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.