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,
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. 
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