Wednesday, June 22, 2005
MOM
I was talking to a friend today about my mother, she died 1/18/2000, I miss her very much. Through this conversation and also the meme (by the way that's what my kids called my mother) 5 things you miss about your childhood, I realized that I've begun to remember only the good things about my mom. I know that when someone you love is taken from your life that you often "Perfect" their memory, that's what I've been doing with my mother for quite a while now. Not that she wasn't a great person, my teen-aged self certainly thought that she was, but when I became a wife and mother myself I realized that she was far from perfect. She and my dad had a very superficial relationship, they loved each other but there was no trust there, especially my dad with her, for a good reason. She used to lie to him all the time and hide things from him, mostly related to money, I remember her rushing to the post office to get the bills so that my dad wouldn't see her gigantic phone bill or credit card bills, she would rob peter to pay paul or borrow from me or one of my sisters to cover up her errors. Alot of her personality traits were do to her addiction to perscripton drugs, she'd been addicted to one degree or another for nearly 20 years, that I knew about. The addiction really changed her, there were days that she would just sit and drool, she's stay in bed for days on end, she didn't want her grandkids around any more, she'd bargain with me and herself, trying to convince us both that she was OK, she wasn't. The day she died the first thing I thought was...oh shit how many pills did she take, I even checked all of her pill bottles, I'm still not sure that she didn't overdose, my dad didn't want an autopsy, I think he was thinking the same thing I was and just didn't want to deal with it. It's funny how all of those memories are fading away, being pushed to the back, replaced by the good memories. Trips out of town acting like fools...she as much as the rest of us. Long talks in the wee hours of the morning usually starting with tears and ending with hugs. She was the best hugger in the world, she's wrap her huge arms around you and hold you just tight enough to make you feel safe but not so tight that you felt stifled, I miss those hugs more then anything else and I'm glad that is the memory that is the most vivid in my mind.
>
