Numb

Numb. I guess that is how I was feeling most of the day. Numb. Stayed in my pajamas until 5 PM. Did not leave the house except to go to Wal-Mart at 6 PM to get some things for my sister. It was strange to be at the store. The past 14 months I took my mom to the store a lot. She was scared to go herself, afraid something would happen because of the medications she was on or that she would get short of breath. Little things like walking or moving around too much can be tricky when you only have one lung. Makes you short of breath and hard to catch it again. She often said it felt like a fish out of water, and then the panic sets in. Sometimes she had to use an oxygen tank on the really bad days. She hated it. It made her feel sick. It is hard to drive with an oxygen tank attached to you. Hard to look healthy when you have an oxygen tank attached to you. Hard to be in denial when you have an oxygen tank attached to you. All those little things such as medications and an oxygen tank that complicates one’s life all the more. So I took her to the store a lot. Pretty much every time she needed to go. I am so used to going to the store with her that now it doesn’t feel right to be there without her. Life doesn’t feel right without her. Numb.

After being numb most of the day I finally broke down this evening. I looked at my mom’s cell phone and lost it. I asked my sister if she still had the voicemail message from mom on her phone. She does. I am jealous that she has that and I don’t. I am on the brink of a hoarding stage. I want everything. I keep telling myself that it really doesn’t matter, my mom is not in the items she had. She is in my heart. But my brain doesn’t accept it. Serious miscommunication between my brain and my heart. My mom often joked that she did not want to get cremated because she knew I would lug her around in her urn with me everywhere. I would tell her that she was crazy. The thought of a cremated body even in the house grossed me out beyond belief. Now I’m not so sure anymore. I think she knew me better than myself. She knew that I hate change and that I don’t do well with it at first. She knew I would never be able to let her go if I did not have to. She was a smart lady. No doubt about it. She often joked to people that we were Norman and Mother from the movie Psycho. It was a funny joke. I even put it in my stand up routine. Now it is not so funny. Maybe down the road it will be funny again…but not now.

Strange thoughts pop into my head all day long. Tonight I was talking to my sister and I said…”I don’t remember where I was born.” She was convinced it was Little Falls. I knew I wasn’t born in Little Falls, I thought it was in the cities somewhere. So I called my Dad, figured he would know. It is 10:00 PM. He answers, I ask. He is not sure. He has to think for a few moments. Remembers where Melissa and Jeremy were born…Melissa in Little Falls…Jeremy in Fridley. Thinks I might have been born in Minneapolis. Can’t remember the name of the hospital. On the tip of his tongue. I start to cry. I tell him to call me tomorrow if he remembers. Typical. So this is how it’s gonna be…my past is fuzzy, unclear, unable to say…but on the tip of the tongue. My mom would have known and been able to tell me in a heartbeat. Not anymore.

People call. People email. People say they are sorry. I am sorry too. I wish that someone could do something to make it better. I would give anything to be able to have someone make it better. But there is nothing that can be done.

My sister says she misses mom. She doesn’t say much more. I worry about that. I don’t know if she is not ready to really talk about it or can’t. I know when it really hits her, it will be hellish. I think she feels that she can’t go to pieces. She was never emotional until she had her baby girl. Then everything changed. She cried at the drop of a hat. Now…not so much. It makes me worry a lot. She deals more in anger than in sorrow, she always has.

My brother is still having nightmares. I feel horrible for him. We talk now. More than we have ever talked before. Him and I…night and day. The only common ground we have are memories and our genes. Now slowly a bridge being built. We were very close when we were younger. Played GI Joe, He-Man and Transformers all day long. He would dress just like me…if I wore a red shirt and blue jeans, he wore a red shirt and blue jeans. He was a mini-me, just like on Austin Powers. Through the years we drifted apart. Now drifting back together. I have missed him. My mom is reconnecting us from the other side. Jeremy fell asleep last night listening to the radio at his place. Woke up in the middle of the night because he heard a familiar song. “Hold On” by Wilson Phillips. A song that my mom and him would jam out to when he was growing up. It was their song. Now he heard it again for the first time in years. Strange thing is the radio station is mostly R & B and Rap with a few top 40 songs now. What is Wilson Phillips doing on their set-list to even begin with? And he never sleeps with the radio on either. Too random. He believes it is a sign from mom letting him know that she loves him. I believe it too. I believe it with all my heart.

I still sleep with the light on. I can’t turn it off. I can’t go into the darkness. I feel once I go there, I may never return.