MooMoopalooza

Today, October 16, would have been my mother’s 92nd birthday.  As some of you know, she passed away this June- following a hunger strike and snit fit of major proportions.

She died the way she lived.  In a rage and fighting with everyone who tried to help her.  A contrarian to the very end, she was also beautiful, ambitious and street smart.

She was an original.

And a whiz at cards.

For many years, she and my father lived in Las Vegas so she could play in a big poker game all winter long.  (My father, glad to be out of the harsh Chicago weather, never gambled. He happily spent his time sunning or reading in the Bally Sports Book.)

In the summer, they rented an apartment in Cannes so Moo Moo (as her first grandchild, Natasha, indelibly dubbed her) could hit the casino in Monte Carlo every night.

But as she got older, she stopped flying and sought out gaming venues closer to home.

This is what she came up with.

The gambling boats in East Chicago, Indiana.

At least three times a week- and sometimes more- she would press gang my poor father into driving her there from their apartment in Northbrook just so she could feed her jones.

Gambler’s Anonymous Sidebar:  Yep, my father was a nice guy.  He was also an enabler.  It was easier to give in to her incessant demands than fight with her.  Or face the reality that he had married a gorgeous lunatic.  We all suffered from her behavior but his behavior was, at times, just as mystifying to me.  It takes two in every relationship to create a monster.  It was my hard luck that these two co-dependents hooked up.

But when my father fell and broke his hip and wrist and could no longer drive her to Indiana, she turned to her illegal underground poker tournaments.

Kenny took her to one of these forays once and told me about it.

OMG.

Smoke-filled rooms filled with shady men.  CASH to the ceiling.  Armed pistolleros wearing bullet belts.

I’m not kidding.  This was hard core.

And then, on July 18, 2011, everything changed.

Rivers Casino opened in Des Plaines.

Moo Moo didn’t frequent it too much right away.  They didn’t have live poker or something.

But she’d dipped a toe in a couple of times a week just for a change.

But four years ago, when my dad had to move into

a nursing home, she went all in.

She drove there every day from her apartment in Northbrook.

EVERY SINGLE DAY.

Come hell or high water.  In good weather or bad.  Come nine a.m. there she’d be hanging on the door.

That’s 18.6 miles- or 29 minutes- via I-294 South.

She’d gamble and then at 11:30, she’d hit the buffet line.

You can see the seating arrangement in the above photograph.  There are no tables for a party of one.

But woe betide the poor hostess who tried to seat anyone with Moo Moo. She needed her space and wasn’t going to tolerate some gabby stranger horning in on her “me” time.  And she wasn’t any too shy about letting her desires in this matter become public record.

Thus she always sat at a table by herself.

She went to Rivers every day until March of 2015- when she had a car accident on the tollway.

Enough was enough.  Her compulsive driving to the casino was putting her- and innocent bystanders- at risk.

Kenny forcibly took the car keys away.

This was the beginning of the End of Moo Moo.

Deprived of a way to feed the gambling monkey on her back- she refused to take taxis, limos, Ubers or any other means to get her there- her life had become meaningless and empty.

(Never mind the children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren around for her to enjoy. If she wasn’t bluffing some scumbag out of his rent money, life was not worth living.)

When she died in June, there was no way to get her descendants quickly together.

And she left strict instructions with Kenny that she wanted no one at her funeral.

This is what that looks like.

Beyond pathetic.  No friends.  No family. Kenny and I- and the guys who dug the grave- were her pallbearers.

But we never listened to her paranoid ravings when she was alive.  We certainly weren’t going to honor her bitter demands now that she was gone.

We decided to throw her a memorial service around her birthday to pay her tribute.

It would give the far-flung grandchildren enough notice to plan a trip to Chicago and it would be a nice time of year for them to come in town.

But what to do?

Kenny and I kicked around a few ideas but none of them grabbed us.

Dinner at a restaurant?

Eh.

A get-together at my/his house?

Meh.

“How about a poker tournament at my house?” I idly suggested.  “That would be fun and certainly in the spirit of things.”

“How about Rivers?” was Kenny’s comeback.

Of course! Brilliant!

So an invitation to honor, reminisce and gamble went out to all four corners of the United States.

And from Boston, Seattle and Los Angeles they came.

They came and they ate dinner.

At the casino buffet, of course.

We all sat together.  (Kenny thought it might be fitting if we all sat at separate tables, but in the end, good sense prevailed and we had dinner at one big table.)

And they played.

Each family member was given a $100 black chip in honor of Moo Moo and the person who won the most in 45 minutes was given another black chip as a prize.

My son, Nick, was the evening’s big winner.  Playing blackjack, he managed to turn his $100 into $275 and was duly awarded the bonus chip.

Moo Moo would have been so proud.