More questions than answers...

I am exhausted. I am spent. I am beat. Another day of packing my mom’s things up and removing them from her house. All day yesterday was spent doing the same thing. Tomorrow will be spent doing the same thing. Soon it will be done. Hopefully. Packing up her stuff is excruciating. It is so painful. How do you pack up a person’s life in a few boxes? How do you throw anything way when it could possibly have been of value to them? How do you know the history of anything? How does a person get through this?

This morning I got an email from a dear friend saying her father passed away in his sleep Friday morning. I was horrified. Beyond horrified. I feel terrible for her. A week ago she was sitting at my mom’s funeral. Now seven days later her dad passes away. In a few days we will be sitting at his funeral. Nothing seems to make sense anymore. I doubt it ever will.

My step-family is a test from God. A test that I am praying that I pass, but seem to be failing at the moment. As if things were not difficult enough, I do not need to deal with them as well. Today’s battle was about some gold Christmas ornaments. My step-dad wants them back. They were a Christmas present to her and she wanted us kids to have them. They are the only thing he wants…clearly because they have monetary value. He doesn’t want anything else of her’s. No cards, no pictures, no personal items. Nothing. He doesn’t even want the Christmas tree or any of the other Christmas decorations. He only wants her ornaments because he can sell them. My mom told me many times that she wanted me to have the Angel for the top of the tree and then we are to divide the remaining ornaments among her three children. I know her wishes. She told me what she wants done with them. She even tried to get me to remove them from the house before she died. But, I didn’t. I never thought there would be a problem. Clearly I was wrong. Why is it so hard for him to do the right thing? I simply do not understand what makes him tick. Wires are crossed somewhere. This morning was spent picking out a tombstone. Again…more spats about money. The tombstone is being paid for by four of us…my step-dad, my sister, my brother and myself. It is not going to financially ruin any of us. For 14 years he was with my mom. He did not give her much. One would assume this is the least he could do for her. I simply do not understand it. I think he is emotionally dead. There is no other explanation. I highly doubt I will ever be able to think of him and feel anything other than rage after all this. I doubt it. I truly do. If she were alive today and knew that he would be like this when she passed, I highly doubt he would be in our family, much less still walking this Earth. I miss my mom. She always could cut right through the games and settle the score in about two seconds.

One more day…one more day…one more day. Just gotta get through one more day.

This evening I struck sentimental gold. In my mom’s things I found my hospital bracelets from when I was born. Tiny little plastic bracelets that I wore. Now, they look like I could wear them as a ring on my finger. I now know the name of the hospital. I know what time I was born and how much I weighed. Finally a positive moment in the madness of today. Then I found something that made me cry. My mom kept a tooth I had lost as a child. It is in an envelope that is covered in misspelled notes to the “thooh fairy”. My mom kept it. She valued it somehow. The tooth has no monetary value in the real world. But, in my mom’s world, it’s true value was priceless. Now it is priceless in my world. If only some people would learn this lesson…for something to be of true value it doesn’t need to be weighed in monetary terms.

When do you get to the point and just give up? When do you walk away? When do you stop praying for someone? When do you just start to wish them gone?

Life truly is not fair nor does it make sense. Why is my mom gone when she wanted to live so badly and loved her life when others remain who add nothing to the world and those around them? Why was she taken from us when they thought she would be cured and others are granted a miracle when they should be dead by all accounts? Why?