Post by Mod City on Dec 2, 2009 15:20:18 GMT -5
EDIT:
Since I didn't want to clutter up the forum with another blog, I've decided to modify the short blog I had already started and take it in a different direction. I did not, however, really want to delete my original post, so I'm leaving it here at the top. You can get to the post that kicks off the new train of thought:
Mod City's Arcadia
My original post continues below.
Mod
-------------------------------------------
I don’t have any real reason for starting this blog other than I can’t think of any place on the board for which this topic would be appropriate. It’s highly personal and will hold no real interest to anyone but myself, but I want to get it down somewhere other than a Word file tucked away somewhere on my hard drive. Just to have it out there.
This is going to be a rambling post about cancer,death and thoughts on my mother. It’s going to be going from one thought to another, sometimes without warning. Just give me a break. I’m on the couch right now and the good old board is sitting in a chair just off to the side charging me $100 an hour for therapy
Mom died two years ago at the age of 63. Cancer. She was diagnosed in July of 2006 and made it to September of 2007. She went from feeling essentially fine to a wreck, and it all really happened so fast that shock set in for me before she had even passed away.
She was stangely protective and removed myself and my brother from much of the process. She didn’t want us to have to deal with it. She had dad, who was her closest friend (and she, who was his only friend), and the two took one last journey together – he taking care of her and she putting her house in order. The end came as a shock to me, even though the last time I saw her was in a hospital room in the cancer ward where “family only” were allowed to visit.
My brother and I came up to see her. We talked about general stuff. Everyday stuff. Like it was any other Sunday afternoon and we had come over for dinner. Mom was on painkillers and was somewhat out of it from their effect, but she was still happy to see us. We turned the Twins game on and acted like everything was fine.
The last think I ever did for my mom was to go out and find her a particular kind of lotion she liked at a store in town. My brother and I went out searching for it, and sure enough, we found it. When we got back to the hospital, I forgot it in the car and went back to her room without it. When I realized I didn’t have it, I told her I’d bring it to her when she got home. My brother, casually, bless him, said I should go the car and get it. Now. So I did. She was happy and thanked us for running the errand.
Went home that night with mom and dad still at the hospital. Got home and logged on (probably on this very board). Still being on dial-up, I wasn’t receiving any calls on my land line. Later that night, I answered a knock at the door and my brother stepped in. “Mom died twenty minutes ago.” Dad had tried calling me, but couldn’t remember my cell number, so he got hold of my brother, the younger sibling, who drove over to my place to let me know.
Nothing has been the same since.
The family was my, my brother, mom and dad. My brother and I never got along that well with dad, but we tolerated each other because everyone in the household adored mom. She was most definitely the stabilzer in the family, and her presence in that regard is felt regularly. Sharply. It was the rougest on dad, of course. He lost the love of his life and had no real friends to fall back on. He isn’t the most sociable guy on the planet, and he’d rather sit at home and watch Discovery, Fox News or read the Bible than pretty much do anything else.
Mom may have been all right with those things, but she liked a good Stephen King novel, the original Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies and Steve Winwood and Rod Stewart. Dad has no clue when it comes to pop culture of any kind, never takes in fiction of any kind (printed or performed) and hasn’t listened to popular music of any kind since the Four Freshmen were still around. Mom was fun and more of a dreamer. She was the one that stayed up late when my brother and I were little so we could watch the original Star Trek in syndicated reruns and take us to movies like E.T. and Back To The Future.
With two boys and dad in the house, she learned quickly to like guy things. She became knowledgeable on topics like college basketball, boxing and baseball and proved highly insightful for someone who never really played organized sports. She laughed a lot and was the last person in my life who regularly gave me a hug and told me she loved me.
Anyway, I could go on forever, obviously. But one of the things that got me started on this blog thing were some thoughts about her I had. Like I said, they’re kind of unorganized, so here are just some additional thoughts.
• Mom had polio when she was a little girl. The disease ended up giving her a severe limp and one leg that was two inches shorter than the other. Doctors corrected this by permanently fusing one ankle in a permanent “down” position – like standing on your tip-toes. Because of this, she could never walk in anything but shoes that had a heel. This made running (or even walking on uneven surfaces like the lawn) almost impossible. This is why she never played sports. At the same time, I learned at a very early age to immediately offer my arm to a woman while crossing the street or what have you. And when I was younger and we went shopping at the mall or someplace similar, she walked slower than everyone in the place. And so did I, without even noticing it.
• She was a professional pioneer in her field – optometry. She served on the board of trustees for the national professional organization for the discipline, the first women to ever do so. She was on the fast track to being the organization’s first female president. Her work with the AOA caused her to travel through much of my brother and my high school years. That caused her to miss ballgames, music concerts and other milestone events. In my brother’s last high school baseball game, he hit the only home run of his high school career – a grand slam – in his last at bat. I was watching, but maybe three batters after the home run, I saw mom’s car pull in behind me. She had struggled to make to the game because of a heavy work load. I walked up to her window to give her an update. “How’s it going?” she asked. “Dave hit a grand slam five minutes ago,” I told her. She didn’t say anything. She stared straight ahead and parked the car, furious at herself for missing it. She had been working. Not long after that, mom decided to give up her work with AOA. I was in college, but she had a chance to not miss some of my brother’s activities.
• Things that made her laugh: Airplane!, Dana Carvey’s impression of Tom Brokaw pre-recording the breaking news segment for the death of Gerald Ford, all incarnations of the Bab Newhart show and Indiana Jones shooting the fancy swordsman. She also became a fan of MST3K through my constant taping of the show back in the Comedy Central days. Two Thanksgivings in a row I took up the television (we had a satellite dish that only allowed one channel on all your televisions in the house, so the whole family got a severe dose of the show in the early days). When I mentioned to her not that long ago that I still watched the show even though it’s been off the air for ten years or whatever, she got a nostalgic look on her face. “Oh, I miss that show.”
• She loved the creative aspect of art. While dad wants far more practicality involved with human effort, mom loved art for art’s sake. With me growing up an unabashed Star Wars fan (before it was cool again, mind you), she would casually watch A New Hope for the 15th time while doing something – dusting, for example – and the movie would get to the point where they’re trapped in the trash compactor. Mom would often say “How did they come up with this stuff?” She said it often about shows she enjoyed like Seinfeld and MST3K as well. She was always interested if popular singers (or any singers, really) wrote their own songs or if they had someone else doing it for them. She loved the idea of singers who wrote their own stuff. On a related note, I’m a writer of sorts now and she saw me reach a modicum of success in the field, and for that I’m very happy.
• For some reason, just recently I got to thinking about a conversation I had with her once upon a time. She was telling me about her favorite television show when she was a little girl. It was called Winky Dink & You, and it was apparently a clever little show that involved a clear plastic sheet that was placed over the television screen. Kids watching the show would then draw on the plastic sheet using crayons at the instructions of the host. The object was to help the main character, Winky Dink, out of jams in his adventures by completing pictures of objects he needs – like a bridge to get across the river or an ax to cut down a tree. There were secret messages involved, too. For some reason, when I think of this story and realize she’s gone I become very sad. I love this story, and I love the idea of her having fun with Winky Dink on Saturday mornings a long time ago. I’d love to talk to her about it more right now. A link to help the memory of Winky Dink live on: www.tvparty.com/requested2.html. (Scroll down for details on the show.) Incidentally, in her final years we had a dog named Wolfie, whom I named. I never picked up on the reason mom always called him Woofer - it was the name of Winky Dink's dog
• I have her collection of 45 records she listened to growing up. Elvis Presley, Bill Haley and a bunch of others. I rescued them from the house before dad had a chance to do something stupid and throw them out (he went through a phase where he was purging the house of stuff that reminded him of mom). I wish I had a good record player – I’d like to transfer them to CD (or mp3, or whatever is hip with the kids these days). Oh, a list of those 45s is here: forrestcrow.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=music&action=display&thread=17379
• She told me another story – a Christmas story – that made me cry when she told it and still gets me today. As a teenager, she worked at a small department store in her home town. One Christmas Eve, she was the last person in the store and there were just a few minutes to go before locking up. Just then, an elderly couple came into the store and went to the toy aisle. Mom could tell they were not well-to-do and were obviously looking for a present for a grandchild or children. After a while, they came up to the counter with a small plastic car and a small doll with no clothing on it, the absolute most they could afford (was my mom’s impression, anyway). Mom could tell they wanted to find something more for whomever they were purchasing the gifts, but of course said nothing and rang them up. Her dad picked her up to take her home after work, and she said she cried the whole way home. Until her dying day, mom always made sure my brother and I had a nice Christmas. Always. She was also a big fan of projects like the Angel Tree.
Heh, that’s probably enough for now. But I don’t think I need to tell you I could go on. I don’t know if anyone bothered to read this. If you did, thanks for listening. And take note, especially during the holidays: cherish the days you have with the ones you love. I’ve never missed anyone as much as I miss my mom, and I know my dad and brother would say the same thing. Thankfully, my brother and I are very close and hang out regularly (a couple of bachelors in the 30s – yeah, we have fun) and continue to support each other as best we can. We do the same for dad, of course, even though I know we’ll never be as close with him as we were with mom. We’re all trying our best, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. We just keep trying.
So anyway, even though it’s a bit early, Merry Christmas, mom, wherever you are! Miss you a lot. Love you. Thanks again for everything.
Since I didn't want to clutter up the forum with another blog, I've decided to modify the short blog I had already started and take it in a different direction. I did not, however, really want to delete my original post, so I'm leaving it here at the top. You can get to the post that kicks off the new train of thought:
Mod City's Arcadia
My original post continues below.
Mod
-------------------------------------------
I don’t have any real reason for starting this blog other than I can’t think of any place on the board for which this topic would be appropriate. It’s highly personal and will hold no real interest to anyone but myself, but I want to get it down somewhere other than a Word file tucked away somewhere on my hard drive. Just to have it out there.
This is going to be a rambling post about cancer,death and thoughts on my mother. It’s going to be going from one thought to another, sometimes without warning. Just give me a break. I’m on the couch right now and the good old board is sitting in a chair just off to the side charging me $100 an hour for therapy
Mom died two years ago at the age of 63. Cancer. She was diagnosed in July of 2006 and made it to September of 2007. She went from feeling essentially fine to a wreck, and it all really happened so fast that shock set in for me before she had even passed away.
She was stangely protective and removed myself and my brother from much of the process. She didn’t want us to have to deal with it. She had dad, who was her closest friend (and she, who was his only friend), and the two took one last journey together – he taking care of her and she putting her house in order. The end came as a shock to me, even though the last time I saw her was in a hospital room in the cancer ward where “family only” were allowed to visit.
My brother and I came up to see her. We talked about general stuff. Everyday stuff. Like it was any other Sunday afternoon and we had come over for dinner. Mom was on painkillers and was somewhat out of it from their effect, but she was still happy to see us. We turned the Twins game on and acted like everything was fine.
The last think I ever did for my mom was to go out and find her a particular kind of lotion she liked at a store in town. My brother and I went out searching for it, and sure enough, we found it. When we got back to the hospital, I forgot it in the car and went back to her room without it. When I realized I didn’t have it, I told her I’d bring it to her when she got home. My brother, casually, bless him, said I should go the car and get it. Now. So I did. She was happy and thanked us for running the errand.
Went home that night with mom and dad still at the hospital. Got home and logged on (probably on this very board). Still being on dial-up, I wasn’t receiving any calls on my land line. Later that night, I answered a knock at the door and my brother stepped in. “Mom died twenty minutes ago.” Dad had tried calling me, but couldn’t remember my cell number, so he got hold of my brother, the younger sibling, who drove over to my place to let me know.
Nothing has been the same since.
The family was my, my brother, mom and dad. My brother and I never got along that well with dad, but we tolerated each other because everyone in the household adored mom. She was most definitely the stabilzer in the family, and her presence in that regard is felt regularly. Sharply. It was the rougest on dad, of course. He lost the love of his life and had no real friends to fall back on. He isn’t the most sociable guy on the planet, and he’d rather sit at home and watch Discovery, Fox News or read the Bible than pretty much do anything else.
Mom may have been all right with those things, but she liked a good Stephen King novel, the original Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies and Steve Winwood and Rod Stewart. Dad has no clue when it comes to pop culture of any kind, never takes in fiction of any kind (printed or performed) and hasn’t listened to popular music of any kind since the Four Freshmen were still around. Mom was fun and more of a dreamer. She was the one that stayed up late when my brother and I were little so we could watch the original Star Trek in syndicated reruns and take us to movies like E.T. and Back To The Future.
With two boys and dad in the house, she learned quickly to like guy things. She became knowledgeable on topics like college basketball, boxing and baseball and proved highly insightful for someone who never really played organized sports. She laughed a lot and was the last person in my life who regularly gave me a hug and told me she loved me.
Anyway, I could go on forever, obviously. But one of the things that got me started on this blog thing were some thoughts about her I had. Like I said, they’re kind of unorganized, so here are just some additional thoughts.
• Mom had polio when she was a little girl. The disease ended up giving her a severe limp and one leg that was two inches shorter than the other. Doctors corrected this by permanently fusing one ankle in a permanent “down” position – like standing on your tip-toes. Because of this, she could never walk in anything but shoes that had a heel. This made running (or even walking on uneven surfaces like the lawn) almost impossible. This is why she never played sports. At the same time, I learned at a very early age to immediately offer my arm to a woman while crossing the street or what have you. And when I was younger and we went shopping at the mall or someplace similar, she walked slower than everyone in the place. And so did I, without even noticing it.
• She was a professional pioneer in her field – optometry. She served on the board of trustees for the national professional organization for the discipline, the first women to ever do so. She was on the fast track to being the organization’s first female president. Her work with the AOA caused her to travel through much of my brother and my high school years. That caused her to miss ballgames, music concerts and other milestone events. In my brother’s last high school baseball game, he hit the only home run of his high school career – a grand slam – in his last at bat. I was watching, but maybe three batters after the home run, I saw mom’s car pull in behind me. She had struggled to make to the game because of a heavy work load. I walked up to her window to give her an update. “How’s it going?” she asked. “Dave hit a grand slam five minutes ago,” I told her. She didn’t say anything. She stared straight ahead and parked the car, furious at herself for missing it. She had been working. Not long after that, mom decided to give up her work with AOA. I was in college, but she had a chance to not miss some of my brother’s activities.
• Things that made her laugh: Airplane!, Dana Carvey’s impression of Tom Brokaw pre-recording the breaking news segment for the death of Gerald Ford, all incarnations of the Bab Newhart show and Indiana Jones shooting the fancy swordsman. She also became a fan of MST3K through my constant taping of the show back in the Comedy Central days. Two Thanksgivings in a row I took up the television (we had a satellite dish that only allowed one channel on all your televisions in the house, so the whole family got a severe dose of the show in the early days). When I mentioned to her not that long ago that I still watched the show even though it’s been off the air for ten years or whatever, she got a nostalgic look on her face. “Oh, I miss that show.”
• She loved the creative aspect of art. While dad wants far more practicality involved with human effort, mom loved art for art’s sake. With me growing up an unabashed Star Wars fan (before it was cool again, mind you), she would casually watch A New Hope for the 15th time while doing something – dusting, for example – and the movie would get to the point where they’re trapped in the trash compactor. Mom would often say “How did they come up with this stuff?” She said it often about shows she enjoyed like Seinfeld and MST3K as well. She was always interested if popular singers (or any singers, really) wrote their own songs or if they had someone else doing it for them. She loved the idea of singers who wrote their own stuff. On a related note, I’m a writer of sorts now and she saw me reach a modicum of success in the field, and for that I’m very happy.
• For some reason, just recently I got to thinking about a conversation I had with her once upon a time. She was telling me about her favorite television show when she was a little girl. It was called Winky Dink & You, and it was apparently a clever little show that involved a clear plastic sheet that was placed over the television screen. Kids watching the show would then draw on the plastic sheet using crayons at the instructions of the host. The object was to help the main character, Winky Dink, out of jams in his adventures by completing pictures of objects he needs – like a bridge to get across the river or an ax to cut down a tree. There were secret messages involved, too. For some reason, when I think of this story and realize she’s gone I become very sad. I love this story, and I love the idea of her having fun with Winky Dink on Saturday mornings a long time ago. I’d love to talk to her about it more right now. A link to help the memory of Winky Dink live on: www.tvparty.com/requested2.html. (Scroll down for details on the show.) Incidentally, in her final years we had a dog named Wolfie, whom I named. I never picked up on the reason mom always called him Woofer - it was the name of Winky Dink's dog
• I have her collection of 45 records she listened to growing up. Elvis Presley, Bill Haley and a bunch of others. I rescued them from the house before dad had a chance to do something stupid and throw them out (he went through a phase where he was purging the house of stuff that reminded him of mom). I wish I had a good record player – I’d like to transfer them to CD (or mp3, or whatever is hip with the kids these days). Oh, a list of those 45s is here: forrestcrow.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=music&action=display&thread=17379
• She told me another story – a Christmas story – that made me cry when she told it and still gets me today. As a teenager, she worked at a small department store in her home town. One Christmas Eve, she was the last person in the store and there were just a few minutes to go before locking up. Just then, an elderly couple came into the store and went to the toy aisle. Mom could tell they were not well-to-do and were obviously looking for a present for a grandchild or children. After a while, they came up to the counter with a small plastic car and a small doll with no clothing on it, the absolute most they could afford (was my mom’s impression, anyway). Mom could tell they wanted to find something more for whomever they were purchasing the gifts, but of course said nothing and rang them up. Her dad picked her up to take her home after work, and she said she cried the whole way home. Until her dying day, mom always made sure my brother and I had a nice Christmas. Always. She was also a big fan of projects like the Angel Tree.
Heh, that’s probably enough for now. But I don’t think I need to tell you I could go on. I don’t know if anyone bothered to read this. If you did, thanks for listening. And take note, especially during the holidays: cherish the days you have with the ones you love. I’ve never missed anyone as much as I miss my mom, and I know my dad and brother would say the same thing. Thankfully, my brother and I are very close and hang out regularly (a couple of bachelors in the 30s – yeah, we have fun) and continue to support each other as best we can. We do the same for dad, of course, even though I know we’ll never be as close with him as we were with mom. We’re all trying our best, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. We just keep trying.
So anyway, even though it’s a bit early, Merry Christmas, mom, wherever you are! Miss you a lot. Love you. Thanks again for everything.