packing up..letting go..

for the past 'a little while', i have been going through my stuff (my junk) in order to get rid of a bunch of forgotten/unused/totally unnecessary "treasures" i have accumulated over the last several decades of my life.. i thought it would be easy to quickly rifle through the boxes of stuff and pare it down to a teeny box of particularly principal, yet precious, pearls.. ah, but not so, for you see, my heart is being tugged at by pooh, mom, music, kids, etc etc etc.. and i am finding i am just transferring from one box to another all the things that i have had hidden for a long time..

for over 20 years, i have been keeping my yearly pocketbook calendars, and they are filled with happenings, births, deaths, dates, naughty things, special life-altering events, and schedules, as well as mundane things..

this morning, i came across the one for 2002, the year my mom was diagnosed with(and murdered by) cancer..

long ass fucking pause to hate cancer AGAIN..

you see, i had an awakening at the end of 1999 and into the beginning of 2000 that my life was gonna be over before i knew it, and if i didn't wanna wake up at the age of 80 and wonder WTF happened to my whole life, and why i had slept through it, that i had better get off my fat ass and make things happen for me.. finally..

well, i sorta went crazy.. i became someone i am glad for a handful of reasons that i did, but for a myriad of others reasons i was someone i despised at the same time.. i told ya - crazy.. i won't go into it, because from december 1999 til january 2003, lord, i swear i could write a book and have it published about what happened, and it wouldn't be pretty..

i say all that to say this: my mother died at a point in my life where i was so amazingly fucked up, and i totally missed out on being the kind of daughter she needed..

she was still the kind of mom that every daughter dreams for - kind, loving, funny, nonjudgemental, shopperiffically inclined, my concert buddy.. she didn't change her inner being when she was suffering through months of chemo.. she was still HER..

i was someone else.. yet, i was me..

oh sure, i still saw her at least once a week.. and i called her several times a week.. and she and i went and saw paul mccartney in may 2002.. we played canasta like fiends, and we laughed and cried and wondered why all this was happening to her.. but she didn't know what i had become, and thank you God that she didn't.. (does she know now what i was?)

but anywho... i digress.. back to this morning.. back to the box with the calendar from 2002..

5 years have passed since i wrote in that book.. and i look at it, and it's not the things i wrote in there.. but it's the things that are missing that hurt the most..

like.. where was the entry when mom told me she wasn't worried about herself- that she was only worried about how we were gonna be when she died.. you see, mom KNEW she was gonna die..

i did, too..

i could tell..

but still, i messed up, and spent that whole year being .. well, being awful.. and trying to convince myself that mom wasn't gonna die.. that we would still have christmas like we always did.. that she and i would go to northpark again and shop for hours, buying lancome and eating at le madeline's.. that we would go see elton again when he came back in town.. that she would just be THERE when i wanted her to be..

but cancer had other plans.. and cancer won.. and cancer can go to hell..

and the wounds today are just are horrible and hurting as they were back in september 2002 when my mom let go, and left..

i guess the best thing about all that is that not too long after she was taken, that i changed my life.. love changed my life..

aside from the love and home-ness of my 2 boys, i had spent years without love.. i had spent years without giving love.. and i don't know if if was God, or fate, or luck, or just the way it is, but love was given back to me on january 22, 2003..

so i place the 2002 calendar in another box, with many other calendars that chronicle some of my up and down life, and i close the box.. too much for one day..

and i make a solemn prayer of a promise, that in every day life - not just when someone is on the brink of death - i will be the kind of person that mom would be proud of.. that i won't miss out on opportunites to be true and right when faced with terrible ordeals.. that i will show love, just like she always did.. and that i will just be THERE for those in my life..

forgive me, mom.. you deserved so much better..