Rome, NY circa 1969—Accidentally tipping over a display rack of women’s blouses, Betty Burneko quickly turned to her 12-year-old son and, with a mischievous gleam in her eye signaling her intent to make as much hubbub as possible, loudly shouted, “Aren’t you going to pick that up you little creep? Who are you and why are you following me around the store? Get away from me before I call the store manager!” Mother and son departed the store as quickly as two people laughing hard enough to spray snot possibly can–the display rack remaining fallen and disheveled, a problem for someone else not involved in that joyous escape.

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But here’s the thing, this shopping trip, like most others with my mom, had been full of tension, drama, anger, recriminations, apologies, gritted-teeth threats and oaths (my mom), and histrionic promises to run away forever (me), followed by sarcastic pleas to finally let it be so (my mom)–all of which storming and bitterness came to an immediate end in that instant of shared rule-annihilating silliness simply because my mother saw an opportunity to do something entirely unexpected and guaranteed to make us both laugh.

That there were many, many shopping trips, Sunday rides in the family car, entire vacations wherein no sunbreak of irony or unexpected sillitude appeared in time to disperse the heavy clouds of family terror that hung over most of our attempts at normal recreation (or dinners for that matter) is beside the point. My mom was a constant possibility, an unpredictable source of mayhem for good or ill. And more often than not laughter was involved–real, lung-squeezing, eye-watering laughter of the sort usually reserved for brilliant comedic performance and typically associated with epiphanic insight into the absurdity of the world.

For me, this was Betty’s greatest gift. The lightning shift from tragedy to comedy, the Marxian (Groucho not Karl) impulse to anarchy in the midst of distress; the smart remark that must be spoken even at the height of rage–especially at the height of rage; the whip-quick rejoinder too funny to silence even in those settings most inappropriate for mirth.

Thus my training into our family’s shared imperative to never let a thoroughly dysfunctional situation fuck up the possibility to laugh in the face of it all.

I recall being yelled at by her in words, volume, and tone that would have shocked a drill sergeant only to be brought down in a gale of laughter–both hers and mine–by some mid-rant bit of mocking or sarcasm she could not resist tossing at me with perfect pitch and timing.

Was this some sort of intuitively wise skill for parenting? Absolutely not. The woman was an actual demon. Life with Betty was like life in a basket with a hooded cobra: intriguing and exciting but…tricky–in a really really dangerous sort of way.

But that instinct to make joyous, ridiculous fun of and out of the madness of life was her own survival skill, her very own way of defeating tedium, pain, anger, sadness, obstacles and barriers real, imagined, or self-deployed. It was a major source of  that “strength of will, perseverance, and general inability to give up in the face of ridiculous odds” of which my little brother has spoken so sincerely and so accurately.

My mom wasn’t just a diva, she was an opera.

She was the prima donna di tutte le prime donne.

And she made it look great.

And no one took more ironic joy at poking fun at The Baroness than la Baronessa herself. As quick as she was to come up with the line to make us laugh, quicker still was she to laugh at the jibes and showoff antics of her children. NO ONE has ever been as good an audience as Mary Elizabith Lis Elisabetta LoFaro-Burneko-Fisher. (Betty to those who loved her most and wouldn’t let her get entirely away with her various fabulist personas.)

Elegant, vulgar, dynamic, lazy, shrewd, tender, wise, demanding, bewitching, terrifying, vital and vivacious, duplicitous and secretive, brilliant and earthy, phony as a Chinese Rolex, real as a category 5 hurricane…there will never be another like you, Betty.

And so, because your faith is more important to me than my doubt, I offer a prayer for you mom:

Therefore my heart hath been glad, and my tongue hath rejoiced: moreover my flesh also shall rest in hope…Thou hast made known to me the ways of life, thou shalt fill me with joy with thy countenance: at thy right hand are delights even to the end.

Psalm 16:9 and 11 mashup