Bittersweet

 You danced around your cane singing ” Around the corner and under tree,  Sgt. Major once said to me….. and while you were singing this and  moving around your cane like a vaudvillian dance act, you lost your balance, your grandson caught you.  Bittersweet memories.  Memories caught on a cell phone only to be stolen by a heartless  &*$%()(!, fortunatley our memories cannot be stolen unless the Almightly decides to snatch it away Himself.

I’ve written about alot of your antics and alot of the good times and the missed times, and I know there must be other times I cannot remember or I have relatives that could put a different slant on history , but now I think it is time to close this blog, not my memories of you, not how much I love and loved you.  You will always be my mother and nothing can change that, through the best of times and the worst of times I loved you unconditionally.   This was created to remember those moments.  I really didn’t have to put on a virtual page these feelings, I’ll always hold in my heart the memories I hold dear of you. 

I’m glad I could share with people  I don’t even know  just a few of those moments.

Happy Trails  to you……….Gloria from Peoria!

 

***your daughter***

Weeding a Memory

I missed you madly and I wanted you to know that the phone was sadly quiet, not a ring anywhere where my ears could hear. Your presence here is sadly missed. No there wasn’t a birthday or even your day of leaving that made me think of you. I was remembering Easter, my patent leather shoes, new anklets, an Easter bonnet and purse. This was way back when and now you are way back when and I can’t even reminisce like I used to. Know one is around, or no one cares. I am greatly missing little things. It didn’t matter if life was imperfect with you, life is imperfect anyway and I am imperfect. What matters is is time and you aren’t here. Thankfully the memories are  and I can sift through it and find the good and weed out the bad.

So here is to happy times and patent leather shoes!

A Missed Tape

The other day I was cleaning out my stack of VHS tapes and I found a tape from eleven years ago.  I thought I all but lost it.  It was a treasure in its imperfectness.  It was skipping  but  I didn’t care I overlooked it.  It was my dads voice and his movement.  His stories and before I realized it you popped up.  When I originally received this video we were all in amazement of it because it was of dad, but surprise I found Gloria from Peoria  on it and to my amazement you were dressed in your deli garb but even better than that, you started dancing.  It was great.  Not only did I have in my hands a treasure of sights and sounds of dad but I had you in action, doing your favorite thing.  Dancing, showing off.  I always thought you had been  shy.  I don’t think so.  Someday I’ll be able to go all the way through this tape, but as for now bits and pieces is all I can handle.  It is surreal to me and confuses the mind but delightful too.    Wow, so much has changed in eleven years, so very much.  What a difference a day makes and we don’t know what tomorrow holds. I do know I’m glad I picked up the dust rag and started cleaning.  

Absent Albert

Where is he? 

Albert Warner?

 For all of my mothers life her real dad was absent.   I don’t believe I’ve imagined what chaos this caused in her life , and how it affected the rest of her family  To all the absent dads out there, serious shame on you making a little girl wonder where you are, what she did to keep you away.  No excuse is good enough and if you let your now present wife or girlfriend keep you away from your child then I wonder who wears the pants in the family. 

At 16,  Albert, she tried to see you and connect with you and you turned her away, more rejection.  I don’t know a whole lot of other things about you other than in my impression you were a coward and I was thrilled when I found out she stomped on your grave.  It was her way of letting the heartache go and letting you know the hurt you caused in her life.   I sit with joy when I think of that, that was her way of releasing you from her life.

Possibly you could have changed all of our lives, just by being there, for taking ownership in your part of your exhale in a shuddering release of ectasy.  A young parent yes, inexperienced, yes, and you made various bad choices growing up like everyone else your age, I’m sure,  a generation had nothing to do with it, but as you aged I would have thought your concious would’ve bothered you.  For shame Albert,  you swept my mother and all the future that came from her under the rug.  You missed out on so much.    I only wish I could have done something to connect my mother to her dad.  But you will never hold that title even in death, you don’t deserve it.  I will also forgive you because  it is what I am supposed to do and I want peace in my life as well.

 May you rest in peace,

will be the only

positive thing

I’ll ever say about  you. 

But a memory and a dance.

February 13,2008-February 13,2009

A year a go was but a memory

a year before that was a conversation and frustration

a year before that was hopeful time well spent and anticipation and fear of dates to come.

I live now in a positive space in time thinking of times past and happy memories, and think of the dance.

You will always be to me a dancing fool

I love you.

Purgatory Papers

Leafing through the hospice papers and other items from my moms things is like sittiing between a doorway…which way do I go, do I keep this stuff, maybe I’ll need it or do I throw it away, why save.    There is no posterity’s sake in old bills, a half written page of a list of to dos, but it is her hand writing.   I feel like I’m in paper limbo, I haven’t been sent to heaven or hell for that matter, just floating around trying to decide what to do with things that have no earthly meaning any longer unless you look beyond the words into her handwriting. Remembering  how she swirled and scripted  the letters into a dance of words flowing on the paper.   Elementary school taught printing and then later on you moved into cursive and it was artful and informative in words as well as pretty to look at. 

Not even a year has passed and people are less caring and seemingly cold when you speak with them about bills that have nothing to do with you.  The bad part is it takes you back to a spot you don’t want to go.  I’m remembering the shear desperation of time and desire during that space of time.   The date on the paper reminds me of my mothers mind slipping away.   Of the need for face masks and tubing and my mother is not what she used to be.  The old gray mare she ain’t what she used to be………she used to sing that song  and we used to laugh.  And we aren’t laughing anymore. 

This is what these papers do, they complicate and confuse, they give you memories you need, they make you wonder.  I just wonder what it would be like to not even have the opportunity to see the swirls dancing across the pages and time is lost because she is gone.  The old gray mare she ain’t what she used to be.

Gloria and the Gifts

Placed under the tree during Christmas when Gloria from Peoria  ruled amongst her kingdom  were gifts of needs and a few wants as well.   Waking up Christmas morning was anticipated, just like the first snowfall sparkling on the historic green lawn.   I remember packages wrapped and one Christmas we had dolls lined up on a little settee awaiting their “moms” .  Gloria made everything special, just as if she was the recipient.  She had picked out and wrapped our gifts and hid them in her closet up or under so we couldn’t find them, just like the fudge she had hidden in there too.  Of course even  if we thought of sneaking a piece we could count on one of our limbs missing in the morning.  Not really, but close.  Of course there were gifts probably hidden in the trunk from Santa as well.  All the good spots discovered from all the Sherlocks of her brood.  What did it take away from for her to save for such a heavenly event, but the question also remains what did it add too  to such a heavenly event as well.  I know she had a wonderful time when we opened our gifts and placed the robes in front of our chests to see how they looked or opening our dusting powder to create a cloud of scent  in anticipation of our next bath.  The games we had were played till I’m sure Park Place was long forgotten and the Mouse was trapped one time too many. 

I wonder now what she really wanted but didn’t get like all wives at one time or another, but also did she enjoy the joy of  her children opening the gifts she had possibly wanted for herself as a child.  

I hope so.  Merry Christmas “Gloria from Peoria”from one of your Sherlocks

Blowing in the wind…….

As I look up from where I sit in on my sofa I see the memorial cards sent by friends and family members.  They’ve been up there for quite some time now, so much so the cobwebs are starting to form.  I suppose it is just in time for the Halloween season, if that’s your thing.   I told myself I’d leave them up until her ashes were spread out on the gulf coast.  It hasn’t happened yet.  The only real available weekend was the one when we had a hurricane.  She at least would have been able to travel.  The fact she wants to be spread out on the water is strange to me, she never liked the water.  She was scared of it.  I have to laugh about that…I bet she never really thought about it.  If she used that same process maybe she wouldn’t have carried that fear all of her life.  Hmmm.  My sister is coming down, my niece is non available right now and my kids schedules are like concrete.  A time when we can ceremonially put her ashes to the wind and our spirits at rest is a good guess.  If I wasn’t so icked out on having her possibly “blow up in my face”  I’d do it myself.  I rather think she’d prefer the way Shirley McClaine and Jack Nicolson sent Rosie the maid sailing down the beach.  Only in the movies.

I need to dust the top of my bookcase eventually and free up the bottom shelf of my mom…I want her to finally “spread her wings and fly”  She needs that.  I need it for her too.  I want her free as the wind and happy for all eternity.  She deserves that….

I love you mom…….

A memory born

Just the little things tend to roll through my mind, of the thoughts, the moments  or memories that time stopped, and some part of your heart told you to remember this, you’re going to need it someday.    You’re going to use it to look back on, it’s going to be the glue that’ll help hold you together when everything else seems to be unraveling.  It’ll be the icing on the cake, a thought that was sweeter than you had expected it to be even at the moment of it’s conception.   A memory a blip blurb of time.

This was a memory being born.

Mom doing her little dances

Being ornery and taking out her teeth just to annoy you.

Those are only two, if I took more time there would be a few or more, no matter what or when the time is ripe and I’m just sitting, along will come the memory a lovely reminiscing.

 

The transparent ear and a can of beans

For more times than I can count  I’ve perused my online hometown newspaper, like I do everyday and  there have been items that called out for questions to ask mom. 

I’d always go to her if a certain event or God rest their soul, someone’ s name was in the obit.   She knew so much and I never quite accessed her never ending vault of information like I should have.  She would tell you if she rode the school bus with him.  If he liked her or made fun of her glasses, or if he lived down the road from the farm.  

   The house was owned by Dr Blabadiblaba and he was quite something in his day, ya know he married Jane blaba, I used to work with her at the hospital.  We used to go out on a Saturday afternoon if we weren’t working, we’d take the bus downtown and shop.  I used to go to Blbblalblbla’s Dress Shop, I bought the cutest things.   It cost this and  I had to save for ages to buy it.

 

I thought I’d remember everything she told me, because I heard it all a hundred times.  Like everything else, it is like a sieve, straining out what I dont want to hear (shame on me) and keeping in what I think is necessary.  What was necessary was sitting there, not being preoccupied with the mundane I thought was important.  I knew it too.  There was a little voice in the back of my cranium telling me to pay attention, I’m going to regret this if I don’t.   Why do I need to know about so and so living a road over or Mrs. Magilicuty living a few houses down and she used to can beans, the best in the county.   I have heard this story a hundred times already. 

 I’ll tell you why and to anyone who is reading this, because it is important to give our parents or anyone for that matter, our full attention.  Because we do not know what tomorrow holds, or if we will ever see that person ever again.   Our life is important too and so are the situations in it right down to the tube of toothpaste you need to remember to pick up at the grocery store.  When we interact and connect with someone else it should be full on engaged impact listening. 

I cannot change yesterday, I can only work on today.  Holding myself hostage of all the times I didn’t pay attention isn’t fair either.  When I sit down to read the paper and I’m seeing someone I think I should know because of the stories I’ve heard, the urge to pick up the phone to call mom to ask her if she knew her, or the place or whatever it is. It is the moment when the full circle comment comes true and through and I have to make peace with myself and pull up  Mrs. Maguiladuy and her canned beans and be happy with that.