Buffalo Wild Wings Royalty

On Tuesday, for the anniversary of my mom’s passing, I decided to spend it doing things she would have loved to do with me. I didn’t know what to do to mark the occasion. What do you even do on the day that is three hundred and sixty-five days without your person? I couldn’t decide until the day before, when I was lying in the sun by the pool with a friend, Bex, who lost her father four years ago. She graciously shared what she did and reminded me that last year I was there and that we watched the original Mad Max in honor of her action-movie-loving dad. After a lot of thought, I decided that swimming and eating burgers and wings with friends would be the ticket.

The pool, because on my last visit to Florida, while my mom was healthier than not, I got pool floaties and forced both her and my aunt Kathy to get in the water with me. They hadn’t been in a while, despite living in a place that regularly boasts temperatures over 90 degrees in the summer, and my mom having a pool in her above-55+ community. My mom got on her glittery tube, and she felt like she couldn’t breathe. She got scared, but insisted on staying in it for a little bit, to stay in the moment with us, and eventually she realized it was just her anxiety making her short of breath, and not her COPD. We stayed in the pool for a couple of hours, and I pushed them both around in their tubes. It was wonderful, and I got to experience a core tenet of my own joy with my mom and my aunt, making a memory that I knew, even then, would really mean something one day when my mom was gone.

The wings because a few years ago I surprised my mom by visiting her in Florida. I hadn’t visited in a while, and I coordinated with my aunt and uncle to keep it a secret. When I knocked on the door, and she came to answer it, she was shellshocked, completely and totally confused about what was happening. And then, once she realized that it was me, in the flesh, there to surprise her, she was so, so happy. She cried, she got snotty, she pulled it together, and she just sat beside me and petted my hand, holding hers, like a cat. I had an abundance of clothes and makeup left over from photoshoots, and I brought a checked bag full of it for my mom and my aunt. They both said it was like Christmas. That night, my aunt Kathy made us all steaks to celebrate.

The next night, my mom took me out to Buffalo Wild Wings. We didn’t frequent restaurants a lot when I was growing up. My dad didn’t like going into them, and we didn’t have a lot of disposable income, so we mostly ate fast food when we went out. Going to Buffalo Wild Wings with just mom felt like this right of passage– this big, beautiful thing. Like now we were both adults, independent women, out for the night. She was the toast of the sports bar, making small talk with all the waiters and waitresses, telling anyone who would listen about my accomplishments both major (“She flew here to surprise me! She starred in a podcast! She walked the red carpet! She’s smoked weed with Willie Nelson!”) and minor (“Look at her nails! She told them she wanted them to be the colors of a hot Cheeto bag!”) We were the entire wait staffs entertainment for the night and she controlled the room like she was doing a stand up set. Everyone loved her.

Our meal and the entertainment at our personal table was wonderful too. She drank a Coke, goaded me into ordering a beer, and we ate hot wings. The conversation we had was perfect in every way, but not for public consumption to protect the innocent (though if you see me in real life and ask me to tell you, I probably will). But what I will say is that it left me feeling, for the first time in my adulthood, that I had a family tree I had actually fallen from. After years of feeling like an outcast because I wanted to leave my hometown and make something for myself, this was a much-welcomed feeling. I felt at home with my mom at a Buffalo Wild Wings.
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And so on the anniversary of my mom’s passing, I spent most of the day crying, as to be expected. But I also spent it lying in the sun with a couple of friends, taking turns dipping carrots into hummus and passing a bag of hot honey popcorn back and forth. I drank a caffeine-free Coke and thought about how much my mom would love the people I’ve surrounded myself with here, how she’d listen intently when they tell her about themselves. When it was time to head over to meet everyone else for dinner, I passed out heart-shaped buttons with a photo of my mom on them to my friends, and the tears started again. Seeing her on the chests of these people who have walked me through the past year of my life, sitting with me in the pain of being without her, was a shattering catharsis.

For the rest of the night I’d hear someone laugh and look over to see my mom emblazoned on them. Some friends chose buttons from the variety I had prepared and said things like “I want this one, it’s my favorite photo of her.” It’s a joy to be loved like that– these friends never met my mom and never will, but still, they have a favorite photo of her. They all tell me they’re getting to know bits of her through me. It breaks my heart because it’s just a shadow, but it’s still something.

Last year, I hosted a memorial in both North Carolina and Florida for my mom. Everyone said both of them were beautiful, but as an only child, most of the work of hosting and organizing them fell on me. It was a wonderful experience, but it felt like a service I needed to provide for my mom’s friends and family to be able to grieve for her. I was glad to do it, of course, but logistically producing events in the middle of grief left me feeling drained and filled with more deep sadness than I had before I held them. Sitting with twenty of my dearest friends on a patio, eating fries off of each other’s plates, and talking about my mom felt like a memorial that was made just for me.

If you are reading this, I hope today you will think about the absolute force of nature that was my mom, Vicki Hall Barnes, and I hope that you’ll do something in her honor, even just for a moment. And if you’re asking yourself, “What would Vicki do?” I happen to be a scholar on the topic: She’d toss compliments out like candy at a main street parade. She’d have a long conversation with a stranger or buy a meal for someone on the street, or sit in the sun next to the water and make small talk with the passersby. She’d buy you a coffee and thank you for being there for me. She would be fascinated by the beautiful world around her and she would tell about it

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