My mother had a hard life filled with trauma. Even though that was so she fought for her kids and did her best to protect her kids. She worked a job as an automobile claims examiner and got yelled at and abused all day long at work and got yelled at and abused when she came home. We did not wear the best clothes or eat good food all the time, but she made sure we were clothed, fed and had a roof over our head even if we lived in a haunted house with rat bastards. My mother paid for little league baseball and I learned about bases loaded, two out and two strikes and taking the swing that loses the game and being THAT guy. After a Summer alone, my mother paid for inner city poor camp where I was the only white kid, YMCA camp where luckily I was fat enough not to be hung in a wedgie on the cabin wall and rich person's camp which was the greatest torture of them all being poor and fat. My mother paid for religious school which financially broke us, but taught me never to kneel before anyone except God. My mother never let us get beaten by my step father and when I tried to interfere she told me to go back into my room and said, "Don't hit him" to my step father in such a way that he knew she would divorce him if he hit her kids and I used to wait to go to sleep until my mother stopped crying which seemed like forever. My mother and I had the same sense of humor when I was young and she tolerated all kinds of bullshit from space monkeys, hermit crabs, gerbils and parakeets. Even though we were poor we had cable TV so I could see jiggling breasts and use curse words properly and see R rated movies without supervision. My biological father never paid child support and my step father worked menial jobs when not unemployed yet my mother held everything together. When a child across the street got the new and innovative ATARI 2600, after much whining and pleading, my mother forked out the $200 so that I could be a minor celebrity for 6 months or so and one of the few that had the video game system. When I was sick and in the hospital and had a fight with staff and they wanted to send me to a hell hole hospital, my mother insisted that I go to the best hell hole that her insurance would allow and that was a place that catered to rich people and even celebrities and this place got me well and on the right track instead of struggling and on the precipice of doom all the time.
I hoped that I would eventually come to a reconciliation with my mother, but that never happened. She did call me before she died and said that she was dying and did not know what to do. I told her we all die and that instead of worrying about dying, start living in the time you have left. She was into walking, taking vitamins, and eating right before she got sick. When I finally saw her before she died, she was eating ice cream. I miss my mother though we became estranged. At her funeral I said things when I originally was going to remain quiet that rubbed people the wrong way. I did not blast my stepfather like I could have and he probably thought I was going to and my stepfather did not understand everything I said because he was probably waiting for the rant about him.
After my mother died, I had a dream, there was an open door and she was walking toward me with my grandmother. They both seemed very happy. "Come with us." My mother said. I pointed to my grandmother and said,"But she's dead." Then my mother and grandmother walked back through the door and I awoke.
Perhaps I will meet my mother and grandmother another day in another place and time. And we can argue like old times.
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