Mom's Going Away Party

It's a funny title I know but it's what she wanted, a Party to celebrate her life. It was a strange event for small town Texas, held at a Mexican restaurant, but it was what my mother wanted.

Irish Whiskey and Margarettas, and some beer for those who were weird. Daddy and I stuck to Irish Whiskey, he wore red, I wore fushia and my sister wore green. Mom, of course, wasn't there in person as she might have been in a real Irish wake but she was in Spirit. I know this because mom had, rather has, a very strong spirit, and no way is she leaving before she has her party.

How do we feel now that the party? Honestly I don't know. I'm still numb. Immediately after the party I cried as I haven't cried in a long time. The last time I cried this hard Zeus my greyhound had just died. Yeah, I know strange comparison but my animals are my family too, so their loss is every bit as bad as losing my mother was, or vis versa.

Today, tonight actually, I'm extremely sad, somewhat lost and more than a little angry. You see I do stupid things when I'd sad and depressed, the worst two are I eat too much, and the wrong things and I spend money I can't afford to spend.

The last, spending I'm mostly controlled about, no credit cards, an allowance I set for myself and someone else controls when I get that allowance, so, 1st of the month, I get a rechargeable credit card so I can easily buy things and don't need to carry a lot of cash, but that card has a preset limit, can not access my checking account, and when the money is gone it's gone until the next month. A highly workable system.

Food on the other hand is another story. You have to have food to eat, preferably good, healthy and nonfattening food and in reasonable quantities. Well, let me get upset, really upset and all the previously stated goes down the proverbial drain.

Food has been a comfort and haven for me for decades, it doesn't work, of course, all it does is make me feel worse especially when I gain weight. So here I sit, in the dark, having just finished off some baked, sea salted and peppered chips, some pizza rolls and ginger ale, not all at once nor together, oh did I mention the grilled cheese sandwich? I had that with the chips, well some of the chips. There wasn't anything with a lot of sugar in it, I didn't buy anything with sugar, but it's tempting, yesterday I had three large cokes, something that I would never do in my right mind. Okay bad food habits are not detailed, and you're asking yourself, so if she knows about this bad habit, and that it's destructive and probably deadly, in the long or short run, why does she do it?

Because my MOTHER DIED!!! I can't get past the fact that my Mother is dead, she isn't coming back, she's gone, all I have are good and bad memories and a picture of her in my head as she lay dead in her bed, and she had her mouth open as if gasping for air, we couldn't close it. I'd rather the picture above be my last memory of my mom but it isn't.

Everything about that morning is etched, engraved rather, in my memory, how daddy reacted when I told him she'd died, how he was inconsolable, and thanks God for atavan, and how for two days after he woke up, he slept because of drugs, blessedly, he was totally silent, he spoke rarely, only when pressed and gruffly.

For the past couple of years my fathers grasp on reality has been rather tenuous, it is now much better, my mother dying did that, and I wish it hadn't in his out of touch world he was happy, we may not have understood why he had gone there, or what he was doing, but he was happy, but not the days immediately after mom's death. And we couldn't do a thing about it.

Mom and Daddy right after they were married

Mommy and Daddy were married 67 years, 6 months and 20 days, approximately. They were in love when they married and they remained in love to the day mom died, daddy still is in love. The love of his life is now gone, my sister and I are poor substitutes for company and to help him through this, we can't supply what is missing, mom's touch, mom's voice, mom's presence, it's not there for him and it's the most disheartening thing to watch him go silent and get a distant look on his face, and you know he's thinking about mom.

But then so are we...

Food? I learn to control myself, I hope, spending, pretty much out of my hands, sadness, no I won't lose that for quite a while. You see my daddy is 88 years old, has a bad heart, bad lungs and a sadness that no one can make go away. So sometime in the relatively near future I'll be going through this all over again, I hope it's not this month, or even this year, but it's not far. How will I get through that loss? Badly, very badly, but through it I will get, past the heartbreaking loss of both parents, being an orphan, I'll have my sister and her husband, I'll have Jerry a good friend, and my cousins, but I will not have my parents.

No one who hasn't lost a parent, or both can understand how an adult, grown woman, or man for that matter, can mourn, so deeply the loss of their parents, one or both. It's a loss you hope you never have to experience, but we all do. I hate death, I hate the loss it means, but mostly I hate that I never told my mother how very much she meant to me. That we would fight, we would say we loved each other, but not enough, we never said it enough.

Don't you do that, if your parents are alive, if you love them, tell them, visit them regularly, give them hugs and kisses, let them know how much they mean to you. I'm going to be sure my father knows how much he means to me, for however long I still have him. He'll know he my hero. Mom was my Guide, Daddy is my hero.

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