Topic: A Party

Mom’s Last Party

My mom’s parties were legendary.  Every year sometime between Christmas and New Year’s Eve she’d have a get together at her house.  She’d invite over a hundred people, and she’d make all the food herself. There would be platters of cookies and treats, veggie trays with exotic dips, multiple crockpots with meatballs “from around the world”, bruschetta, baked brie en croute, liver pate, giant seafood salad in a big shell-shaped bowl, homemade guacamole, and endless bowl of punch so lethal that mom printed up a warning label for her guests.  My parents hosted this party nearly every year of their 50+ year marriage.  Once, according to Dunn family legend, they even cashed in a life insurance policy during the leaner years before mom became a lawyer, to finance the party. 

Every year for my birthday mom would offer to throw a party even once I was grown with kids.  She’d prepare a sit- down dinner for me and a dozen of my closest friends.  She’d let me choose the menu.  Nothing was too daunting for her—crab soufflé, baked Alaska, standing prime rib roast were just a few of her specialties.  When she learned that crème brulee was my dessert of choice, she bought a set of ramekins and a culinary torch specifically, so she could make it for me.   

She’d plan cast parties at her house for her community theater buddies when she was well into her seventies.  About 30 cast and crew members would arrive at her place closing night around 11pm, and she’d have everything waiting.  There would be a crockpot full of pulled pork, homemade coleslaw, buns from the North College Hill bakery, a fruit salad in the fridge, and homemade dessert bars.  Her basement fridge was full sized and was always stocked for a party-water, soft drinks, and assorted alcohol.  She was the most thoughtful hostess I’ve ever met.  If a guest was going vegan or gluten-free she’d accommodate their dietary restrictions without being asked.  When family members decided to get sober she’d have their preferred non-alcoholic drink on hand at all times.  For those of us, like me, that weren’t sober, she’d always have a bottle of Bacardi, and Diet Coke for mixing, behind the basement bar. 

She loved planning parties almost as much as executing a successful event.  When it was time for my parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary, a lavish catered event with a guest list of over one hundred people, she instituted a party planning committee consisting of me and my younger brothers.  She had spreadsheets.  We had assignments.  This party was even bigger than the annual Dunn holiday party, so we had to hold it at my brother’s place.  It was June 6, 2014, and yard had been transformed.  Balloons and lights were hung in the yard.  My son’s band was set up on the deck and played a set list that she ordered.  The garage was turned into a bar with as many selections as most local pubs.  The yard was scattered with tables covered with yellow tablecloths.  There were places to sit or stand and listen to the music.  She had a photo booth with props.  There was a big screen tv set up in a tent which featured a slide show of Dunn family pics over the years interspersed with Dunn family trivia questions.  One of the questions was, “At the end of this year, how many Dunn family Christmas parties will have been held?”  The correct answer was fifty.   For this party, mom and I made appetizers, but in a rare move of accepting help, she opted to have the entrée catered.  She shopped around until she found a caterer that was up to her exacting culinary standards.  For any event with her name on it, the food not only had to look good, it had to taste good, memorably good.  People would talk about her parties and a specific dish she had featured years later. 

Mom got diagnosed with a particularly aggressive cancer in the fall of 2015.  Multiple myeloma was such a cruel bitch that she took away the Dunn holiday party of 2015.  I offered to help make it happen, but her heart wasn’t in it.  She let me cook Thanksgiving dinner that year, one of her favorite tasks, provided she got to “coach” me while I did it.  I had to make the glazed onions, the mashed potatoes, the whole deal while she watched me, making suggestions and giving me directives in what had become her  thin, always tired voice. 

On February 12, 2016, my siblings and I were called to the hospital.  She had just signed up for hospice.  They had done an MRI of her brain earlier that day and the lesions from her cancer were everywhere including her brain.  She was pretty high on morphine and she was still talking to us.  She made us all stand at the end of her bed and my brother’s girlfriend took a picture of us.  Then she said, “Okay, funeral plans. . . “ 

Mom had her final party planning meeting right there in that hospital room.  She wanted us to use Hodapp Funeral Home.  “They do a nice job,” she reasoned.  She wanted a funeral Mass at St. Vivian’s.  I would sing “Softly and Tenderly” and my niece Sammi would sing “Ave Maria”.  She rushed through all those details, so she could get to what mattered the most to her, the wake, mom’s last party.  We would have it at the house and everyone would be invited.  She told me, “I know you think you’re going to make all the food, Bridg, but you’ll be too sad.  Call those caterers that did the anniversary party.”  She told us to spare no expense.  Her wake had to be classy.  We would have plenty of booze, especially plenty of Dewar’s, her favorite, on hand. 

After that burst of funeral plan energy mom lapsed into altered levels of consciousness.  The next morning when I arrived to accompany her home the only things I heard her say were, “Oh Jesus”, “Oh shit,” and “Where’s the fucking morphine?”  After a bumpy ambulance ride home, and we got her set up in her hospital bed in the living room, she looked around puzzled and said, “Where’s hospice?”  What she meant was, “Why am I still here?” 

Mom didn’t speak after that and she died quietly at 5:46 P.M. in her living room on Valentine’s Day 2016 with my dad on one side and me on the other.  My daughter and my youngest brother huddled together on the couch in disbelief.

A week after she had planned her last party, we got to execute her plan.  At her packed out funeral mass each of us kids took a turn sharing about mom, ignoring the suggested five-minute time limit. My youngest brother Marty went last providing the invite to the wake right there in the middle of St. Vivian’s church:

“I want you all to know one more thing I learned from her. . .Irish hospitality.  Tonight, OUR house is open to all of you and your friends.  Please don’t feel you are not “close” enough.  Understand that this is a celebration, not a solemn event.  A celebration of her life, her legacy, and her story.  Dress comfortably, bring nothing but a smile, and let’s give HER the party she deserves.”

And we did.  It seemed like everyone mom had ever known showed up at the house that night-even my ex-husband, neighbors from where we lived back in the seventies, law school cronies, her community theater family, actual family, so many people.  My siblings and I started off in the basement bar and passed around a bottle of Dewar’s drinking a quick toast to her memory.  The catering bill was pretty steep, but we had endless hot hors d’ oeuvres with wait staff keeping everything rolling.  Neighbors brought an array of homemade desserts.  The party went on in the wee hours of the morning.  It was probably one of the best parties I’ve attended.   People joked that it was a shame she was missing this great party.  She would have loved it they said.  But she didn’t miss it.  She was there.