aspects of that complex compilation of uncompromising truths, surprising contradictions, hidden facets, unasked questions, feathered persuasion, blunt trauma, demanding perfectionism, and fierce loyalty that composed just some of the building blocks from which she was constructed.
There was a lot that she did wrong—but there was also a lot that she did right. And above all, she never stopped trying.
My sister took that message with her when, after a decade in Iran, she moved to Hong Kong at the age of forty and, in 1981, opened her own architecture and design company with the goal of building an empire; today, M. Moser Associates, Ltd., has eleven offices across the world, from London and New York to Delhi and Beijing, and a client list that reads like a “Who’s Who” of international big business.
I’m hard at work on two major projects that no one sane would ever believe could be brought off—but I don’t hear the words “you can’t”, and long ago came to realize that sanity was an overrated, self-limiting commodity to which I should never aspire…
Mama always hated funerals, and didn’t wish one for herself; what she wanted was a fabulous party, at which people would eat well, drink well, speak of her in exceptionally glowing terms, and leave feeling damned glad to have known her. And that’s what she got. Hers was a life well lived and, far more than most, those parts of the script she didn’t write herself, she edited to her liking.
And I don’t for a minute doubt that she accepts full responsibility for the final cut.
——————————————————————-
OBITUARY:
May 30, 2007
Camino, California
“Born in a trunk, and raised on printer’s ink” is the way in which Halmar Forrest Moser Flynn, 88, who died May 30th from congestive heart failure and pneumonia at her home in Camino, invariably described her beginnings. The actress, dancer, writer, and composer was born in Chicago, March 21, 1919, to actors Hazel Howell and Al Wohlman, and was brought up in the artists’ colony of Laguna Beach, California by actors/newspaper writers Marion and Hal Forrest; her first name was the deliberate combination of those of her four parents.
Classically trained to both ballet and the stage, she began performing professionally at the age of five, and as an actress and dancer participated from its very beginning in Laguna’s famed Festival of The Arts. Growing up the daughter of the editor of The South Coast News, the newspaper was another of her frequent haunts, and by her teens she was writing a column about Laguna’s colorful denizens, as well as learning the discipline of straight reporting. As a passion for writing came to dominate her interests, her love of both words and music found expression through pen and typewriter, and rather than physically interpreting the work of others, she preferred to create her own.
In 1943 she fell in love with Swiss entrepreneur Fred Moser, whose interests and involvements ranged from nightclubs and resorts to the discovery and development of natural resources. Until his death in 1978 they shared 35 years together, and over those four decades she wrote novels, plays, musicals, special material for Hollywood stars, and eventually created for herself a highly successful career in public relations, which had previously been virtually unknown in El Dorado County.
For much of the past 25 years she focused her creative efforts on musical theatre, and collaborated extensively with locally well-known pianist and vocalist John Trenalone. At the time of her death she was working on a show based on the Ayn Rand novel “Anthem”.
In 1985 she married El Dorado County native, politico, and consultant Joe Flynn, and with him embarked on a series of high-flying adventures that saw them criss-crossing the skies above United States in their single-engine Beechcraft, with Joe at the controls. Whether exploring America, campaigning for the causes in which they believed, debating ideas, or wandering through Europe and being kidnapped in Israel, love and laughter was at the foundation of their lives together, and their world never ceased being one of discoveries.
She is survived by her husband, Joe, of Camino; brother Juan Forster of Huntington Beach, California; daughter Moira Moser Luk and son-in-law Joseph Luk, both of Hong Kong; daughter Shoshanna Moser of Gold Beach, Oregon; son Scott Forrest of Beverly Hills, California, and grandson Daston Kalili of Hollywood, California.
As she would have wished, her family and friends converged from around the globe in time to say goodbye and, center-stage to the end, she was not to be done out of her final- act curtain.
At her request there will be no funeral services, but her friends are invited to join in a gala memorial celebration of her life on Tuesday, June 5th, from 3:00-7:00 p.m. at The Sequoia Restaurant in Placerville.
Comments
8 Responses to “A Life Well Lived”
Leave a Reply
Your mother sounds like a woman I would have loved to have been friends with. In fact, your wit and charm leads me to believe that you would be a terrific friend as well.
Peggy, who is trying to catch up with the blogging class
What a wonderful post and tribute.
I really enjoyed reading it.
Carol
That’s all we can ask in the end is a life well lived. It sounds like indeed your mother had that. I enjoyed reading this.
You have dealt with something in your life which is imminent in mine,my Mum being 86yo cannot live forever, I know this intellectually but my heart cannot accept it. Since my stepfather,s death last year August 17th,I have had her in my care, not in my home but taking her shopping and cooking her meals etc. We have grown closer than ever!
Thankyou for this moving tribute to your Mum,she sure was a character and I enjoyed reading about her and you immensely!
I think it is wonderful that your mother was able to admit that she wanted you to be an extension of herself. Mine certainly felt that way also, but it came across in the form of endless criticism. It’s good to know what the ground rules are. A beautifully written post.
The anniversary of my own mother’s death recently passed this spring. Although we were never close, not even when I was an infant, there is something about a mother’s passing that hits one’s core.
Thank you for sharing your own story and memories.
What a fabulous shot in my life’s vein to stumble accross this while exploring the internet on this Sunday morning Shahanna.
You are an exceptional talent and a brite angel who truely relects the best of Halmar and beyond. And..I can tell you this from my personal experience with Halmar that she knew it before she passed
I honor you and your beautiful soul.
I’m doing research for a book on “Boo Boo” Hoff, a colorful Philadelphia bootlegger and major figure in boxing during the Roaring Twenties. According to Philadelphia newspapers, Al Wohlman, your grandfather, was an entertainer at Hoff’s Piccadilly Cafe. Do you know where can get more info on Mr. Wohlman?
Thanks. Parry Desmond