Mommy Moments

So I developed a bulls eye rash from a tick bite today, living in Loudoun County you know thats never a good thing. But Before everybody starts sending me Lyme’s Disease literature let me say I have already made an appt with my Dr. to get on the antibiotic regimen and let me assure you I am fortunate that she is actually one of the leading Dr.’s in the Country on this topic. If it develops into anything I’ll let you all know but for now its 3 weeks of antibiotics for me (or whatever the latest protocol is).

But the reason for my writing today isn’t to tell you my health concerns but talk about my total break down this morning after I found the Bullseye. You see this is one of those Mommy Moments, one of those moments where I would text mom and tell her what I found. She’d make a joke, then ask me to send a picture, then say yea that doesn’t look good…LOL! Then she’d tell me to make an appt. with Dr. Walsh and ask me if I wanted her to go with me, which I’d say no I’d be fine. Then she’d text Shawn to check on my state of mind and probably show up anyway. Then she’d go back to sending me a bunch of silly GIF’s about ticks and tell me it was all gonna be fine. And then I’d feel fine because she told me it would be okay.

So with all that you can probably understand my break down. I have none of that today! I actually considered just texting her anyway (until this moment I never understood when people said they did stuff like that when a loved one passed), but then I remembered I shut her phone off and I’d probably get some message back saying it didn’t go through and that wouldn’t be good either.

Damn I miss my Mommy!

Traditions

So the day is finally here, I’ve been kinda dreading this for about a month. Well at least since the Easter stuff moved off the shelves and the Mother’s Day cards starting popping up at the grocery store and the jewelry and flower commercials started playing on TV. I usually don’t pay attention to that stuff cause my mom and I always joked about how commercialized Mother’s Day among other “Hallmark Holidays” had become, but this year for obvious reasons I feel like I’ve noticed a lot more. And man no wonder people feel pressured to give Mom the perfect gift. LOL!

Its really not Mother’s Day itself that is the issue today. I’m pretty confident my mom knew how much I loved her all year round so we never made a big deal of the fact that it was Mother’s Day. But we did take advantage of being able to spend the day together and we always did the same thing on Mother’s Day. So here is where my issue today lies, it is more about the traditions my mom and I had formed over the years rather then the day itself and realizing that we will no longer be sharing those traditions together.

Mother’s Day feels like the start of “Tradition Season” for me. Both mom and I are kinda home bodies and neither of us loves the Winter ( I think we both have a little of that Seasonal depression thing going on…we always said we were going to get one of those special lamps). So throughout the Winter months, like a lot of people, we spent more time in doors at our perspective homes then having adventures. But as Spring rolls around this year, I’m reminded of all the things that we always counted on doing together when the weather got warmer. Mom and I are both creatures of habit so where we were always willing to try something new, doing our usual was something we always looked forward to and cherished.

A few weeks ago Leesburg had its Annual Flower and Garden Show. That event was like the kick off of “Things” we always did together. She’d come to the house and we’d hop in one car and head down together. We’d hit the food trucks first and figure out what “carnival type” food we’d share. Fresh Lemonade was always on the list and at some point we’d get a funnel cake or kettle corn or whatever new trendy food item was speaking to us. Always swearing after we would never eat that again cause our bellies hurt…yet the very next year (or event) we always would do it all over again. Then we’d poke around all the stalls and maybe buy a few things but more often we collected cards of things we loved and couldn’t afford and talked about how “when we won the lottery” we’d buy them for each other. Mom would take a bunch of photos and then document the whole thing on Facebook…man I miss those posts.

So today its all about Crabs. Mom and I loved picking crabs! So every Mother’s Day I’d take mom out to Lowry’s in Hamilton and we’d get a dozen or so crabs and we’d sit there for several hours picking crabs, eating hush puppies and talking about all the events, festivals, shows, etc. we were going to hit up throughout the Summer. We always talked about bucket list trips we were going to take or plans we had for my garden or house. After our free ice cream cone, we’d roll out of there way to full and go to the nursery to get Gerber Daisies to plant in my front pots and whatever other plants spoke to us. Mom always forced me to wait till Mother’s Day to start planting cause she said if I planted sooner I’d regret it because I’d lose the plants to a late frost (and I did many times when I wouldn’t listen to her, Mother always knows Best).

Thank goodness for Shawn. He gladly took me to the Garden Show a few weeks ago and he patiently sat while I picked crabs today. And I know the next thing that pops up he will happily be my partner for that too. He has been so good through all this while I try to navigate my emotions and what I need to do to get through the day or moment. All the while he is trying to manage his own grief too.

Damn I miss her! Remember the part where I said I was a creature of habit! Mom and I had our “ways” of doing things and I feel super robbed right now of those moments. I know I am lucky, I have memories, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I feel like screaming like a 4 year old that “Life isn’t fair!”

remembers

Day One

I know I haven’t written in awhile. A friend asked me if I struggle with content, HA HA HA ..ummm no, I have lots of content. I struggle with time (don’t we all). I’ve always had my hands in a lot of things but now I feel like I have thrown myself into work cause its easier to concentrate on that then think about her. And that’s what I’d do if I had idle time, I’d think about her and go through the stages of grief. Right now I prefer to live in the fantasy world of denial where I just sit and wait for her to come through the front door after some fantastic bucket list trip she took (Maine or Alaska probably), bearing gifts and yelling to Smudge “Hey Girlfriend”!

But today I can’t do that. Today is a day I’ve known was coming and a day I’ve been dreading probably more then any other day since she passed.

Before I go on I have some things I want to clear up right now. Honestly, I didn’t think I’d have to but some people felt it necessary to share their opinions with me about my writings about my mom. My mom was an Alcoholic and I am the daughter of an Alcoholic. Actually I’m the daughter of two alcoholics and generations of alcoholics prior to them but talking about my Dad is definetely for a different day and shoot maybe a different blog. My mom was an alcoholic my whole life. Sometimes she was sober (she even went 12 years prior to the last time she fell off the wagon), but she was still an Alcoholic and even when she was sober I always waited for her to not be. That is till 6 years ago. 6 years ago was different. 6 years ago she checked into EdgeHill in Winchester and both of our lives became different. She became the authentic woman she always wanted to be and I became the daughter that didn’t worry about when she might take another drink and leave me to become the mom again.

The things I want to clear up are that by telling my moms story and my story ultimately, I am not disrespecting her or airing her dirty laundry (or breaking HIPA laws which some bat shit crazy lady tried to tell me I did). If you knew my mother at all you would know she was open about her journey to sobriety (she was actually writing her own book, which I found when going through her things) and was very active to help others down their own path to sobriety. I have been shocked by the nasty things a few people have written to me, trying to tell me I was a horrible disrepectful daughter and my mom would be horrified to read what I was telling the world about her. But as always the good has far exceeded the bad so I’m learning to hit that “unfriend Button” a little more freely.

So back to today…Today would have been her 6 year Anniversary of being Sober. Today would have been a big day! 6 years ago today I drove her out to Winchester with some clothes and toiletries and dropped her off at Rehab and then drove back to Leesburg sobbing uncontrolably. You see I had horrible guilt because she said she wanted to change her mind ( I had actually picked her up from the hospital where I had to medically detox her first cause if she had gone cold turkey she could have died), she promised she could do it on her own again, she promised to not let me down again. But much like an episode of Intervention I had to tell her she had to follow through and go or I was going to have to walk away from her. I had to do the hardest thing I have ever had to do: I basically made my mom choose between me and alcohol (thank God this time she chose me). While driving home I had no idea what the future would hold, I had no idea if this time it would stick (honestly I didn’t think it would), I had no idea that this day would actually end up being the first day of having the mother/daughter relationship we both always wanted.

So today is a day to Celebrate (and I will as I go to her “Home Group” Meeting tonight), but it also is a day where I feel so robbed. We had so many plans, so many things we wanted to do (like Maine and Alaska) and I’m still in such shock that we won’t be doing them. So before I go out to Winchester and spend time with some of those people who helped her 6 years ago and whom she helped as well, I think I’ll go back to my land of Denial and wait for her to come through that door.

This Cake is For You!

I never knew how she did it, how she kept up with all the people. How she managed to make every single person she was talking to feel as if they were her Best Friend. I think we touched on this before, but it’s true and to me its mind blowing. After she passed away I had so many people reach out to me saying they communicated with her every day and how much they were going to miss those text messages from her. And I’m not just talking one or two people which in my mind would seem reasonable, but I’m talking dozens. And these weren’t group messages or cut and paste the same thing to each person. These were true genuine, authentic (there’s that word again) conversations. I know cause I had them with her….every day!

At some point in her recovery she must have subscribed to the Rachel Hollis line of thinking or whomever came up with the idea prior to Rachel Hollis (BTW, If you haven’t read Girl Wash Your Face go order it now….well unless your a man then don’t but if you are a man you could subscribe to her husbands Pod Cast, he is pretty good too). That is get up an hour early and do something for you. Go to the gym, write in your journal, read…something, anything, but it has to be you time. She did that. She got up early, got her coffee, got on the couch with Bob and started in with the messages. For those of you that got them you know what I’m talking about. She was checking in on people, sending inspirational quotes, sharing an article and then there were the cake pictures.

Every day she checked her FaceBook Events page and posted Birthday cake Pictures on her friends FaceBook Walls. While the rest of sent generic Happy Birthday Messages she would search out a picture of a cake that made her think of you and post it on your wall. If your Facebook Page was set to private she sent it to you through messenger or text, but she made sure people got them and she wanted them to know she was thinking of them on their special day. She did this every day and it blows my mind.

So those of you that know her know why I’m writing this today. Those that don’t or don’t know her well are about to find out. Today is Patti’s Birthday. She would have been 73 today. Today I and many others would have posted Birthday Cake pictures for her on her Facebook Page. Today we would have celebrated her because it was her special day! And now, well you know the now.

I can’t write much more today because I really can’t do hard today. It’s gonna be a hard enough day as it is so I’m gonna end this post. But before I do, do something for me today. Do something in honor of Patti. Checkout your friends list and see who is having a Birthday today (or yesterday or tomorrow if you don’t have somebody today), find a picture of a cake on google that reminds you of them and send it to them and see what happens, see the response. It really is lovely!

Oh and Patti Best, my amazing mother this cake is for you!

I Dreamed About Her Last Night

People kept telling me she’d visit me in my dreams. It’d been 43 days and nothing. I’d started to believe people just say stuff to try and make you feel better. In a way I’d started to get angry. Why wasn’t she visiting me in my dreams? Between this and the not her password blog you are probably thinking I sound like a spoiled 5 year old. When it came to my mom I kinda was a spoiled 5 year old to be honest. I know without a doubt how much she loved me!

Before I tell you about my dream let me back up. Yesterday was a really hard day. I mean really hard! I hit a brick wall yesterday: the things I have left to do are way to overwhelming and emotional for me to deal with. I feel paralyzed if I’m being honest. To start, I got a semi nasty letter from the bank that holds her car loan that requires me to go to court and be named the Executor of her Estate just to get them to fricking talk to me on the phone about what to do. Hello people I’m grieving and trying to keep my head above water just tell me my options. At one point I think I screamed to nobody at all “just come Repo the damn thing its not like its going to hurt her credit!” I won’t go into all the other things I still have left but lets just say its all the hard stuff and I’m not coping well. I literally stood in the bathroom and sobbed before I headed into the office yesterday.

Poor Shawn he is being as supportive as he can, but I just don’t think he knows what to do with me when I’m at that point. He is kinda used to me having my shit together and I just don’t. The great thing about Shawn though, is he is like what I imagine having a Jewish Grandmother would be like….he just keeps cooking me food and feeding me. I’ll have gained 50 lbs when this is all said and done but since he’ll be the cause of it I’m pretty sure he won’t leave me LOL.

So after my melt down in the morning, I stuffed all my feelings down deep like my mother always taught me to do then went to work and buried myself in processes and procedures, you know those mind numbing things. But when I got home from work I locked myself in the bathroom for about 30 minutes and got in the shower and cried and cried and cried. I figured in the shower, Shawn wouldn’t hear me and he wouldn’t worry about me. It wasn’t a good moment people, it was first time in my life I think I fully understood what depression felt like, I understood people who are depressed feeling Dispair, I understood feeling literally hopeless. I stood there in the shower and felt hopeless then I got out and went and ate all the things Shawn had been cooking in the kitchen all day and went to bed. And then she came for a visit.

It was different then I thought it would be….I thought she’d like come and talk to me and tell me I’ll be ok and I was handling things and I’d get through it and maybe even she was sorry she left me with all this shit to handle. But that wasn’t how it was at all. So this is how it was: I was at Noah’s salon getting my haircut and it was me, Noah and James. Sidenote: For those of you who don’t know who Noah is he is my mom’s boss and is my hair stylist and my friend and like a brother to me. He is also married to James who is also amazing and is like a brother to me. In comes mom strolling in mumbling her credit cards won’t work wearing this old jean shirt that Shawn and I had cut the looney tunes patch off the back of when we cleaned out her closet so I could put the patch on something else (there is a whole story about the shirt, but just know it was special and I’ll get t that story another day). I was like mom what are you doing here and she looked at me like I was crazy cause duh she worked there. I had to tell her she was dead which of course she told me she wasn’t and then I told her that her shirt had a hole in the back where I cut the patch out which annoyed her because why would I do that and then I explained to her why her cards didn’t work cause I cancelled them and again the why would you do that are you crazy look. Essentially she made me believe she wasn’t dead but had just been gone but of course didn’t remember where she had been. Then I woke up!

I talked to a friend today about my dream and she said “that doesn’t sound like a happy dream” and it wasn’t, but it wasn’t sad either. Just very mom like is all I can say (for those who knew her, I know you know what I’m talking about). It was very “why are you guys all moping about, hello I am here” This friend also said she found it interesting mom showed up on a night when I had a really rough day. My friend said this and I quote “I can see her saying to the person on the next cloud….I’m going to have to go down there and straighten her out…”

I don’t think any closure really came from this dream and I really don’t know what it all means (I’ve thought about going and seeing a medium but thats a whole other topic), but she was there and it was vivid so for now I’ll take it.

Forced to Write an Obit

So early on the funeral home asked for me to write an obituary that they could post on their website and then I was told it could also be sent out to the local newspaper. Not gonna lie, I was kinda surprised about the newspaper part…do people really still do that? I mean newspapers at least around this area are fairly obsolete it seems, but I was assurred by a few people that yes local newspapers do still print Obituaries (and people DO still read them LOL) and I should consider it. Well knowing my mom, my first reaction was UMMMMM NO! She would not want an Obit written and she certainely wouldn’t wanted it splashed across one or more newspapers. And then once I discovered that on the low end an obituary is like $200 to submit I definetely was like no way! Mom would rather I play the lottery with that money then waste it on her obituary. And I’m sorry but that just seems outrageous to ask a family to spend that kind of money on something like that especially during the whole grieving process (I have a feeling I’ll be discussing my feelings about the craziness of the funeral industry at some point especially when it comes to money so be prepared).

So I put off writing the Obituary. I mean in this day and age of Social Media and in particular Facebook, I feel like anybody that needed to know already did and there had already been several posts and pictures floating around so why did I need to do something formal. Honestly, Why did I need to put myself through that. My emotions are pretty raw and fragile as it is. Then I got the Life Insurance packet that I needed to fill out to file the claim. And guess what it fricking asks for….yup the Obituary, are you kidding me. You have the Death Certificate people why would you need the obituary too, not sure a copy of that proves anything more. Shaking My Head! So here I sat in the same spot I am now, trying to concisely put in to words some sort of eulogy that remotely paid her justice.

I got through it and I won’t lie I’m kinda glad I have like an official link to share and people can write in the guestbook and all that… so in the end I guess it was theraputic. But I seriously hate feeling like I was forced into doing something that not only did I not want to do, but my mom wouldn’t have wanted me to have to do either.

So here it is for those of you who want to see it….the official Obituary of Patricia “Patti” C, Best.

https://www.colonialfuneralhome.com/obituary/5815861

She’s been preparing me for this

I truly don’t know where to begin so I guess I’ll just begin at what feels like the end and go from there. My mom passed away on Christmas Day! Wow thats tough to write and even tougher to actually see it written. On Christmas Day of 2018 it truly felt like my whole world came crashing down around me. I feel like I have dealt with some tough stuff in my life (not as tough as hers, but you’ll learn all about that later), but this my friends is by far the toughest thing I’ve dealt with in my 47 years on this earth.

People keep telling me I should be thankful she didn’t suffer. I guess in a way I am lucky…she passed quickly and wasn’t in any pain, hadn’t been sick and up till the moment she collapsed she had what I like to refer to as “The Best Day Ever”. She fricking loved Christmas…in fact her exact words that very morning to my boyfriend Shawn was “Wake her the F up, its Christmas” LOL, she was quite the character and yes she used the full curse word! We opened stockings (her favorite part of Christmas by far) and gifts, had bagels and lox with all the fixings for breakfast, went and saw Mary Poppins came home and put our jammies back on, had dinner and then she collapsed and then she was gone. There are a few details between the collapsing and the passing part but for now that is enough.

My mom was and always will be my best friend, she was my cheerleader, my inspiration, my sounding board and my voice of reason. She was my craft show and antique shopping partner, she told me what to read, we watched the same shows and movies and discussed them at length, at the end of the day…this apple did not fall far from the tree in a lot of ways. I still don’t fully grasp she is gone and I have too often in the last few weeks picked up the phone to text her only to remember I can’t and then I have to let a new wave of tears wash over me instead. So yes I guess in some ways I’m thankful she didn’t suffer, but in some ways the suddeness of it all is its own kind of hell.

Which is how I got here. You see my mother was a pretty amazing woman, a Unicorn really! She had led a crazy life: she had a few divorces under her belt, was a widow, battled addiction and had been sober for almost 6 years, was an entrepreneur a few times over, had major successes and major failures, she was creative and funny, she was smart and well read, I truly could go on and on but for now I’ll stop here or this little intro will turn into a whole book. And neither you or I have time for that right now.

But I tell you this because she documented most of her life in journals (both written and visual). I don’t know how many there are but it feels like hundreds and I have a feeling there are some floating around that I haven’t even discovered yet. She always encouraged me to journal and I’d start but for whatever reason I’d stop after a few entries (I never was the girl who wrote in a diary either, but she certainely was), but today…today is the day! Today is the day I start writing it all down. I realized today, She’s been preparing me for this! Preparing me to tell my stories and hers and hopefully through them inspire or encourage somebody else along the way.

So here we go, here is Day 1 . Go easy on me now, I don’t exactly know what I’m doing here, but I have a feeling along the way we’ll figure it out (and maybe somehow she will provide a little guidance too). So here’s to Day 1, here’s to perserverence!

Keep passing the open windows – John Irving

open windows