Her Family Life …
From day trips in the car stopping at every antique shop or traveling around Europe with her daughters to fertilizing her roses in the garden to fishing on the St. Lawrence River … she was one of a kind.
To Those I Love
If I should ever leave you whom I love
To go along the silent way,
Grieve not,
Nor speak of me with tears,
But laugh and talk of me
As if I were beside you there.
(I’d come – I’d come, could I but find a way!
But would not tears and grief be barriers?)
And when you hear a song or
See a bird I loved,
Please do not let the thought of me be sad...
For I am loving you just as I always have...
You were so good to me!
There are so many things I wanted still to do –
So many things to say to you...
Remember that I did not fear…
It was just leaving you that was so hard to face...
We cannot see beyond...
But this I know:
I love you so –
’twas heaven here with you!
- Isla Paschal Richardson (1886-1971)
Susan’s familiar return address label
Running Around Boston with Mom…
Mom and I spent an enormous amount of time hanging out in Boston together – she invariably had some student performance to go to, or a great new restaurant to try. She loved the city, and seeing it all through her eyes made me love it too. We were regulars at the MFA and the Gardener Museum, would try to never miss a night at the beautiful Oak Room when Dave McKenna was playing, and our other big haunt was the Regattabar for jazz. Mom loved jazz, she had even performed it with a trio back in the day, and together we were lucky enough to see artists like George Shearing, Astrud Gilberto, even the Modern Jazz Quartet. I knew that whenever I was home from school, I wouldn’t be bored!
Susan always kept a copy of Lloyd Shearer’s “Resolutions”
No one will ever get out
of this world alive.
Resolve therefore to maintain
a sense of values.
Take care of yourself.
Good health is everyone’s
major source of wealth.
Without it, happiness is almost impossible.
Resolve to be cheerful and helpful.
People will repay you in kind.
Avoid angry, abrasive persons.
They are generally vengeful.
Avoid zealots.
They are generally humorless.
Resolve to listen more and to talk less.
No one ever learns anything by talking.
Be chary of giving advice.
Wise men don’t need it and
fools won’t heed it.
Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the wrong.
Sometime in life you will have
been all of these.
Do not equate money with success.
There are many successful money-makers who are miserable failures as human beings.
What counts most about success
is how a man achieves it.
Susan’s parents cut out the horoscope in the paper on her birth day to see what the future would hold!
Memories of a Wonderful
Mother-in-Law
Now every time I think of Susan, my mother-in-law, I can see her vividly in my inner eye. I can hear her voice. But she is no longer and will no longer be able to welcome us in her house. She let us know in her chosen poetry that we should not be sad thinking of her but should rejoice at the memories of time spent together. I will try, Susan, I will try.
From David Brock: A Funny Dinner Party with Sue…
I remember a dinner at my place, it may have been for Susan’s birthday, it was about this time of the year. I cooked iced plum soup, lamb curry, and apricot meringue cake. I remember Angela Vanstory Ward was there, but then I am not sure who else was there. Anyway, we had dinner, even seconds on the cake. We are chatting and having a great time when Susan says, "Have we had seconds yet?" We all answered, "Yes." So your Mom says, "Oh, I forgot to taste it!" So we all had a third piece of cake!!!
Travels With Mom…
Amazingly, despite working full time and a two hour daily commute, Mom still managed to get us out and about, and she loved to travel. We spent endless hours exploring her beloved New England (Vermont most of all) scouting out back roads, rambling Victorian mansions, antiques shops, country stores, and a historic inn for a proper lunch was de rigeur. We rambled all around the Berkshires, often catching the Saturday dress rehearsal at Tanglewood, and the Clark Art Institute was always on the itinerary. Every summer we would drive seven hours back up to the Thousand Islands on the St. Lawrence River where we came from, and even at times down to South Carolina to visit our grandparents. How she managed all that I will never know.
When my older sister Karen graduated, Mom took the three of us driving cross country in a Buick for three months – a trip which she planned over a year in advance and all by letter (no internet back then!), making sure that in every big city we were right downtown and that in every national park we had a room in one of the historic inns (except Yosemite – cots in a cabin with a single bare light bulb is what I remember…)
For my graduation, she booked a trip to Europe where we made our way from London to Rome. This must be prefaced with the fact that wherever we went in Boston, and often New England at large, someone would invariably come rushing up to our dinner table or stop us in the street shouting ”Susan? Susan Clickner!!” always to be followed by a chatty catch up session. Now that we were in Europe, that wouldn’t be happening, or so I thought, until we got to Venice. As we were making our way down a typically narrow, dimly lit Venetian alleyway, we suddenly hear from behind us, ”Susan? Susan Clickner!!” I couldn’t believe it, but lo and behold the only other people in this tiny street at 10 o’clock at night were a former student and her husband! The chatty catch up session included the fact that they had been trying to conceive for some time, and a doctor had told them to just go somewhere romantic. Nine months later, we got a birth announcement!
Mom Meets Luciano…
One of Mom’s students had won a scholarship to go to Italy and study with Pavarotti’s teacher, and they soon began exchanging students. Pavarotti invited Mom to one of his concerts on the east coast and had asked her to come backstage afterwards to finally meet in person, as he had heard so much about her. Mom was ushered into his green room, only to promptly burst into tears at the sight of him and she couldn’t even manage to squeeze out a “Hello”. A memorable meeting for all the wrong reasons…