Mothers Day

Today was the first motherless Mother's Day for me. I never thought that would happen. When you love someone as dearly as I loved my mom, the thought tries not to cross your mind that someday she won't be there. I miss her like crazy. She died on Dec 22 07. A few days before Christmas. Now it's nine months later and I keep trying to look for things she'd like, and  whenever I get close to Ridgefield, CT, where she last lived, I feel that momentary stab when I realize she is no longer there. But then again she still here. I have a little altar on my dish cabinet where her ashes lie in a box in a velvet covered pouch. There is a picture of the first five of us kids beside her and an Audoban bird clock that she loved so much and talked to it toward the end.  Then again she always talked to her plants, real animals she had, and tiny babies. Things that answered her only with unconditional love, which is what she craved and what I felt she gave me.

She came up to live with me in 1994. At that time I believe she would have been around 65 and finally getting a life. She and I had been estranged for many years, for I got out of her house as soon as I could - age 13 - partly due to the nasty, awful, stream of boyfriends that she had after my dad left her. She was on her own with all of the kids, (7 of us and my absent dad's great Aunt) and no money. Dad'd had a mid life crisis and had to become the man-about-town dandy he had always believed he was. And he did. He went out with all the big boobed blonds, some married,  some not. Some young enough to be one of our older sisters. He moved to a resort in the Bahamas and lived like a king. But enough about him. I will give him his due on fathers day. He is no longer of this world either. Not that I am afraid to speak ill of the dead. I don't believe in that. But we shall save that rant for June.

So back to mom: She moved up to NY in 1994, not long after Hurricane Andrew almost struck New Orleans, where Mom had lived since around 1972.  I'll never forget talking to her on the phone while she was watching the massive storm come toward her city. She was wheelchair bound from a shattered ankle.  I was distraught that I couldn't get there to save her; she was fearful of her cats and herself drowning.  I begged her at the time to please come up and live with me. She had to wait until she was totally fed up with the remaining kids who were still living close by in Louisiana. 

I finally convinced my now ex- husband that we needed to buy ourselves a house and get situated.  We had recently done a nine year stint of working in the middle east; I was not going to do that again! So when we looked for a house I always kept in mind that I wanted an extra room for mom. She moved up with us and stayed with me, my two kids and the ex, who made my mom's life miserable, until another angel came into my place of work and gave me the name of a beautiful housing development for retirees in Connecticut.  Not thinking we could possibly get her in there, (New York State has nothing for poor elderly), somehow after we applied and were interviewed, the people at the elderly housing place said they had an opening.  They said openings had never happened like that. So again her karma , her angels, came through for her. She lived out the end of her days there in an idyllic peaceful community with lot's of friends and wonderful caring people all around her. She died in her sleep on Dec 22, three days before Christmas. I miss her, but I'm so glad she didn't suffer.