A Promise Kept

Dear Mom,

This month makes it seven years since we said goodbye.? On some days it feels like a story I watched in a movie, not something that happened in real life.? On other days, life feels so full of happiness, of smiles, of blond hair on a bouncing boy you’ve never met, that I forget.? Life is never without its intricacies, its obstacles, and its stories, but it’s the act of facing our most difficult moments that helps make us stronger.? We learn, as we grow, that the only way out is through.

A month before our goodbye, you let me share your story with the world, and that story inspired so many people.? I promised you that I would be ok.??

Mom, I kept my promise.

I’m writing this letter to you from the guest room of the house we bought.? I’m writing this letter as a blond six year-old rests his head on my lap, home on a sick day from Kindergarten.? I’m writing this because your biggest hope was the one that I now understand with all of my heart; the hope that your children will one day grow up to find love, give love, and spread love.??

When I first came out to you, told you the whole truth about the secrets inside of my heart, you were so scared that I would grow up in a world that couldn’t love me back, that I wouldn’t be able to realize my dreams, that the world would show me a coldness and a brutality from which you couldn’t protect me.? That conversation between a young boy and his Mom happened 20 years ago, and the world is, in many ways, a much different place.

This Fall, my husband and I will celebrate ten years of marriage.? You knew him, you loved him, and you held my hand and walked me down the aisle right next to him.? You trusted him to love me, to take care of me and to start a family with me.? You wanted desperately to be a Grandma, and in every story I will tell our son for the rest of the time we’re together, you will always be his Grandma, my Mom.

And in some of your final words to me, you expressed that you thought that in my life, I might be able to find ways to help people.? I will spend the rest of my life trying to help, teaching my son to be kind and helpful.? At work, I ask every guest the same question, informed by a promise I’m bound to keep; “How can I be helpful?”? So many people hear me ask the question, but so few know why I do.

Mom, I want you to know that I am happy.? I have found a career that allows me to make the rest of the world invisible for my guests for a few short hours, that helps blur the lines between a world that can be too rough for too many and the world I help create for my guests.? I’ve helped families remember people they lost to COVID, I’ve helped teammates meet in-person for the first time, I’ve celebrated birthdays and engagements and Mitzvahs and divorces.

It’s my second year at Topgolf, but like the best experiences, it feels like so much longer than that.? There’s the old expression about time flying when you’re having fun, but I haven’t heard one yet about how quickly time flies when you’re busy beyond compare for two years.? We all have moments at work when we feel like the kite, and moments when we feel like the string.? But at the end of the day, a job is a job, work is work, and that would be enough to keep the lights on.? But where I work, Mom, it’s more than that.

You and I would talk about how long your days were when you were the cook at Papa’s Diner back home.? We’d talk about how no one ever came back in the kitchen to say thanks to the cook, about how you felt invisible.? And in every place I’ve spent time since you left, I’ve made it a point to make sure that no one feels invisible, unheard, or unappreciated.? I’ve taken the time to learn names, to wait for an answer after asking “How are you?”.

When I dressed like a pinata and walked every single floor of our building to raise money for the Susan G. Komen Foundation, raising money to fight cancer in the moms, sisters, aunts, cousins, friends, and family of people I’d never meet, I did it because of you.? Because I knew I worked in a place where I could help, where I could affect real change, each and every day.??

And when I accepted my building’s Silver Star Award for Culture, the first person in Sales to win, having won on the strength of votes cast by my fellow Associates, the people working in the heat and snow, in the kitchen and in the bathrooms, in the office and on the floor, I smiled.? Because it meant that it was working, people felt like we were really making a difference together.? And it meant to me that maybe, just maybe, I continued keeping that promise I made to you seven years ago.

Your biggest fear was that the world would treat me poorly because of who I loved, because of who I am, fundamentally, inside.? But since you’ve been gone, I’ve learned that each of us has a pretty big say in who gets to spend time in our world, and that we get to choose the percentage of importance we give to those that we choose to keep close.

On the 4th of July last Summer, I brought my son, your grandson, into Topgolf with me.? He stood on the side of a bus cart, along for the ride across all three floors of the building, handing out ice pops to my teammates working the holiday in sweltering heat, each of them giving away pieces of themselves to their guests, to help, as we all do, make the world go away.? Because of you Mom, and because of the place that has wrapped its arms around my family without question, my son gets to see what gratitude looks like in real life.? He gets to help say thank you, he gets to learn names, he gets to peek behind the curtain at the people who make the magic.? He sees not just the story, but the authors.

The world you were afraid was waiting for me?? It turns out, that if we remember where we came from, and we consciously choose to leave things a little better than we found them, if we do things that scare us, if we allow ourselves the grace to be imperfect, and if we are both humbled and buoyed by our successes and failures, then the world that waits for us is a world that we help define, every day.

I choose to work for a company that sees me, that loves me, that values me.? I make that choice every single day.? And when I walk through the lobby at Topgolf, I know that my husband and our son are welcome, invited, and celebrated.? We are loved, just as you’d hoped.??

The only way out is through.? Some days are hard, and some days are even harder.? But they’re never spent alone.

You are here, inside of my heart, every day.? You’re in the smiles I give my guests, you’re in the programs I create that help spotlight other people.? You’re in the successes and the struggles, the wins and the losses, all working together to keep me pushing forward, year after year, month after month, day after day.? Life is all of those beautiful pieces, all at once.

Thanks for teaching me how to step back and appreciate the picture that those pieces create, together.

Love you, Mom.