Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Not So Daily Updates - Made Of Money...


As you've probably guessed, I have another excuse to blame on my tardiness with posting; this one should be fairly acceptable though, actually, I wouldn't tarnish this one by making it out as an excuse. Outside of being an ESRD kidney failure patient, I felt it relevant, on this occasion, to do a write up about my Mother.

Mom's life, as I can remember, or have been told.

I honestly have the WORST memory, so go easy on me if I miss some important details. From what I've heard, she was always the nicest of the bunch, always caring for each of her siblings and even inherited a couple along the way that she still called her own; if you've never met Nana or Poppy, I am sure this is where she got it from. If you've been touched by her at any point in your life, I can almost, no actually, I CAN guarantee that it was out of pure love. Sometimes it seemed like she was angry or disappointed in your actions, and rightfully so, we're sinful people, but she was as close to heavenly and angelic as they come. I have never, ever come across somebody that disliked my Mom, in-fact, many adopted her as their second mother; you couldn't have met somebody with a bigger heart and everybody felt it. Now, I have heard stories from her and my aunts, that in high school, she was always picked on for being too nice, or back in those days (which was a Wednesday by the way;)), she went to a school that was predominantly African-American, during the 70’s, and Mom was about as white as they come, well minus the blonde hair; I never heard a story finishing with her hurting anybody, that's what her sisters were for ;)! She had the most lusciously chocolate brown hair with a hint of red wine swirling through it, her curls were always natural and it was always so shimmery and bright that it created her veritable halo over her head. 

As I write this out, I am struggling to think about how Mom and Dad met, and unless I've completely forgotten the story, I don't believe we were ever told this story; an incredibly lucky story on my Dad's behalf I am sure. From what I recall, they were high school sweethearts and then, as far as I know, BOOM, married. I'm sure there is a much more imaginative story floating out there somewhere, but it seems to have floated out of one of my ears and into the heavens; probably my right ear, because my left ear popped back in 2001 and the scarring probably closed up any exits, but we'll get back to that story in another post. 

Let’s skip forward to what many claim as the biggest mistake in any marriage, children; our parents had three devilish boys from 1983-1987, each two years+ behind the previous. Not surprisingly, the first born was the favorite, he always has been and always will be. Following the natural order of things, the middle child (me), was neglected and treated as old news and although Mom and Dad would never admit it and it seems planned from the dates above, I was probably an accident. Just wait until the youngest came along, he was the baby and reached almost as favorable stature as the eldest, leaving the middle clamoring for third position. My brothers, will of course, write those previous sentences out in quite different orders, but I wrote it first and it's on the internet, and you can't put anything on the internet that isn't true, right State Farm? In reality, my parents never favored any one of us over the next, in-fact, there were many, many occasions when our parents were unable to differentiate their children from other children; everybody was family, whether they liked it or not and the favorites has always been a running joke in our family. 

Are you ready for one of the longest paragraphs ever written? Here's where many of you illustrious readers probably have me beat, and would probably consider me to be a terrible son as well; I will forget to describe probably 100x more items then what I will actually bring out on paper, err on blog. From the time I was born until the time Mom passed, whoops, cats out of the bottle now, some of you may already know, or postured from previous posts, that Mom had been struggling with Breast Cancer for 6 years and had finally and reluctantly, crossed the metaphorical finish line; I tried to use a racing metaphor because she loved racing just as much as the next guy/girl at the track. Although it seems she impacted many peoples lives and crafted her three boys piece by piece, the events experienced during my general life experiences while my Mom was alive have become a giant blur, hence why I would qualify for a terrible son; there are always flashes of memories that come flying through my head from time to time. Her life in these past six or so years, have obviously been the most memorable, due to her great struggle that was handled with such tenacity and heart has touched so many peoples lives by being such a strong powerhouse during her battle with breast cancer. In-fact, I remember times when she would drop us off at school, good ole Jefferson Elementary, where our teachers had nearly bludgeon us cold to get us pried from Mom's legs. I have countless memories of coming home, very late of course, and finding Mom sitting on the porch awaiting my arrival; I'm sure there are many children of all ages that have encountered this with their Mothers, but I don't recall seeing it from any of my friend’s parents. I recently encountered a joke that I probably should have known for quite some time, which fits perfectly into the next memory. 
Mom was always trying to make us boys happy, if we wanted to go out, she made it happen, she always found some money somewhere and often handed us her debit card to go out with; don't go reading too deeply into this, we were by no means wealthy. 
In-fact, she would give us money with the instruction to bring her change, but she never seemed to get any back; we either spent the whole lot or our wallets got fatter while hers blew out spider webs and dust. Additionally, whenever she would hand us her debit card, it seemed she wouldn't get it back for days at a time; this didn't necessarily meant we were on a spending spree, but why give up the goods unless your hand is forced. The joke I previously mentioned isn’t as much of a joke and it is a play on the word Mom; Mom seems to, at least in most occasions, to stand for Made of Money, get it? 
I think on of the funniest memories I have of Mom, at least at this moment, happens while Dad is asleep; I can almost bet that some of the greatest memories of all time, for anybody, happen because somebody else fell asleep before everybody else does. We were currently painting the living room inside of the house, so all of the furniture was scrunched in other rooms. I don’t remember exactly how we ended up in this situation, but Dad was sleeping on the living room floor while all four of us were still away, big mistake! 
We got our hands on a camera somehow and were taking pictures of the night, after dad fell asleep, completely innocent and sober by the way, we corralled all of the empty cans and bottles of beer we could scrounge up, as well as cigarette boxes and really anybody who would pass out at the bar would have and cluttered them around him; picture time!!! 
As you could imagine, we were all giggles the whole time and when dad woke up shortly after it all, he was NOT happy; we still laughed the entire time. It could have been worse, we could have painted his toenails, which we also did onetime he fell asleep on the couch; both Mom’s ideaJ. There are so many flashed of memories that I could be writing down here, like huddling in the camper at lake Havasu during a monsoon and Mom and Dad rescuing the boat out of the lake after it crashed on a rock; Dad drove the boat around with the boat nearly submerged while Mom backed the truck and trailer down the slip, for the first time I believe. There were times that many people would be very spiteful, if not hateful at a person for something they’ve done, accident or not; Mom had another way of doing things, she was a forgiver, some of our best friends came from unthinkable acts and it wouldn’t have happened that way if it wasn’t for Mom. Mom had a big triumph in racing as well; it was the fun race for So-Cal Sprinters at Adams Kart Track, and it was the Mother’s race, I believe that’s what it was called. I was racing the event prior to hers and we had only one go-kart, I ran it up the hill and flipped it but she still hoped in it, after we checked it and cleaned it of course; she went on to win the event, and further more, passed people in places that track veterans never even conceived, those were good times. Even the simplest things, like typing the way and speed that I do now, is because of here inspiration and training; imagine how long it would be between posts if I didn’t type at approximately 90 WPM. I could write for days, and well technically I have, but it won’t take you that long to read it so it doesn’t count as writing for days now does it; unless you want me to write the worlds longest post and turn it into a novel…I didn't think so; on to the next paragraph, or we’ll be here all day, which wouldn’t be so bad when talking about my Mom.

There have been many occasions where I jokingly talk about things in my life and why I can’t do certain things because of them; this pertains mostly to chores and anything that requires getting out of bed, in most occasions. Now I know my Mom would give me a look that meant something about not using her passing as an excuse to not get on with life; we also joked from time to time about using the BC card to get what she wanted, she never did and we often got the same look for cracking the joke as well. Of course, with me being a good, traditional son, I would have to come back with a rebuttal that would probably have to explain to her how much of an influence she'd been on everything I have ever done; I've come to find that she had been one of the biggest influences on many more people outside, as well as inside the family. Some of you that knew her will pick-up on the fact that my writing has been heavily influenced by her, on top of the many other things that you will see come up through my writing. Now, lets not go writing off the multitude of people in my life that have influenced my life in some of the same ways; you all have helped to form me into the handsome, loving gentleman that I have become, this post isn’t about you guys now is it? However, considering all of the people that I have had the pleasure of meeting, and some of them I call my second mothers and fathers, I have never met a person so generous and caring as my mother; I have never seen her do anything out of spite and I have matured purely from the realization of how wonderful she really was. Now to explain the excuse that I mentioned waaaaaaay up the page; it’s about time right? 
Mom had passed on April 2nd 2013, not on April 1st, she was never a fan of April Fools, quite frankly I think she was too wise to be fooled during April fools, so we never caught her of guard; it was probably because she had three boys, she could never let her guard down. The couple of weeks leading up to this date were quite the emotional struggle, with all of the family coming in and out of the house to visit mom, as well as my continued struggle, had made it very hard to want to do anything but eat, sleep and repeat. For somebody like my Mom to be in the state of pain and quite completely out to lunch as she was, was heart wrenching for me, and I am sure for the rest of my family; you could hear a needle drop when it was quiet and those were probably the loudest times in the house, because that’s when you start to think about what you will be missing for many years to come. I am sure you can fathom, even if you had never gone through something like this, how it affected my motivations coming up to April 2nd, and even after her death; it’s taken me this long to write anything about it and the previous sentence was probably the hardest of this entire post. However, a very good friend of our family, Mark Talmo, put it into words very well at her wake; "she didn't leave us, she wouldn't do that to us"; Love you Mom and you will always be remembered by so many. I know you have probably heard it a million times, but she has not died, she has merely moved onto the next life and is healed, without stress, pain or illness.

I can't likely comment on how she affected the lives of the many people that filled the church during her wake, and explaining every detail of how she has affected my life would simply require an entirely new blog. However, I can explain how much she has influenced me to push through my recent struggles with kidney failure, she always had a smile on her face and was willing to push through all of her pains and weaknesses to make everybody in her life as happy as can be; I can only claim that I am living up to part of her legend, as they are obviously very big shoes to fill, but every time I feel even slightly down and out, I think of her through-out her struggle, which she made seem like nearly no struggle at all, and that gives me that extra oomph.

I was going to continue to write about my other struggles since my last post, but I don't think it would be rightly so to put them together with a post about my minuscule debacle. I don't plan on making you wait nearly as long for the next post, but then again, I never did to begin with.