Two Years Ago

  Monday at 11:40am marks the two-year anniversary of my beloved mother and best friend's death at 64. It hasn’t been a happy two years. It’s nothing I would wish on anyone, and nobody can understand unless they’ve gone through the same devastating and life-changing loss. I’ve had people who lack empathy say things like “I’ve lost an uncle and a cousin one time.” Ummm…ok. Are you an only child, single, childless and alone, with a useless father and no other close family? Did you spend 39 years straight with your mother, side-by-side almost non-stop, together in practically every aspect of life? No? End of discussion. Go very far away.

   I’ve had virtually no support from Mom’s family during the death and afterwards. No cards, no calls, no condolences on Mom’s obituary page. Two of Mom’s siblings haven’t even acknowledged her untimely death, and one asshole uncle told me to hurry up and move up just hours after I watched the woman who saw my first breath breathe her last. And in less than a year, two longtime friends have died unexpectedly, and another has moved far away to another region of the nation. 

   My world has gotten smaller and darker in the past two years, and I’m not the same person I used to be. All one can do is just keep going on, I suppose. 

Some Minor Progress?

 I finally moved Mom's sick bed back from the living room corner to the guest room. It had been sitting there unused for two years this month as Mom was sent to the hospital and then to a nursing home, where she died soon after on August 16th, 2019. I rarely am in my living room, so I kept putting it off as I guess I wanted to hold on to any memories of my beloved mother as I could. My online therapist encouraged me to finally move it back, and I did just that this week.  I found lots of books and paperwork under the bed and I cleaned that all up. I then brought out Mom's clothes basket that had been sitting in another corner, and I went through that, throwing away most of the clothes but keeping some favorites she wore, as well as the last thing she wore before leaving my home forever. I feel that this was a bit of progress in my grief.

Where it stayed since Mom's death

What was underneath 

Time for the clothes basket 

Back where it originally was 

Her 66th Birthday

 Mom's 66th birthday would have been tomorrow. Every year, I would scour the greeting card section to find the perfect card for her. My birthday is exactly one month from hers, and she would do the same for me. We both kept each other's bday cards for life. For the second year now after her death, I still bought a card for my momma, and I'll probably do so as long as I live. I read it out loud and placed it on her piano on top of last year's card. I guess it's just a tradition I'll always have.

Mom's Car

 I thought I would share this with all of you as it’s been a long time since I’ve posted on here. Tomorrow is the 18 month anniversary of the loss of my beloved mother and absolute best friend, Carol. One and a half years without my soulmate. One of the very few things of any value that she had left in her possession when she died was her car. I decided that there was no way I was going to part with that car, even if it meant paying a bit more with insurance and the initial title transfer fee (which the tag office cut in half when they realized the car was bequeathed to me). It was the first vehicle that Mom bought on her own, the first one she paid off on her own; it was hers and hers alone. Mom neglected it badly in her final year of life, so I have fixed it up, top to bottom, cleaning it, getting all the needed maintenance done, and taking care of it even more than my own car. 

 There’s also a sort of spiritual connection with it. Some months before she started getting sick, Mom was involved in a car accident. A woman driving a brand-new Toyota Tacoma pickup truck slammed into Mom’s car at a roundabout. The truck was badly damaged and had to be towed away, but Mom’s car had no damage. Nothing, not even a dent or scratch. The lady who caused the accident couldn’t believe it, but then she looked at the plate on the front of Mom’s car and said, “Yep, now I get it. Now I understand.” I used to pick on Mom for the tag, saying it was goofy, but methinks it’s going to stay on there. I don’t drive the car too much, so I expect to have it for a long time. Keeping the vehicle and taking care of it at all times is sort of a memorial for Mom; I do this in her memory.

Anniversary

It was exactly a year ago today that I lost my beloved mother and absolute best friend, Carol Diane Gibbs Collins at 64 years old. I stayed by her side for the week that she was dying, her last words to me were "I love you" before she became uncommunicative for days. I didn't know what to do today, so I just drove to the nursing room where she died, sat in my car in the empty visitor parking lot with Mom's ashes for little while until the minute of her death. I even wore the exact same clothes I wore on that tragic day. I'm just very sentimental and traditional in that way. It was overcast and drizzly last year, the kind of days that Mom loved; today, it was partly sunny and hot.

 A year later, and things aren't all that much better in life; I just go through the motions in life: work, home, going out with a friend or two not often enough anymore. Things just aren't the same anymore; nothing's fun or exciting, because just about everything in my life had Mom right by my side. My twin, my next door neighbor, and my soulmate, gone 20 years too soon. I'm an only child, my father is useless, Mom's extended family hasn't been there for me, and obviously I don't have a spouse and kids. I had no money for grief therapy, so I've grieved alone for a year. I think about my momma every waking hour of my life.