Thirty Six
It�s my birthday today. I do believe it�s the one birthday I�ve had in a long time that I�ve gotten so much attention. Hub got me a new digi cam and a DVD player (the DVD, though, honestly, was more for him than me, but we�ll let him take the credit for being such a wonderful spousal unit, mmkay?). My dad and my new step-mommy got me a gift card for Barnes & Noble which was just spent a mere hour ago. The miracle of Myspace has people sending me birfday wishes from all over. And I got a lovely card from my dear Anneliese the other day.
So, nice birthday, right? Yes, absolutely. I couldn�t ask for anything more. (Okay, I can be a pig and say Bo, but I won�t. LOL).
So why am I so down? Why was I just crying a few minutes ago?
My mom.
It seems to be hitting me harder and harder as I am at the age my mom was when she got sick. She was 35 when she first got sick. I had a tough time last winter around Christmas with this shit and worked through it.
But it keeps coming back.
I did the math this morning. My mom turned 36 in 1979. By the time she had this birthday, she was gone, for all intents and purposes. She was in a persistent vegetative state, a la Terri Schiavo, except not as alert as Terri was. Yeah, it was bad. She couldn�t talk, she couldn�t walk, who knows if she could even see. She just lay there, day in and day out.
My only prayer, all these years later, is that inside there, she didn�t know what was going on. I can�t fathom being like that and knowing what�s going on. For three years.
And to know that by the time my mom was my age, she couldn�t take care of her kids. She might not have even known us at that point.
It�s such a reminder of my own mortality. To know that my three children are such mirror of her own. The fear that I have of not being there for them suddenly, it�s all consuming. It walks with me 24/7.
To think of my oldest son being put in a position of caretaker at the age of 16, like my older brother, or leaving my daughter without her mother. Or, worse yet, to have my precious little baby son go the way of my younger brother. It�s the scariest thought I could have, outside of something horrible happening to them.
I miss my mom so much. This December, it will be 25 years since she died. 25 years and it still hurts like it was yesterday.
I know that I wouldn�t be who I am if none of that had happened. However, I wonder who I would have been. Who would my mother have been? My father, my brothers, my children.
Fucking flu shots. That�s what did it. Her flu shot in 1976 was contaminated. It caused her to have a condition known as Guillian-Barre Syndrome. Most people recover fully from it. My mom got it as bad as you could get it. For those who are interested, Wikipedia has an interesting article on it, including a reference to that 1976 flu shot. But, that�s not what actually killed her. It debilitated her beyond capacity, but what got her in the end was pneumonia, that best friend of hospital and nursing homes.
*sigh*. Sorry for being such a bummer. It�s times like these that feel the need to share with you most, dland.
And so concludes today�s dland therapy session.
Now, in typical Jackie fashion, I am going to the store to buy beer and spinach dip, and I�m going to chow down and drink my sorrows away. I�ve got four great new books also, and it�s time to dive in.
And, just to show how ironic my fucking life is, my �life song�, according to the internets, is the song that was number one on September 19, 1988, when I turned 18. That song is, ironically enough, �Don�t Worry, Be Happy� by Bobby McFerrin.
How fucking funny is that?