My Mom is back! (Hey-La, Hey-La) My Mom is back!

cornflower, Webshots pic

You know campers, I don’t divulge a lot about me home life. Often on this here blog I think I choose something to ‘discuss’ (rant) about various subjects, as if you couldn’t come up with topics. I am not an unknown world reknown speaker for nothing. As in, if I’m not paid to expound why listen to my ass?

I understand. Today, a treat for the weary and waiting. I’ve read other’s blogs. Now, maybe its because they are ‘normies’ but they do a very interesting thing. They talk about their everyday life. As though they are not afraid they are going to be tracked down through their IP address and be killed. I don’t think I’m putting ideas out there, I’m just saying. And I’m tired of setting precedents in this life – I don’t want to be the first one it happens to, ya know?

But I digress. As usual, I tempt fate.

I am so happy that the Madre has returned. While I got to leave and go on a cruise, Mummy stayed at my Dad’s apartment and continued cleaning – an extremely arduous task as Dad was a Pack Rat Extraordinaire. Well, that is done, her RV is in my driveway and life is good.

See, the house I live in has been owned by our family for 30 years. As in, for the last 29 years Mom has owned it (Dad, uh made paid payments too, like, for many years:) and last year Husband and I bought it from her. It’s just that Mummy didn’t leave. She was here. Always here. Which doesn’t make for marital bliss for us and doesn’t give me that neat Mom relationship where you hang out with Mom, then Mom leaves for her OWN house and you have blessed space. Even if this has never been your living arrangement, I think you can imagine the frustration.

So now, Mom is cleaning her stuff out of MY house and going on RV sabbatical, looking for her forever home. This is what she wants, not me. So, now you know. I guess I’m all grown up now, now that Mom is leaving home. (I think of the Beatle’s song, ‘She’s Leaving Home.’) Sure it’s a weird dilemma, it’s a weird life. And it’s mine. What makes up for it all is that I have always known that my parents really and truly love me. Sadly, that’s not the case for everyone. Which ought to be weird.

But now that she returned today, we have so much to talk about. The great thing is that she and I knew Dad like nobody else. And I am so amazed because she finally relents and agrees with things I said about Dad all along: that he was a valiant soul, that he did suffer from bipolar and that he fought it very well. It was a nice surprise to hear her say I was right about that all along. Not because it sounds nice. But because she started paying attention to the stuff she was throwing away in his room and realized that bipolar, for him, had been like a mountain of stuff –literally, as he felt compelled to hold on to everything – that he spent countless hours trying to swim out of.

He was not weak (because he couldn’t throw things away, because he was attached to stuff) he was strong because he tried so hard to beat it. He didn’t want to live in a mess. He wanted organization and a wonderful life. He just had such compulsion, but he was always trying to slay it back, get control of the beast. Ah, well, you didn’t know Dad. He was a wonderful man, and that’s no glossing of things over, either.

Of course, I sit here in my crapped up room, surrounded by stuff I just can’t seem to part with. I feel like mine is more controlled, and it is. I had great conversations with my Dad and one of the nicest things was the sweet easy feeling that he simply understood my ‘thing’ he knew what things were like. All unsaid, actually. Sure when he was older, he finally knew that he was bipolar, too. But he also literally had sat by my bedside while I struggled to come out of psychosis, whether I was sleeping (yes, he would stay there because I asked him to, even though I couldn’t stay awake!) or he would gently talk to me to calm my enormous fears and anxieties – this formidable, yet utterly gentle, spiritual force that let me know that things were going to be okay – whether by talking to me, writing things for me on a 3 x 5 card that I taped to the inside of my little cubby in the hospital, to remind me that I was loved and that he was real (literally), or simply sitting there. There could be no greater love. It's unforgettable. (And yes, that was our song at my wedding:) Ay! What a magnificent creature - he thought he was verklempt and he was so not!

I was so blessed.

So you see, I know that does not die. God plainly states that he did not create things only to kill them. It is not part of His plan that the body dies and that’s it. It is so obvious to me that this is true and I didn’t make any of this up, its in the Bible, as well as in a book I actually read. Love and life does go on.