Monday, March 29, 2010

Five Minutes From Now

I've always considered myself somewhat of a writer. Not a dedicated blogger or diary writer, I don't chronicle-ize every event or detail of my life. As far as I know, there aren't even many pictures of the major events which have taken place in it. Not like anybody would recognize me in half of them anyway. I was a fat kid. I liked cake, as well as most things with sugar.

Getting back to my point, I've been feeling the itch to write lately. Not the stories I can never finish because my mind drifts to a completely different idea after the first chapter or two have been written. Not my classy rhyming animal story-poems which everybody seems to love getting (courtesy of six to seven text messages in a single minute while I'm bored at work). Not even my normal poems. I've just been wanting to write; write about something, nothing, anything. I'd been pushing off creating a new blog or journal for a few weeks, but tonight I need to get it out of my system and I'll have the common decency to hit it on a sad depressing note that hits home.

Five minutes from now, would be my parents twenty fifth anniversary. It would also be the day my mother died. It was the end of a long struggle which involved breast cancer, big rigs, pack-rat tendencies, brain tumors, hospitals, designated time of living allotted, strokes, doctors, pack rat tendencies, Race For the Cure, free samples, garage sales, yard sales, coma, pack rat tendencies, bad motor skills, another coma, and finally kicking the bucket. I don't know if I mentioned the pack rat tendencies, because those were absolutely horrible (I'm still cleaning up after them. I don't understand why somebody would need so much useless junk).

On a more serious note, I did love my mother, I still do. How could you not love the woman who carried you in her womb for nine months and probably went through hell in order to evacuate you from her uterus prison? Then proceeded to raise you with love and affection, even if she did have somewhat of an odd sense of humor. She was a strong woman who drove trucks, and apparently wore three inch heels when she did it and didn't swear like a longshoreman. She fought through a life threatening illness starting with the breasts, migrating up to her head, suffering from a major stroke and two minor, pulling out of a coma and raising two children. She was a fighter and a survivor.

She also had a knack for collecting useless crap. And lots of it. Heaven forbid if you drove past a garage sale (or a yard sale or an open house) sign and didn't hunt for that fucker in one of those intricate maze of a neighborhood. Nor could she pass up a Pick-N-Save (currently known as Big Lots) without stopping. After she had stopped driving (after her first stroke), her fellow drivers would joke that the company trucks she had driven were programmed to stop at them. Did I mention she had a fascination for free stuff? She had a fascination for free stuff, no matter what it was, and she was determined to stuff it, cram it and coax it into every nook, cranny, and crevice which wasn't filled with her garage sale/Pick-N-Save stuff.

My mother definitely had her hobbies, but writing to complain about them and how I'm still cleaning up after them really wasn't my intention.

Five minutes from now, that strong, fighter of a woman was on her death bed, in a coma she wasn't going to come out of. She had been in hospice care for a week, taken off of life support after a couple week struggle in CCU because the doctors said if she actually pulled through that time, she'd hardly be more than a vegetable (with a tracheotomy). I think telling the doctors to pull the plug was one of the harder things I've ever had to do in my life and it was done as a group effort with my brother and my father.

We shuffled in that week: me, my brother(who I keep wanting to refer to as Idiot. Is that so mean? Ah, hell, Idiot), my mother's sister, G-ma (because my grandma is so gangsta, not really), various other family member's I'm not going to touch base on tonight, and some of my mother's support group friends. Each of us sat there almost in turns, sometimes together, sometimes alone with my mom. We'd pass the time by reading or listening to music and I remember going out and buying Dumbo and Grease on DVD so I could pop it in my laptop and hoping that she might like watching one of her favorite movies before she was gone. Not once since my mother was moved to the nursing home did my father go see her, and frankly I don't blame him for not. He's not the type of person who's ever been good with hospitals or death (not like anyone is). I couldn't blame him especially after her last full day, because that's when the death rattle began. It's a sound I never hope to hear again in my life. It's a sound I hope most people never have to hear. Like ever.

I remember when I finally convinced him to go see her for the last time, not long after seven pm. We didn't even make it out the garage when my mother's sister called him and as far as I know, she didn't even say anything. We rushed over to get Idiot after that, who's street of residence of the time was blocked off by the police because of a high speed chance which had just ended there (convenient, eh?). The rest of it is rather easy to gather, I'd imagine. It's not something I really like thinking about, not like I like thinking about any of it because it's quite depressing. I'm not sure if it's horrible, but all I can seem to think about now is how I hope I don't look like that when I die.

Today, Idiot and I will each go at different times to buy flowers and go to the pier to pay our respects. She was cremated and her ashes spread in the ocean. We'll each call our father and either hope he doesn't realize what day it is and have a normal conversation, or somewhat console him.

I know my mother didn't like it when my father forgot about their anniversary, but damn, what a way to make him remember it for the rest of his life.