I really don't know what prompted the post on my mom the other night. I've written about her before, though not in great detail.
I'm a passionate person, but not typically a super emotional person when it comes to my family. My family is what it is, not so great, but not awful. We're not close like other families. Again, it really, honestly doesn't bother me- it's just the way it is.
Today was the 3rd anniversary of my mom's passing. I have no idea why I've been so emotional about it. It's worse than the first anniversary, and by far much worse than the 2nd. As I was driving home from the cemetery today, I thought that maybe my emotion is over losing her memories. Losing the sound of her voice.
When my mom got sick with young onset Parkinson's Disease, I was in high school. She got sick pretty quickly, and began compulsively shopping and spending tons of money. I want to think it was the disease that did it to her- or even the medications (which have been linked to gambling behaviors). It tore some things apart between our relationship, and our family was ripped apart. My parents divorced and she moved back to GA when I was in college. I wish I had realized back then that I had “lost her” at that point, because she was never the same since.
Instead of focusing on the bad things that happened afterwards, I'll focus here on some happy things. She threw the best birthday parties. I had a Strawberry Shortcake one, my sister had a clown at one where we all got our faces painted and they had a magic show. One was at Putt-Putt, which was super fun. She fought someone to get the last Cabbage Patch kid in the store for me for Christmas. She let me drive her Volvo when I was 14 to go half a mile to the store and back. We never fought. She let me have slumber parties and stay up all night with my girlfriends. She made pretty Christmas trees. She helped convince my dad to buy me the Mustang I wanted when I turned 16 (and then subsequently wrecked within the week). She was nicer and more fun than any of my friends mom's (sorry friends- it's all perspective). And my friends really liked her.
I don't know if this is good or bad, but she always tried to help me lose weight. I tried all kinds of diets with her. She got me into her doctor who had then got me on fen-phen when I was 14. She sent me to weight loss camp. She struggled with weight as my sister and I were growing up, and I was her little tag-a-long buddy with that.
Anyway, my post from a couple nights ago was a panic over me not remembering her pre-Parkinson's voice. The last hope that I have is to get the 4 Super8 tapes from our family camcorder and have them put on DVD's. The camcorder doesn't work anymore, so I don't know what's on them. I know there's footage of our family trip to Hong Kong, so I'm hoping that will have her voice- and I can remember those times. Sending the tapes off this week, so I'm hopeful these feelings will resolve themselves when I get the DVD's back.
Anyway, thanks for letting me ramble. Hope everyone has a great weekend 🙂
