I still remember her voice. I thought she could have been a singer, but I never told her that, and I never heard her sing a whole song.
She drank Pepsi in the morning but told us we couldn't because it would 'stunt your growth'; she was kidding but I believed it.
When I was 9, I wrote a horrible sports story about a football player who was carried off the field 'with seven cracks in his helmet.' There was blood, too. She read it and offered to type it up for me. Whaaaat...? You would do that....? Like it was a real story....? I never forgot that.
The house was usually messy and dirty. I realized years later she had just given up. Dad's alcoholism pretty much dominated the family and there wasn't much energy left for anything else at home. I think she lost hope in house and family ever being like anything she had dreamed of. Maybe that's why she worked two jobs for so long after me and my brother and sister were grown; it got her away from the hopelessness.
When she was growing up, her parents used to fight a lot. Dad told me one time that he thought he married her because he felt sorry for her, more than for being in love with her. I remember thinking, you just need to shut up.
She loved Christmas and made it the most exciting thing in the world...she never learned to drive...I know she believed in me, even though she didn't say it...she was a peacemaker and hated confrontation...she was my sister's best friend...
Fifteen years ago, on a Sunday afternoon in July, my sister called and said Mom was in the hospital. She'd had a stroke in bed overnight. Dad found her all tangled-up in the sheets. It was bad and we needed to get to Indiana now. It was a 10-hour drive and the whole way I rehearsed everything I knew about the Gospel and how to be right with God. Today I would have prayed more than rehearsed.
She lived for three more days. The first day I know she knew I was there. She would squeeze my hand slightly. I told her about Jesus and assumed she heard everything. I have no idea if she believed. The second day she was way worse, and the third day she died.
Back at the old home, as soon as you walked in, you could sense the life was gone out of it. Just like a body at a funeral. No spirit. Her lottery tickets were still on the table by the TV in her bedroom; she had checked the numbers before going to bed that last night. I picked a gray hair off the pillow, and took her old sneakers that were so her. I have no idea where they are now.
I realize I had always wanted to make Mom's life better, but had no clue how to do it. Part of her heritage is two sons and a daughter who may be subconsciously motivated to create the kind of home and family that we know she wanted and deserved, but never got.
Another part of her heritage is a granddaughter who looks a lot like her...