I'm not going to address my long absence, because well, there's too much to catch up on, none of which has nothing to do with why I'm typing this blog post. October 21, 2011 no longer means just seven days before my birthday. From now, and forevermore, it will now symbolize something much more important to me: The death of my mother. Time sure flies, and it sure as hell doesn't seem anything close to a year. But I intended this to be my one year tribute to her, since I can't be there in CA to help celebrate this milestone with family (we just moved to Portland/Vancouver and I can't take off work just yet).
Keep in mind that I'm under the influence here, because it's the only way I can lower my inhibitions to speak openly and freely, so if I misspell at any point or wander off on a tangent, or bounce around topics/memories-I apologize ahead of time. The cost for honesty in feeling is the occassional grammatical error LOL.
With no bias at all my mother was one of the greatest human beings I have ever had the priviledge of knowing. She was a true inspiration to a lot of people, who often considered her their second mother. Those of you who don't know my mother's story, you can go back in previous posts to read the details since retelling it here would triple this post size.
On a side note, I have to go to bed, and I'll have to continue this tomrrow. Seems that I've "influenced" myself a little too much, and I've just been looking at the screen for 5 minutes haha.
To be continued....
Okay, just got back from the paper route, and am more alert. It's been a hard year without my mother, for myself and my family. She was the rock of the family: The Matriarch. What made it hard for me, as I've discussed in previous posts was that when she died, I had to force all the emotions down so I could be the person to organize her funeral as she had wanted it, and get everyone else through it, since nobody else was in any state to arrange anything. As that very difficult week went by, every day I had to cram those emotions further and further down, until it was so packed tight that when it was all done, and I wanted to reach them, so I could grieve....I couldn't. I didn't feel anything anymore. Numbing yourself to pain works too well if you do it too long, and I felt like such a shit son for not being able to cry for my mom, the wonderful lady that she was.
BUT, all is not lost, I'm happy to say that I was finally able to grieve, and it just happened a month ago. When my mom first died, someone had said not to worry about not being able to cry, that it tends to happen to the organizer and "go to" guy of the family that handles the arrangements, due to the reasons I mentioned; cramming it all away to deal with "later" to get through the hard part. And no truer words were spoken. After a few months after my mother died, I just came to accept that those feelings will come one day and stopped stressing over why I couldn't reach them.
Well the time came when last month we watched Big Fish (one of my favorite movies, you really should check it out). I've always loved this movie, but it never came close to making me cry, but this particular time after not having seen it in years its what triggered my grief. Without spoiling the movie for anyone who hasn't seen it, in the end there's a scene where a son gets to say goodbye to his dying father. And it all started with the thought "I never got to say goodbye", as I connected w/ the scene in relation to watching my mother die. The night my mother died, by the time I got to the hospital, she no longer was conscious. The moments during her actual death she made noises like she was trying to say something, but nothing understandable ever came out. So in essence, I never really got to say goodbye.
That thought I had was like a key to the 30 foot walls I built around my grief, and it all fell apart. All the walls crumbled, all the rusty locks broke open, all the emotions like water rushing through a broken dam, came flooding out...it was instantly overwhelming. And...I cried. I cried like I've never cried before...HUGE, sobbing, grief ridden crying. I have never ever cried like this, and I couldn't stop. My instant reaction was to try to stop, but just like I didn't know how to reach my grief when it was walled up, I didn't know how to stop crying. It was like standing in the middle of a river, trying to figure out how to get it to stop flowing instantly. Wasn't gonna happen...so I let myself go, released control and just rode it.
Needless to say, my wife and kids lost it as well. My kids have never seen me cry, and all of a sudden they see me just sobbing like a fucking Fat Boy (from the 80's rap group: UHUHUHUHUH LOL). Now everyones crying, and no one knows why I am, and everyone's hugging me, and I managed to get out: " I never got to say goodbye...HE (the actor) got to say goodbye, and it was beautiful...My mom deserved a goodbye, she deserved for it to be beautiful just like that...I should have been able to send her off into death just like that...it's what she deserved..." And now knowing why I was crying everyone started crying even more. LOL....and after, I felt a weight ( a rather huge one) off my shoulders. The grief was no longer locked up, and I smiled.
None of this changes the fact that I miss my mother, more so now, than a year ago. It tears heart in two knowing that she won't PHYSICALLY be able to see my beautiful daughters grow up, graduate, get married, and do wonderful things. But I know that she sees us all, wherever she is, and I live my life hoping to continue to make her proud.
She was a truly amazing woman, one the world can never replace. She was a woman that everyone admired, and lived her life full of honesty, integrity and strength. And I hope where she is, there is no more pain, and that she continues to smile down on us, and I hope she's proud.
I love you, mom. I miss you, and life will never be the same without you....but you live on in my thoughts every day.
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