Scotti,
I hope this helps you a little.
In May of 1983 my mother went in for surgery, I was all of 14, I didn’t understand but I knew things weren’t right. I wasn’t really told of why she was going in but was sort of told that she had problems.
My parents were divorced and my father was remarried at the time. My brother and father came in the house, after being at the hospital, to tell me that my mother had colon cancer, they cried I couldn’t. I still couldn’t comprehend it, it was too much. It was the one of the strangest times of my life and continues to be except for something I care not to discuss here.
Anyhow, usually Mother’s Day is the freakin hardest holiday throughout the year but after 18 years I go through the motions for my step-mother (gag).
Later, I think it was late July, my father (the butthead that he is can be the sweetest man on Earth – hey he’s my dad) sent my mother, her boyfriend who lived with us, my grandmother, my brother and me to Epcot first class tickets on the plane with a time share condo so we could have some happy moments together before she was gone. In May they had only given her six months.
Unfortunately, my father’s plan went wrong, not his fault he was doing what he could for his kids. My mother had a brain tumor pressing on her brain, something no one knew. I remember sitting there watching her put red pistacio nuts into her rum and coke. I was looking at her with this odd expression and really didn’t say anything. Through the night she got worse. She was jabbering something I wish I could remember but I don’t.
It’s kind of a blur but I remember they picked her up in an ambulance where she eventually ended up in a 24 hour “hospital” flight back to Colorado Springs, not a cheap thing and not a pleasant thing either. I was left there with my brother who was 20 at the time and my grandmother who was 69 and grieving over the entire episode.
Thoughout the summer, I was living with my father, they felt it best that I live there to meet people I would eventually be going to school with. I hated them for doing that, I never got to spend the time I needed with my mom. Which might, in hindsight, be a reason I can be such a bitter person.
I spent some time with her, but not enough for her last months. I remember we took a walk and despite our problems in the past we had an excellent conversation. I remember giving her a bear for her birthday (August 14) which I have to this day. He’s a sad little thing but cuddly and I slept with it for years.
Anyhow, three days after my birthday my father came downstairs with tears in his eyes, about 12:30 am on August 23rd. He told me my mother passed on about 11:30pm. He was crying and all I could do was hug him back, no tears or anything in my eyes. (WOW, this is freakin weird to talk about after all this time and I have a few tears too.) I didn’t know how to react or how to feel. I just turned 15, I was an unhappy teen with raging hormones and I am told my mother died.
They had a wake for her but I never attended, they wouldn’t let me. She had her ashes spread between here and her home town via a small plane so I never got to really say good-bye.
For what it’s worth Scotti, I can understand what you are going through. I kind of feel cheated because of her early death (she was only 45) and usually get weird in May and again in August…oh and then again during Thanksgiving and Christmas because she made such a big deal out of it…I kind of hate those holidays now.
