Mom's Letters: Ferguson Letters

Now that Mom's been dead almost ten years, I'm re-reading all her letters. I keep wanting to look up all her old friends and see if they remember her, or if they ever wondered what happened to her after she divorced Jerry and moved away from Houston.

I actually looked up one set of friends: Mike and Marilyn Ferguson. They were writers, and they even obliquely mentioned Mom and Jerry in the book they published: Champagne Living on a Beer Budget. They knew Mom when they lived in Houston. The most notable letter was from Marilyn, when she advised that Mom and Jerry not get divorced. Mom fired back a testy letter because she was fighting for her marriage! (At least, until she ducked back to Saint Louis and found her ex-boyfriend, thank God. I liked Dan Davis as a stepdad more than I would have liked Jerry Lockett as a father. I know you shouldn't judge your ex-father based on your Mom's letters, but even HIS father was on Mom's side.)

Anyway, the thing you notice when you Google Mike and Marilyn Ferguson is that Marilyn died a few months after Mom, and that Deepak Chopra was sad about it. Evidently, Mom's friend Marilyn became a big noise in the New Age Movement in about 1980.  

I already knew a few things I saw in her Wikipedia article. I know she had written a book called The Brain Revolution, because that was on our living room bookshelf, and I know she divorced Mike Ferguson because Mom noted it. Not smug or hateful. Just a little note on yellow lined paper, tucked in to her divorce letters, that listed all the friends who told her not to get divorced, followed by the dates of their divorces. (Well. Perhaps a bit smug. Not hateful.)

So, add this to the wedding photos taken by Bill Eppridge, and this makes two friends of Mom's who went on to immortality. I'm sure if Deepak Chopra had known my Mom he would have been sad she died too.

Comments

[Dawn]

My mom died 10 years ago last November. If feels like a million years ago, and it also feels like last week.

[theQueen]

Dawn - They live in in our heads. That's why it feels so fresh. (Mom-in-my-head just rolled her eyes.)