My Mom

My Mom was my plan B, my back up plan, my best friend, my champion, my safety.

My Mom was always the one constant and even when I grew up and went out into the world, if I screwed up or a man became a really bad choice I always knew I could go back to her for comfort and a restart.

My Mom passed away on May 3, 2007, but we met so many years before about nine months prior to December 1962. Ours was a tumultuous beginning. She had cervical cancer and double pneumonia while I grew in her belly. It was just we two trying to stay alive while she tended to my two older sisters, both had medical and emotional difficulties. Dad [Fred] was, well a story for another time.

I was actually a love child conceived as a result of her 13 year love affair with the man she would tell me two years before her death; was the "The end all beat all" love of her life and in a way he was mine. He was a dear and close friend of the family, so I grew up knowing him, loving him, adoring him and so desperately needing him. 

He died when I was a kid. 

My Mom wasn't perfect as Mother's go. She preferred me over my sisters and took a white glove to the furniture after we dusted. She was unable to stand up to Dad [Fred] and with good reason, so we all suffered under his rage and evil.

Her life was certainly not what she had hoped, but, then whose is? At least she had my 'secret' dad. 

Recently I've been feeling out of sorts and trying to get to the root of my current dysfunction. In a state of pondering and personal reflection I was struck with the realization that my fears and phobias began to morph the day Mom left. I remember our last talk, she asked me...begged me to please keep my sisters from fighting and I begged her, no ordered her not to go. I told her I would not survive without her. Well, in a way I have, not wholey, not happily, but I've managed to keep my carcass moving through the trials and tribulations of survival and of course I haven't lived. 

I feel so ashamed to be grown and realizing how dependent on my Mom I was and even still am. 

She comes to me in dreams, and even though the theme or topic of them are different she is always in a hospital gown and completely unable to speak, she just points to what it is she is bringing a message about. I don't understand the hospital gown, she passed at home in her own nightgown. 

Since her passing my oldest sister and dad Fred have also crossed over, so I'm left here behind on this rock with my only remaining sister and a bunch of nieces and nephews. Now, my Mom was married for decades to her high-school sweetheart, Russell, they reconnected after she and Fred divorced. We came together in a twisted version of the Brady Bunch, she with three kiddos and him with six. We all mostly grew up together and this enriched our lives immeasurably.

Last month my oldest beloved [step] (although we don't use the word) brother Michael passed away suddenly and without warning and it has brought me back to making my sisterhood with my sister and brother Matt a dailey priority. 

I'm feeling so down on myself and it just gets worse. They always leave you know, our parents and grandparents. They always leave because they have to. 

My Mom would've loved Douglas and our home. Russ would be under the car right now helping Douglas fix the motor while Mom and I sipped coffee and talked. 

Our connection to our Moms is like no other. It is a bind that transcends beyond this reality and even if we have never met her she is always in the back of our mind, a whisper, a smile, a hoping. 

I think adopted children know what I'm talking about because they always seem to want to know her even if she is a monster. 

My Mom is gone and it's left me changed and deflated, the umbilical chord not cut, but rather caught in the jamb of a door between this world and hers. Someday one of us will have to open that door.