Heading back to Texas in the rain could explain the water running down my face, but it doesn't. More accurately but incompletely, visiting the cemetery and Mom's best friend in her old room 167, does.
I guess I'm surprised at how much feeling at "home" in Kansas has to do with being hugged by and hanging out with my Mom.
We had lots of family, great food, hugs, bracelet-making, and football-watching at my Dad's, so it wasn't that there wasn't a lot of good and a lot of love in another home with a lot of great memories. There certainly was.
I knew it was going to be hard and there was going to be a big void because I spent a lot more time with Mom than anyone else on my visits home, but I'm still surprised at how this feels like homesickness, for her.
Many widowers have told me they lost their home when their wife died and just live in a house now. I think I'm closer to understanding.
Maybe I'm surprised because Mom lived in a nursing home for her last few years, our roles have been reversed for so long, and being with her always meant attending to a laundry list of things she wanted or needed, and usually right now.
The lists were so long, I used to write them down so I could marvel at them later. I guess later is now.
Here's one from my last visit with her, a month before she died:
Look for eye drops. Wash glasses with hot water and Dawn dish soap. Apples cut. Peanut butter on them. Window shade down. Water plants. Find necklace. Find earrings. Go through mail. Clean out text messages.
Considerably shorter than when she lived alone in her apartment:
First 40 minutes:
Sweep up hominy (implied)
Pick up mail off floor (implied)
Empty pee bag
Put lid on toothpaste
Hang up sweaters (request for later)
Get jacket
Get bag
Close heater vent
Clean glasses
Wash inside of van window (request for later)
Open gum
Go to eyedoctor (request for later)
Get gas (request for later)
Another day:
Hi honey. I need you to...
Pull my shirt down on both sides and wash my glasses.
Get my zebra bag
Take vacuum off charger.
Get my phone off charger.
Put money in my wallet.
Pull my butt (x3) *Translation = reposition me in my wheelchair
Get my bangle bracelets
Move medical alert bracelet to other side
Get poncho
Put scarf on
I need my CPap put back on my bed, but I can ask Janet to do it...
Getting her from A to B was time consuming, even if she was on time, and you could bet against that with all of the money in the Publisher's Clearinghouse.
It took four strong men to get her into any house and her colostomy, George, leaked at the most inconvenient times. Yes, including last Thanksgiving. She was in tears and just wanted to go home, but we made the best of it, and we're glad we did.
She wasn't talking about Heaven just then, but it would only be three more months until she got to go Home-home.
She's nestled between a beautiful tree and her Mama. I am very happy for her, and closer to wanting the same thing for myself.
I am newly hopeful that I might, one day, have a similar holding in the hearts of my sons. Sizeable and significant, and if anything like me, quite surprising to them.
No matter how messy, task-oriented, back-breaking, or upside-down it can get, there seems to be something untouchable about a Mom and her sacred role of introducing and orienting us to life.
Roles might get reversed, but titles don't. She called me a lot of things (mostly good), but Mom was never one of them. That name-calling went one way, and one way only.
Here's to your Mom and my Mom, home, and the women who not only create it, but are it. Happy Thanksgiving. ❤️🌻
