waste of a day

Today was a waste. Nothing done at all. I only left the couch to get something to eat or to get a different blanket. A day of nothing. The only things that I really accomplished today were breathing and simply existing. Wait, that is not true. I did watch the season finale of “Will and Grace” and “The Apprentice”. Kendra won on “The Apprentice”. A life changed forever with two little words “You’re Hired”. I think she would have been the one my mom would have been rooting for. My mom loved “The Apprentice”. We watched it every Thursday without fail, even in the hospital. The Thursday before she died she had me tape the show so she could watch it later. At the time she was too sleepy from the medications and knew she would not be able to stay awake for the whole thing, so she asked me to record it for her. She never did get a chance to watch it. It was weird watching it without her tonight.

Every time I thought of doing something today, it was immediately followed by the nagging question “what’s the point?”. It didn’t start out that way…I had big plans for the day and a list of a million things to do. But, as one hour melted into the next, less and less got done. It wasn’t even until an hour or so ago that I realized just how little I did do today. Waste of a day. No two ways around it.

A phone call this afternoon. “Hello” I said. “How’s your mom?” said the voice on the other end. “She’s dead.” my voice responded. Awkward pause. Silence. Nothing. Another person not knowing she is gone. How is that even possible? More than a month later I still hear “How’s your mom?”. Life and it’s sick little jokes.

I thought a lot about my mom today.

Even when you don’t want to think about things that you know will make you sad, the thoughts keep coming. The mind is never still. The thoughts come even harder the more you try to stop them. Then the mind races…not even finishing one thought before beginning the next. And the next and the next and the next. Saturday will be my mom’s birthday. Had she not died she would be 52. 52…to young to be dead. 52…an age she will never reach. She died a little over a month before her birthday. So close, yet so far.

My aunt called today to check on all of us. It is hard to talk to her family. It makes me miss my mom even more. My aunt is my mom’s only sister and also the oldest in their family. She told me a story about their aunt Helen and my mom when she was 5. I was told that their aunt Helen was a big woman…6 feet tall and had feet just as long and did not take anything from anyone, she was one tough lady. It was winter and aunt Helen was over visiting, when it came time for them to leave they went to the kitchen and were putting on their boots. As aunt Helen was putting on her boots she looked at my mom and said “I bet you have boots like mine”. My mom looked at her and without skipping a beat said “No, my boots are itsy-bitsy boots.” That is my mom. She always had a crazy comeback for everything said to her, even at the age of five. My aunt said that she could still see my mom, 5 years old, standing there in the kitchen with her hair in her little curlers and hands in her pockets taking the steam out of their aunt Helen.

Then I looked down at my niece, Isabella. I know already that Isabella is going to follow her grandma’s footsteps. She is already so much like her grandma. A grandma she will never even remember knowing firsthand.

I take after my grandma. It freaked my mom out. The things I would say, the way I would stand, my need to have a million pairs of shoes, the way I drive. Just like my mom’s mom.. My grandma died a month after my eleventh birthday. I remember a lot of the whole ordeal. She had gone in for a surgery to have her gall-bladder removed. In the surgery they discovered she was full of cancerous tumors. My grandma lived for only six weeks once they found the cancer. She never left the hospital again. She never saw her home again. When my grandma died my mom was 32 years old. Now my mom is dead and I am 30 years old. I turn 31 in two months. When my mom was diagnosed with cancer her mom’s battle with cancer haunted her. Every trip to the doctor’s office my mom was afraid she would never see her home again. She did though. We made sure she got home. My mom spent her final 12 days at home. Living with cancer is not living. Living with cancer is living in constant fear. My mom often said that had my grandma died before I was born, she would believe in reincarnation. My grandma and I were so much alike to my mom. I even have a mole on the left side of my nose identical to my grandma’s. I am the only one that has it. Strange but true.

Saturday is going to be a tough day. I am bracing myself for the worst. The thought of Saturday makes me want to stay on the couch forever. The thought of Saturday makes me want to bury my head in the sand. The thought of Saturday makes me cry. But, I know that in the end…in the blink of an eye, Saturday will come and go. Just like all the days, whether we use them to live fully or waste and squander them, they come and go before you know what happened. And then it is too late. They are gone, time you can never get back. Time stops for no one.

A lyric stuck in my head today as I was watching country music videos today on CMT. Yes, strange I know. I don’t even like country music. But there I sat…for hours…watching country music videos. It was like being in a foreign land. How is it possible for people to have sold 10 million records and I have never even heard of their name before. Odd. Very odd. Anyways…the lyric is as follows….

“If you wanna hear God laugh, tell him about the plans you made.”

So very true.