What a horrible situation all round. I’m so sorry, Sampiro.
My heart goes out to you, Sampiro. I can’t imagine how hard this must be for you.
I don’t have any recommendations for your housing situation, but as far as burial/cremation plans are concerned, I think you should follow your mother’s wishes. Easier said than done, I know. My family recently went through the same thing with my grandmother, who was extremely reluctant to talk about death plans. Sometimes its just a question of getting people to talk. My mom started talking about her own plans, which prompted Grandma to chime in with her own wishes.
If you do get your mother to talk about this, you should get her wishes in a signed writing. Your sister may not like your mother’s decision, but at least you’ll have proof of what your mother wants.
Good luck to you, Sampiro. You’ll be in my thoughts.
I really do not care about your mother enough to read your whole post.
You are a nasty little shit, Snakes on a Plane. Why don’t you do something about that?
I second the motion, though if we’re going to start making suggestions about what, specifically, ought to be done with/to/about Snakes on a Plane, let’s devote a new thread to the project.
I do care about Sampiro’s mama, in an odd way akin to caring about a powerfully wrought fictional character. Sampiro is dealing with her mortality now, but he has already given her a kind of immortality in his writings, with much more still to be told, it seems. It’s probably voyeurism as much as sympathy talking here, but I hope that the current crisis – however it resolves – will keep alive at least the narrative. We may not always appreciate the tributes that come our way, but for someone who loves us to want to tell the whole truth about us has to be, among other things, a profound tribute.
Tabby
I wonder what it is that makes idiots feel the need to come in here and shit on this thread; snakes makes two or three, I forget. Morons.
I always enjoy your threads, Sampiro, and as far as I’m concerned they’re not only not too long, often they’re not long enough; you make me laugh and cry at the same time; nicely done. I hope things are better this week. Keep us posted.
You obviously don’t care enough about your posting privileges to read the thread before shitting in it, either. As TVeblen already told another poster, it’s jerkish to post only to say you’re not going to read the post. This is your only warning – another jerkish act like this and you’re out of here.
Sampiro - I guess from reading your threads I kinda figured your mom was just a force that wouldn’t die. I remember when you talked about editing history for the book unless your mom was dead I thought “Well then, I guess we’ll never hear the real story.”
Like you, I’ve seen people never better than on death’s door, so I’ll keep you in my thoughts.
Some thoughts of my own:
(1) Mama’s will: I would give it one last shot (using the great examples given here) with the “do you want the government to take it all?” argument and then mentally prepare yourself for the government (or your siblings) taking it all.
(2) Living situation: I wouldn’t bet on living in Mama’s townhouse - either (A)your sister will never finish the house, you will have made plans with nowhere else to go and end up living in the townhouse with your mother, (B)everything will go smoothly and then the BIG ONE will force your mother out due to some horrible slight by your sister and there you are again, or © nothing like that ever happens but this all gets turned into how either your sister or mother did this as a favor to you and you have a mental/emotional IOU.
Good luck. I’m here in Bama if you need anything.
I’m thinking of you Sampiro and offering prayers for your mother, and for you as you deal with it all. I hope you skip right over the stupid comments a couple people have made and find comfort and help in the many, many positive ones the people here who care about you have made!
Just wanted to say there’s at least one"hippie Wicca" gal sending you and your family all the good thoughts and energy I can spare. (You don’t need to tell your sister :))
To Deevee and Snakes on a Plane (SOAP): a post that is hopefully short enough for you to read-
Please eat emu shit, then set records for the most consecutive bouts of explosive diarrhea caused by getting fucked by every passenger on a ¾ mile long train filled with Circus Freaks (all of whom have been expelled forever from Gibsonton for a combination of morals charges and scaring the other natives), and then have a nice day.
How’s your mom?
I apologize for the above.
I didn’t really mean the “have a nice day” part.
Or the “please”.
Sorry.
[Michael Corleone]“Whaddya do with a piece of shit like that?”[/Michael Corleone]
I truly hope that it is not Revelation to Deevee or SOAP or anybody that I am not surprised or even in the least upset that you, or for that matter that anybody on or off these boards, cares about my mother as much as I do. Most people on here know me exclusively from my postings and my mother only through her inclusion in said postings, therefore I’m a relative stranger and she’s a relative stranger’s stranger relative. I am truly not the least bit offended that nobody here is as upset as I am over the issue of her possible impending mortality- it’s human nature. We all come preloaded with varying but usually copious amounts of compassion (hopefully) and we all come preloaded with compassionate surge protectors.
Dozens of people died around the country this past weekend in automobile accidents. (One of them happened to be one of my father’s favorite singers who died a few miles from where I am.) I shed no tears for any of them- I certainly am not glad they died, my sympathies are with their family, but none of them left a personal void in my life. If I were to hear on the news that a school shooting in Texarkomazona violently and prematurely ended the lives of a dozen kids, all of them born in a place I’ve never visited to families I’ve never met a member of, it would upset me, but if it should happen on the same day that my “endearingly stupid” little dog were to be killed by a car, I can guarantee you that I would be far more devastated by the latter.
Is this saying that my dog’s life is worth more than that of a dozen Oklahoma school kids? Of course not. Is it saying that were I ordered to choose between the life of my dog or the lives of a dozen children I’d go with the dog? Of course not. Is it saying that I’m a bad person for crying more over the hypothetical death of my dog than over the hypothetical death of children? Well, your mileage may certainly vary, but in my opinion no, of course not. It means that the death of the schoolchildren is an abstract tragedy that disturbs a hinterland of my compassion while the death of a funny sweet and stupid little brown and white dog I share a pillow with would breach the walls of said compassion.
If the death of strangers who died on an Interstate or children in Texarkhomazona affected me as much as the death of those I love (regardless of how many nipples or legs they may have, and that answer varies wildly dependent upon species and what drugs were being experimentally prescribed during gestation) then I’d have two options: A) Spend my life curled up in a fetal ball of despair whenever I turned on the news, or B) I would look with near disinterest on the pain and suffering of a person I love, and obviously neither is an option I want.
So it is with my mother: to those on these boards she’s a (hopefully complex) character, to me she’s a decidedly more solipsistic singularity. She’s the last surviving Titan from a time when the Earth was new. Each of us has so much compassion and each of us has so much emotional detachment. She is a histrionic damned near impossible hopelessly high maintenance and utterly selfish judgmental drama queen responsible for the worst moments of my life. She is a stoic strong selfless “I dare you to try and hurt one of my babies” mother lioness with an incredible work ethic, an unconditional love of family, an overdeveloped sense of duty of a sort not seen today and scarcely human in scale. The former is conjoined with the latter by a bond as real and as inseparable as the shared liver of Chang and Eng. I have at alternate times praised and cursed the names of every god there is, ever was or ever will be for giving me such a mother and meant it as much the one time as the other, and if she lives for more than a few more days or for several more decades I’ll curse and praise them for her again.
Again, I don’t expect others to feel the same way about her as I do. I DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT HER SOME DAYS. But I do know that, to borrow a line from INHERIT THE WIND, “a giant once lived in that body”, and its passing, be it today or in 2042 leaves a void that will not be replaced in my life. I will survive in body and in spirit, but not quite all of me. She is, all Freudian baggage aside, due to an odd series of events and circumstances, almost my life-partner.
So I write about it because I find writing therapeutic. I learned when I was a kid I could understand many more things by writing about them than by just thinking about them, and things that I found terrifying at the time sometimes echoed hysterically funny from print and vice versa, so I do it. Whether it works for everybody I don’t know and I couldn’t care less, some people like snails and some like oysters while most just wonder why Olivier would waste time seducing Tony Curtis (who he owns anyway) when Sal Mineo was filming just one set over, but I do it and I post it so it seems less masturbatory.
So once again, I am not offended at somebody not being as conflicted or emotional on the subject as I am. Frankly I’d be more offended to learn that nobody found anything in the O.P.s funny (for that would reflect on my writing, not on my mother). Yesterday I sat in the waiting room of an oncologist’s office with several other people of varying ages and backgrounds and I’m sure varying characters and I.Q.s and the like, and while certainly if I could have healed them all with a kind word, a kiss on the cheek and a lap-dance I would have, I ultimately didn’t really care. I mean, I don’t wish them any ill will, certainly if it were up to me they’d all be well, I “feel their pain” and the like, but on the most gut level, whether they live or die is nothing to me when compared to the way I felt about the chain smoking obnoxious and kind, cantankerous and wonderful, selfish and selfless old woman I was there with. I don’t remember their faces and I’m sure they don’t mind, and I’m sure they wish me and my mother generic good will and I’m sure they don’t really care about how my mother fares either when compared to their own condition or the person they were with.
But I most certainly did not go up to any of them and say “I don’t care whether that mother/daughter/grandfather/husband/child you’re with lives or dies— couldn’t care less— I don’t have time to get to know you and so your pain or joy or recovery or death mean pretty much nothing to me”. It’s just a shitty and vile thing to do. If you don’t care, that’s fine, but make like Ms. Warwick and “Walk on by…”. I don’t give a damn about threads concerning professional football, LOST, Lemony Snicket, coconut cream recipes, gardening tips, how to strip beam-board, whatever, so I just don’t go in them. What the fuck is hard about that? I don’t go to Amazon.com and type in “didn’t read it, probably wouldn’t like it” to most of the books on the bestseller list. (I’m imagining the “he looked like a rabbit… didn’t he hon?” yuppie couple on SNL for some reason.)
I hope it’s not disobeying the ordinance of wishing death on other posters when I say that I hope if I ever reach a phase where my sole reason for commenting on the emotional turmoil of a person (a person who has never knowingly done me ill) is to interrupt them and friends and well-wishers and say “I just want to let you know, I don’t give a damn”- even if it’s on the Internet instead of real life, then I hope that is the day that the Divine Author stops the sentence of my life ala Joyce. Sometimes there’s just no word but “you fucking piece of shit”.
(Apologies for the long rant and please know that it was only intended for the two named posters or any similar posters whose posts I overlooked- I really and truly very much do appreciate the good wishes, advice and e-mails.)
I actually came in to post an update but got a bit… uh… distracted. Let me just say that my mother does have a mass, they’re trying to find out what it is and where to go from there. Not having had exposure to cancer in the inner circles before I’m not sure how it’s usually diagnosed, but I’d always thought it was “suspicion/X-Ray/biopsy”, but so far it’s been all nuclear scannings and no biopsies. Anybody know how this works? (The doctor’s main suspicions are lymphoma or lung cancer- I’m quite aware of the recovery rates for the latter [though the oncologist says that ‘large cell/small cell’ makes a big difference and my understanding is that lymphoma is the more treatable in general, though as of yet nothing’s firmly diagnosed.)
Regarding holographic wills: my bad. I misunderstood what one was- I knew that the original meaning was handwritten but I thought that in the age of word processors it was extended to mean any signed but homemade will- it still has to be all handwritten?
In more personal news and to paraphrase LION IN WINTER again, I think we’ll all see the Second Coming before we see the [assert vulgar expletives here] river house built ([Hepburn quaver]"The kitchen tile work alone will last for years…[/Hepburn]) as my sister quite tipped her hand on the matter. “Well, I really want you in Montgomery, because I just think she’ll recover so much better in her own house with her own stuff and I can’t devote 24/7 to going through cancer again…” (my sister’s mother-in-law fought cancer off and on for 15 years). Ooooh darling, thanks for coming clean at least, even if you honestly don’t seem to realize that’s what you just did…
My mother’s holding up amazingly well while I literally lost 8 pounds in one day (though I honestly think it was due to a stomach virus rather than nerves- I’ve never had a nervous stomach). Will tell more later, but very sincere thanks again for all well wishes and advice and apologies for the rant.
Will at some point give the story of yesterday and the other interesting occurrences of the past few days, but for now I’ll just include what I’m currently using as the signature of my e-mail:
Well, she sounds fine…
To get a real diagnosis, they’re almost certainly going to need a biopsy, but since that’s a bit harder to do than a scan, they’re probably scanning first to get an idea of the size/location/etc. of the mass. I suspect they’re also looking for whether it’s spread past the lungs, and if so, how far/to where.
I’m sorry about your mother, and I hope that you end up with good news. From dealing with my father-in-law (who my husband describes as “I love him, but I don’t like him”) and his recent cancer, hospitalizations, stroke, etc., I know at least as an in-law the pain and conflicted feelings of dealing with a difficult parent. I will also admit that I intentionally never suggested the hospital I work at as an option because I don’t want to inflict him upon coworkers.
The real shame about this post is that, if those two gnat-brained illiterates couldn’t be bothered to read the OP, they’re almost certainly lacking in the attention span required to read (to say nothing of lacking the intellectual capacity to understand) this brilliant denouncement of their various and extensive moral, intellectual, and, most likely, hygenic failings.
Well, I for one feel like you and Momma are almost family after all this time reading your posts. Definitely not strangers. Here’s hoping for good news soon.
The O.P. was quite interesting but the following text was priceless.
I’m not saying I had to stay late at work so nobody saw that I peed in my pants from laughing so hard. No, I’m not.
Sampiro, I hope I don’t sound like the other jerks that have weighed in when I say that I hope your momma gets better, not only for you, but for me. I want to read more about her exploits. I’ll think good thoughts for you for momma and throw in a few prayers for my own selfish interests.
Note: Liberal Bubbadog editing of Sampiro’s posts. shortening and bolding mine.
First of all - never underestimate the power of the lap-dance, second - if you end up at UAB and need anything my email is in my profile. My mom works at the hospital so if nothing else I could send you warm non-hospital-y food. But no, I cannot score you any of that $20/pill tylenol. I’m fresh out. But at lease my mom could tell you where the good spots to smoke are.