I know, it's been more than a week! Unthinkable! *slaps own hand* Shame on me.
Hm.....what's happened in the last week?
Sunday
The neighborhood had a brief power outage due to a little storm on Sunday evening. That was fun. ;o) Actually, we wound up hanging out in the front yard, since it was too stinkin' oppressively HOT inside, where the A/C wasn't working. :o( The neighbors, too, got wise and migrated outdoors, so a lot of people who had never seen Erinne (because many of them speak very little English, and so consequently, we don't mingle very often) got to hold her. Erinne tolerated the passing-around remarkably well...until my neighbor's boyfriend tried to hold her. She found him scary.
Monday
Let's see, what did I do on Monday?.....Ooh, wait never mind, I remember Monday now. I tried to block that out.
Suffice it to say Monday was a bad day for me. :o/ I came in to work wayyy late...because I thought it was Tuesday, when I come in at 8:00, not Monday, when I was slated to come in......at 7:00. I think I clocked in at a quarter to eight. Yike.
I consoled and distracted myself by playing nurse to Kevin, one of my co-workers. He was feeling queasy. I'm sure it did me bookoos more good than it did him. LOL. It gave me a chance to slip back into the "mother tendencies" that are my sanctuary. I'm sure I "over-nursed". lol
Thank you for humoring me, Kev. :o)
Tuesday
Um....Tuesday.....I don't remember doing anything on Tuesday. It must have been boring.
Wednesday
I had KidStuf drama rehearsals on Wednesday night. I spent three Wednesday Afternoon hours memorizing two scripts containing four skits. Bleh! My brain was tired by the day's end.
Joanna and company provided readily-accepted comic relief. Ha! Jo and her three older brothers and her dad, and a group of their friends had all gone to "MusiCollege", which, to hear Jo tell it, sounds kind of like a music retreat, with lessons on voice, piano, violin, whatever you please, I suppose. Now, that could very well be a very WRONG definition of MusiCollege, and any MusiCollege attendees may feel free to post a corrective comment, but it's of little consequence, as it contains little or no pertinence to the rest of my story. ;o)
Anyway, the MusiCollege kids were all hopped up on adrenaline and caffeine, and totally beyond hyper and silly. The phone got passed around and it was a, ah, rather interesting experience. I must say that Joanna's coherent conversation was the highlight of the phone call though. ;o)
Thursday
Hmm.....I made an (unsuccessful) attempt at cleaning my room and got in an argument with Amanda. I was in bad need of some chocolate.
Friday
Friday was spent pining for chocolate, buying some chocolate, and wishing I had purchased a different kind of chocolate. I wanted Hershey's, but all I could find was a Nestlé Crunch bar. And I must say I'm TERRIBLY proud of myself for discovering the "é" that appeared at the end of "Nestlé". I had to play around with the keyboard shortcuts for a good minute or two before I discovered that it's ALT + 1 + 3 + 0.
*applause for Ashley*
Thank you.
Friday's purpose was pretty much to tie up the loose ends and kiss the remnant boo-boos inflicted by the accumulation of stress from the previous four days.
Boo-boos kissed courtesy of the nice salesman that took time to chat with me for a good ten minutes or so before I actually got around to transferring him. I can honestly say he's the most congenial, pleasant stranger I've dealt with on the phone since I started working there. And all he needed to do to deserve such a statement was be friendly! So many people that call are unfriendly! Hey y'all, be nice to operators and receptionists and telemarketers. You'd be surprised how quickly we're made aware of the fact that we're bottom-rung.
Nana came for a visit. Dad's going to Baptize Ricky and Jared at church tomorrow, so she's here for the weekend. :o) Hi Nana!
Saturday (today!)
Today has been spent taking it easy. Doing a lot of nuthin'. I got my "Missouri fix" talking to Joanna today. And then I OD'd on twelve Missouri e-mails!! (LOL, just kidding, Jo!)
And speaking of Missouri goings-on, I need to ask anybody reading this to please pray fervently for Ron Mandella. Mr. Mandella is Joanna's grandfather, Mrs. Burks' dad. Long story short, the doctors found he had a brain tumor, the family was told he didn't have long to live. They had a bit of hope when a top neurosurgeon told them he may have some success with radiation, but they found out yesterday that a CT scan revealed that the tumor is growing so fast, that the radiation is having next to no effect on it. They've sent Mr. Mandella home, and they've called Jared, his son, home from service in Iraq.
Please pray for the Lord to give rapid healing and recovery, if that's the Lord's will. And pray for the Burks and Mandella families, that God will give them courage, and a peace that passes understanding.
So what else is new?
Hm....I've been thinking about Mom a lot. I dreamed about Mom on Thursday night, what it would've been like if she had just woken up like she was "supposed to", and how things in our house would've been different. She was going to have to go through a rehab program when she woke up, because she didn't use any muscle for a month, and she wouldn't have been able to do....anything, really.
From an e-mail I sent Joanna the next morning:
"She was still going through rehab, her gross motor skills were back to normal, and I guess she was still working on her fine motor skills. She was talking okay (Mom NEVER had a problem with talking! lol) , and functioning alright, but she was sitting down a lot, she got really tired. And she was dismayed b/c Erinne had formed a stronger bond with Bobby and Amanda and me--as I expected she would, as Mom would've been in the hospital for her first few months--and Mom was just saying that it made her sad, but that it was the way God had it worked out, that she would be closer to us. It hurt her, but she was okay with it, because it was the way God orchestrated it.
"It's so weird. I see and remember more of my mom when I'm dreaming than I do when I'm awake. I wonder if that's because my conscious mind wants to 'saint' her, and I think that gets a little in the way of who she really was, y'know? But when I dream, I dream things that really happened, or things that *could've* really happened, and it feels real.
"And then Dad had to wake me up five minutes into my blissful virtual reality. :o/ *grumble* I couldn't have told him to wake me up at 6:45 instead of 6:30???
Ah well..."
Yeah, I miss Mom. It's weird, the more time goes by, the more clearly I remember her. That's the opposite of way I thought it would be. And, like I said, I think my waking mind wants to "saint" her, to make her even more beautiful and patient and loving and "Proverbs 31" than she already was. And she was an amazing woman, she needs no further embellishment. But all I can remember are the moments where she played "Sage Mommy". But I like what I remember when I'm not trying to remember. It's the normal stuff. The dumb stuff. Sitting at the dining room table, looking at Christmas cooking magazines and listening to her tell me what we were gonna do for Thanksgiving dinner. And grocery shopping. And going out for coffee and talking about....whatever I wanted. And practicing the choir music together. I'm an alto and she usually sang soprano, but she could sing all the way down to tenor, so she would help me with any part, hitting a dissinant chord with the tenor line, or whatever. And I remember sitting on her bed, looking over shoulder while she explained all the lists and sketches in her notebook....usually a new idea to better one of her home businesses, or more holiday planning. Her phrase was "It's all about Christmas!" She planned Christmas stuff all year 'round. That's where I get the bizarre urge to sing "Sleigh Ride" in August.
But it's so weird....I can't remember that stuff when I try to. It usually comes when I'm sleeping, or when I find something of hers that still smells like Mom. Or when I browse through one of her hundred thousand notebooks. Reading her recipe notebook is great. There's something about reading her handwriting, and touching the pages she touched over and over again, every time she made us dinner, there's something about seeing more of the "old normal" that really stirs me up. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes, if I'm not looking at it alone, I can laugh. Sometimes I just get real quiet for awhile.
But I digress....
Anyway, this is me, and the fam, and last week in a nutshell. Now I can say I've updated my blog. Yay me. :o)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I dunno if you know, Ashley, but from birth - 16yo I was raised mostly by my great-grandmother.(she was only 60yrs old when i was born)
She passed away when I was 16. STILL today, 16yrs after her passing I have those sudden memories of her. I get very sad, missing her, grieving her. It's worse around when it should be her bday, the anniversary of her death, when I have a baby. The memories and missing her are just part of life now, they've not gone away - and pray they don't! But the pain of missing her is 'normal' now, not the initial biting pain of those first few years.
I wanna tell you, too.... I have one of her sweaters, one that she wore ALL the time, in a sealed bag. Every now and then I come across it, open it just a tad and inhale. I'm home, I'm in her arms again, she's here loving me now. Is that too weird? I dunno. But I find it comforting.
Poor Alex, about a year after we were married I have a "grief burst" where I mourned much like I had when she first passed away. He didn't quite understand why I was so upset about something that had happened two years prior, but he held me while I cried anyway. I think that part of me had to "shut off" to cope with the grief in little bits here and there so that I wasn't overwhelmed with it.
and, just so you think I am completely crazy, I'll tell you one more story... :)
This time about my Grandmother, the daughter of the aforementioned g-grandmother. She passed away in June of 04. She came home from Houston ill and despite the drs prediction that she would be home in a week or two, she got suddenly worse and went into a coma. What it boiled down to was my mom, aunt and I having to follow HER wishes to be taken off life-support and allowed to pass on. Even though there was no doubt it was what she wanted, it took a toll on each of us.
Every now and then I will have a dream that Grandmother has come home and is MAD at us for taking her off life-support, or not picking her up at the hospital when she was well OR that she's home and FURIOUS at us for cleaning out the house! I wake up, and in that groggy state feel as if it's real and that we owe her a major apology.
anyway, I'm not trying to compare my own experiences of loss with yours, I'm not. But wanted to share to let you know that I think you're experiencing perfectly normal stuff... ((hugs)) :oD
Thank you, Miss Jenn. :o)
Sometimes I wonder just how much of "that stuff" is normal. *laughs* But then, I don't suppose I've ever been "normal" anyway, hm?
One lady I know--who's dad died when she was 16--told me that she really doesn't remember him now. Like, she remembers a few specific events, but she doesn't remember *him*. I guess I kind of expected that whatever I remembered about Mum was all I would EVER remember about her. So it's been a surprise to me that now all the "old normal" is starting to resurface.
Am I sounding weird again? ;o)
I'll stop now.
Thank you. :o)
Hehe. ^ I accidentally posted the same reply twice. :oD
Post a Comment