Cars & Calls

I was driving over to get my lunch this afternoon, when I drove by a black hearse with its lights on.  Normally, it would at least make me a little uncomfortable, but today was different.  Today, it was going in the direction of the hospital where my mom died.  I saw it, thought to myself “yeah, that was like my mom” and started to cry.  And now, over an hour later, all I want to do is sit and cry it out.  Some of this is PMS related, I am sure of it, but most of it is just dead-mom related.  Seeing that car heading to the hospital made me remember that night, making that call, and then hearing the next day that they had picked her up pretty quickly after I had called (within an hour, if I remember correctly) and that she was already embalmed.  Less than 24 hours after she passed away and she was already in the funeral home, ready to go for the services.  She just needed an outfit and to be set up for people to see in whatever casket we chose.  It was a very odd feeling, hearing that she was in the building that day at the funeral home. I don’t know what I expected; why wouldn’t she had already been picked up?  I don’t know.  I guess I didn’t expect them to be so efficient.

That call was very surreal for me.  I knew that I would be the one to make it; I made the call when it was my brother so I was prepared for it this time around.  But still.  Having to tell them who it was, her relationship to me, who I was, where she was, when she passed. It was all very surreal.  And today, seeing that car just made it stick out into the front of my mind again. I guess I’ve done a decent job of pretending on a daily basis that I’m relatively okay with it all, but when things like this happen it all unravels and voila, I’m in tears.  Not a day goes by that I don’t think about her, not a day goes by that Emily doesn’t ask about her – she doesn’t remember her, which is such a shame because she was the greatest joy of my mother’s entire life I think – but Emily asks about her necklace and in that way, she knows who she was and that she was loved by her.  I miss her.  I miss her for what she was, and for what she wasn’t.  I miss her for all of the craziness, and all of the madness, and for all of the times that I had wished for better – which I will admit, was a lot when I was younger.  I miss her for all of it – the bad and the good.  I miss the grandmother she could have been, and the one that she was just learning to be when her time ran out.  I miss all of it, and not a day goes by that I don’t feel that emptiness that will always be there.  I’ll never have another Mom, I’ll never have another person in my life that I can refer to as the ‘crazy old lady’.  There was only one Eileen, and as crazy as she made me most days, I miss her.

Still Not Easy

Today, I miss my mom.  I’m not in the best of moods for a bunch of reasons – Rob and I had a tift yesterday during which he thought it was okay to apologize to me over email.  No, just no – that is never EVER okay to do to someone, especially someone that you actually give two craps about.  Emily was pushing every one of my buttons last night, from the moment I picked her up at school to the moment she went to bed.  My job – ugh I can’t even list all of that stuff out in any reasonable way.  And this morning, my mom.  I guess because part of our argument was about my birthday, I am now thinking about it which again – just like last year – makes me sad. Really freaking sad, again.  And I thought it would be easier; easier to think about, easier to manage, easier to go without her this year but I don’t know if that’ll be the case since I’m already crying about it and it’s only February (my birthday is at the end of April).  How the hell is this happening AGAIN?  I was a mess last year and it looks like I will be again and really – I am so tired of being a mess.

I just want to be okay again.  I don’t expect to ever be the ‘normal’ I was before her passing, I know that won’t happen.  But I just want to be okay and I’m slowly realizing that what everyone has told me really is true….you are never actually okay ever again.   You just figure out how to live with it.  But here I am, experiencing a bad dead mom day that came from out of nowhere and it sucks.  and I’m not doing such a great job of handling it.  I’m in a horrible mood (I really do feel bad for just about anyone that has to interact with me today), I’m on the verge of tears – thankfully I did not cry to entire way to daycare and work or I would look as bad as I feel, and I’m just miserable.  I miss the days of normal and okay.  I miss the days when I didn’t have someone to miss as much as I do now.  I miss not having my  mom to make fun of.  It’s true!  I do.  She didn’t take it very well and I was often threatened and occasionally hit for some of the things I said but still.  I miss calling or texting my sister after talking to my mom and saying “can you believe she actually said that” and “so I just got off the phone with the crazy old lady we call our mother”.  I miss it.  I miss all of it.

And today, I just feel alone.  Between feeling like he isn’t on my side right now because of other priorities, and missing my mom, I feel very much alone.  I know that I’m not in the ‘real world’, but in my head, it is a mighty lonely place right now.  He doesn’t really hear me right now – he doesn’t really see me, claims he didn’t know I was in a bad mood last night when I am pretty sure it was very apparent.  And, although I get it, he doesn’t understand what this is like for me or why it’s the way that it is.  He doesn’t understand because I wasn’t that close to my mom, we didn’t have the best relationship.  But it obviously doesn’t matter.  It still hurts and I still miss her more than I think I could ever really put into words.  And I don’t expect him, or anyone else, to fully understand.  But I guess that’s the catch-22 of it all.  You don’t expect someone to really fully understand it, but when they don’t, that’s what makes you feel so alone. So no matter what, the end result is still the same.