A Pirate Looks at 53

I turned 53 years old this week rather uneventfully.  J.P. was away at golf camp - his first sleep away camp albeit in Franklin.  It was Jude, Joe and me and by my request, we had a quiet dinner at home and watched the MLB All Star Game.  The National League lost, as usual.

It was a strange birthday, melancholy, as I found myself preoccupied with the idea that it was my first birthday without my mom.  Lately I've slipped into a bit of a funk again, thinking about my mom a lot and really missing her.  I guess that's normal - or maybe it's not, I don't know - it's been five and half months since she died.

Things happy, in my life or in real life, and I get lost in my mind thinking about how much my mom would have enjoyed this or that event or how much fun it would have been to talk to her about it.  Tiger winning the Masters.  Vanderbilt winning the College World Series.  The Predators trading PK Subban.  Bonnaroo.  J.P.'s WNSL Dodgers winning the 11U State Championship.  My 53rd birthday.

All of those events, to me, are slightly less meaningful or special because my mom isn't here to share them.  It's weird, I know, because it's not like she could enjoy those kind of events, anyway, the last three years or so.  Alzheimer's disease robbed her of that.  Still, somehow, she was here and would have been a part of all of those events in an odd way.  I don't know.

Often times in my conversations or interactions with others, my mom spontaneously comes up.  For example, I ran into Dr. White the other day, her former primary care physician (and my grandmother's, too).  We were talking, getting caught up and he mentioned attending an event with his mother, who is 86.  Apropos of nothing or, perhaps everything, he told me he was sorry to hear about my mom's death.  He told me how much he had enjoyed knowing her over the years, how much fun she was, how much they laughed together and how opinionated she was.  Yep, that's her.

He didn't know the details of her death.  I shared with him that I was blessed to have visited with her the Wednesday afternoon before she had a stroke.  Describing the telephone call I got from Tracy Thursday morning while I was having coffee at  Honest Coffee Roasters to tell me that the nurse at NHC was looking for me - that something was wrong with mom - brought it all back home again, like a scab opening up and bleeding.

Dr. White was a good listener.  When I described what the neurosurgeon at St. Thomas Hospital advised me about our options, Thursday morning after my mom arrived there in an ambulance, he agreed we made the right decision not to proceed with any type of cranial surgery.  My mom wouldn't have wanted that.  He knows it and I do, too.

He didn't realize we were at the hospital with her for a week before she died on the night of January 31st.  Recounting that part of the story made me think about that week again and wonder if I've done it justice by writing about it.  I'm torn between wanting to remember every detail of my last week with my mom and wanting to forget all of it, because it was so hard.  By the end of the week, I was  hollowed out and my emotions had been wrung out like water from a sponge.  I was numb and it was . . . just . . . hard to feel.  Anything.

It was such an intense week and unlike anything I had ever imagined.  Everything was so raw and real yet so unbelievable, too.  It's hard to describe it.  Again, part of me wants to remember every detail vividly and part of me wants to forget it happened.

So I find myself at 53, with good days and bad days and some in between.  I miss my mom and I think about her almost every day.  Well, probably every day, actually.  Her laugh and her smile, before and after Alzheimer's disease ravaged her mind and body.

I suppose it will get easier.  I hope so.