Read the full transcript of author Bonnie Habyan’s talk titled “Who Has Impacted Your Life and Have You Told Them Yet?” at TEDxGainesville 2024 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
The Power of Reflection
BONNIE HABYAN: During the acceptance of his lifetime achievement award at the Emmys in 1997, Fred Rogers, better known as Mister Rogers, asked the audience to take ten seconds to reflect on those who have cared for them, loved them, and made them who they are. So who is at the top of your list and why?
I imagine they lent you something precious, their special glasses, their life lens, sharing with you everything they thought you needed in order to become your best self. God knows I’ve borrowed a ton of glasses during my lifetime, and over the last several years, I’ve invested in a pair of my own. But when I was a little girl, I depended on everybody else’s pretend glasses, the kind shared by those special people who provided glimpses, filters, visions of the future, and wisdom from their time spent here on Earth.
Now there is no one person who touches our lives and single-handedly makes us who we are. Right? There are many. A teacher, a coach, a grandma, a friend, but there’s usually a standout. And for me, that standout was my mom.
Uncovering Wisdom
And over the last several years, in an effort to understand myself better and our relationship, I peeked behind her special glasses, delving inside those firsthand experiences to uncover the tiny gems of wisdom, and walked away with some important ones that have for certain shaped my life. I recently lost her at 91 years old and had the honor of being with her as she took in her last breath, and I’ve come to a rather scary realization.
Here it is, we have a limited window of time to really tell people what they mean to us. A survey from Psychology Today reveals that one of people’s greatest regrets is something called connection regret. In short, they regret the things left unsaid to those who matter most.
Thank you. I love you. You matter. So I am here today for one reason, to ask you to pause, to stop, and to confirm that short list of key people who’ve helped make you who you are and to commit to giving them an absolutely special, powerful, incredible gift. The acknowledgment, whether they are still with you or not, that they made a huge difference in your life and that the lessons they taught you truly mattered.
Express your love and gratitude right now. Do not wait until they are in a ceramic urn on your bookshelf. My standout taught me many life lessons, and I’m about to share them with you. They shaped my life, and I made sure to let her know before she passed. My mom was named Bessie Emma.
Introducing Bess
We always joked it sounded like a cow’s name. The fact is, she was named after her aunt. We all called her Bess, even the grandkids. It was this kind of short, loving synonym fun grandma. Bess grew up in the 1930s, a kid in the Depression era where neighbors would literally run to the corner grocery stores to receive phone calls from their teenage sons serving in the war.
Where her dad, my pop, would paint houses after his full-time day job in exchange for Maryland crab cake or trip to the dentist for his kids, and where Sunday family dinners were as much of a mandatory routine as brushing your teeth, but always and only after the two-mile walk to church and a visit to the cemetery. The dream of college and a career, well, that was in the back seat. In the case of my mom, it was deep under the sea. Yet she had this tremendous wisdom often straddling between what the world was and what the world was becoming. And that critical point where those two worlds collided certainly influenced my upbringing.
And you’re about to hear how these ten interesting life lessons that were absolutely fueled by love, I think.
Life Lessons from Bess
Earn your own money. Back in the 1940s, women were focused primarily on home economics. And in fact, Bess told me she was graded on her dusting ability. She said the teacher almost lowered her grade after she accidentally dropped the rag out of the school window, but she worked extra hard the next several weeks practicing her dusting skills on the small wooden table in the classroom, and she earned herself an A. She left school completely in the ninth grade. And although she never even earned a high school degree, she made me promise at a very young age that I would go to college and get a good job. Why? “So you don’t have to take crap from anyone.”
Dance on a table at least once. I asked my mom how many times she did this during her 91 years, and she said about six times. In other words, enjoy yourself. Let your hair down. Just make sure no one records you on their iPhone because you do not want to end up on TikTok. Maybe you do.
Love all animals, big and small, except maybe for the little bastards. A survey and research in the National Institute of Health shows that people who love animals and pets have a greater capacity for empathy and love, and there could be some truth to that. Because if you Google the phrase “people who don’t like animals and pets,” you get sociopaths and serial killers. That’s alright. I think it’s okay if there’s a caterpillar you don’t like. And what are those little bastards? Well, they’re insects, particularly ants. And my mom used to mutter that profanity under her breath every spring when she would wake up to find thousands marching around the sugar bowl, “You little bastards.” And what do you call people who don’t like ants?
Normal.
Hitch your wagon to a true partner, not half an ass. Bess told me this many times saying, “If you don’t have a real partner, ship them out.” Now she amplified this growing frustration one day when she told me she was getting sick of watching Uncle Phil. I realized she meant Dr. Phil, the guy on TV. And when I asked her why, she said, “All these men and women go on his show and talk about how their spouses did this to them and did that to them. I’m getting sick of hearing it. They just need to ship their asses out. No one needs a half-ass partner.” And you know what? She’s right. Partners need to help each other. Otherwise, why have one? Right? I mean, you could get yourself a dog, a cat one that you really like or maybe even a little bastard.
Run the water when you pee. As a little girl, I was imprinted with the fake news that nobody should hear you pee. It was sort of like breaking one of the ten commandments if they did. And I can still hear the streak of my mom’s voice from our small Baltimore kitchen. “Run the water. No one wants to hear that.” It wasn’t until I was six months pregnant with my daughter that I realized peeing takes precedence. Who cares about the noise?
Roll with the punches, but punch back hard when you have to. Bad things happen to good people. Bad things happen to bad people. The fact is bad things just happen, but being resilient is critical. And I witnessed my mom’s resilience many times, most notably after my dad died. And she had to go back to work at 64 years old at Macy’s full time to learn the new computerized checkout systems. Most people that age, right, are out there crushing it on the pickleball courts. Right? Where are my pickleball friends? And again, in late-stage dementia, when she functioned the best her fading body and mind would allow.
Love golden arches or sometimes found in burgers and fries. Now when I was a little girl, I don’t remember hearing “I love you” all the time, but when I was in the second grade, most Fridays, my mom would bring me a McDonald’s cheeseburger and fries to the school cafeteria. All the other kids were looking on with jealousy, and the lunch moms were absolutely putting that in the neighborhood gossip bag. Can you blame them? And when I look back as an eight-year-old at the 3 AM, quickly fulfilled requests for a toasted waffle and milk, the batches and batches of homemade Christmas cookies, the well-assorted school lunches accessorized with the little surprise holiday treats, like, you know, the little yellow marshmallow peeps. I used to love them. I now know that was her love language. And sometimes we just have to look at the translation a little closer and understand that love is spoken in many ways, not just words, but in burgers and fries too.
Don’t take life so seriously. Be able to laugh at yourself. Alright. A few years back, I had just brought my mom home from the hospital, and I was spending the night with her. I woke up to her sitting at the foot of my bed at 3 AM holding the cordless phone. She said, a loud noise had startled her, and she insisted a bunch of loud teenagers had abandoned a stolen car in the driveway. After a peek out the window and a call to 911, two cop cars arrive. After running a check on the car, one of the policemen slowly approaches the front door. We open it. The two of us in absolute dreadful sight. “Good evening, ma’am. Do you own a 2011 Toyota Corolla?” Whereby Bess said, “Well, yes, officer. We do.” “Well, that’s your car in your driveway.” Oh, my gosh. As Bess climbed back into bed, she couldn’t stop laughing. In between trying to catch her breath, she said, “I wish I could see that officer tell his policeman friends about how this nut and her daughter caught in a stolen car that was theirs.” I didn’t know if I was going to laugh or cry, but as Bess reminded me, “Oh, Bon, lighten up. Don’t take life so seriously.” And you know what? She is right. You know why? Because stories like these are absolute gold when you’re having a glass of wine with friends.
Life is one big connection. Throw parties, go to dances, celebrate your friends. Bess loved a good party. And at the end of her life, all she wanted to do was to relive happy memories and connections, joyfully sifting through all the ones she had made with friends and family. Fun holidays, great outings, and all the times and places she had danced on tables. She knew a lot of people and she absolutely loved hearing that people knew of her. I mean, it didn’t matter if I just came home from the grocery store or walked thirty feet to and from the mailbox. The first question I would get when I walked through the door was, “Bon, did you see anybody we know?” One time, my brother took her to the cemetery to visit a friend, and he said she wandered off and was looking at all the tombstones, cane in hand. And when he said, “Ma, what are you doing?” She said, “Well, there are a lot of dead people here. I want to see if I dated any of them.”
Death can have its light moments. Don’t be afraid. There’s something to be said about seeing someone who has had such an impact on your life disintegrate before your eyes, and there’s something else to be said about seeing that person have a sense of humor about death knowing that that moment is imminent. One morning, Bess sweetly but bluntly asked her nurse, “Aren’t you glad when you come in to wake me up and you touch my hand and I’m still warm?” During her last few weeks, we had many conversations about the journey towards death. I mean, one night, I was helping her remove her dentures, and I just asked her directly. I said, “Ma, are you afraid to die?” And she said, “No. But I just don’t want you to be lonely.” She was still worried about her little girl, and she promised me at that moment that after she died, she would give me a sign that she is okay. And I look for that sign. I pray for it. I ask for it out loud. During her last few days, my brother and I whispered in her ear, “Thank you, mom. We love you, mom. You were a good mom. You mattered, mom. It’s okay.” And in the end, that’s all any of us wants to know, And I am so glad I got to tell her.
A Final Message
I got to hold her, express how I felt, have intimate conversations about life, people, and even death. So this is how I see it. For the last few moments, I’ve shared with you my perspective through my glasses, the ones that were polished by Bess, to provide you with a glimpse of my experiences and to demonstrate why it is so incredibly important to let people know how special, loved, and impactful they have been. No one is self-made. No one.
So whether it’s your mom, dad, teacher, coach, friend, mentor, aunt, uncle, you know who they are. Thank them. Cherish them. Tell them how they’ve helped you. Let them know that they truly matter and that you deeply love them while it’s still the present tense.
And if you’re lucky enough, go hug them today. And then right after that, I want you to grab their hands, Uber to the nearest dive bar, put on your favorite song, climb up on a table together, and then dance like no one’s watching. Thank you, mom.
