Another set of holidays and my birthday, missing my mom so much. Not as bad this year, but the pain cuts so deep at times. I just want to pick up the phone and call her. I want to plan her trip here for the holidays, pick her up at the airport, go out to breakfast, buy last minute stocking stuffers and food for Christmas dinner. I even want the annoying stuff, the smoker's cough, the way she said my name that bugged the hell out of me and that feeling that she would NEVER be going back home. Isn't it crazy how it changes after they're gone?
I used to sit at the dining room table with my grandfather and listen to him tell the same stories over and over and over again. Sometimes he'd tell the same story within a half an hour. It drove me crazy. Something from my childhood kept me from finishing the story for him, and thankfully, I would sit politely and listen for what seemed to be the one-millionth time.
I had dinner with my friend Sean a few years ago at a restaurant he and his wife owned. I noticed Sean's father sitting at the bar and asked him if he would like to invite him to join us. He answered that he needed a break, that he couldn't possibly listen to his father's stories again that night. My eyes immediately filled with tears so big I couldn't keep them from spilling down my cheeks. I told Sean that night that while I completely empathized with what he was saying, I would give anything to hear my grandfather's stories one more time.
I struggle a lot with assuming unconditional love, or not assuming it, whether it be from Doug or anyone else. There truly isn’t anything like it. I love Frank and Beck in a way that I will never love anyone else and there isn’t anything that will ever happen that will change that. While my mother was an extremely difficult person, brought on but what I imagine to be a certain level of mental illness, I did know that as long as she was alive, if I ever really, really needed anything, she would be there for me. She wouldn’t make it easy for me, she wouldn’t necessarily judge the help I needed very well, but she would be there for me, no matter what.
My birthday is always a reminder that in essence I am now an orphan, and in a few hours, I will be a 46-year-old orphan. I don't know, maybe once you have children, you aren't an orphan anymore. Will have to look into that.
