I never got the chance to tell my Mama about this blog . . . cause we aren‘t promised a tomorrow.
On January 4, 2011, I got the call … a call none of us ever want to receive. My Mama had gone to bed the night before and by morning she had woken up in Heaven.
To say that it is hard to lose your Mama doesn’t even begin to describe it …it was the hardest loss I’ve ever had to face. Your Mama is your biggest ally and a lot of times in life, your only friend. To not ever hold her hand again or hear her voice or talk to her almost every day …that’s my loss. But my loss is Mama’s gain because now she is in a place that we can only dream about.
Now some three weeks later, the fog and depression are starting to lift. I don’t know how else to describe what I was in during this time except for saying a FOG! Yes, the Lord has been pulling me up for weeks and I’m sure He will continue to. This has been the most difficult time of my life …. EVER! I lost my Daddy in February 2002 after watching him go downhill FAST with Alzheimer’s leading the way! It was awful … it was hard … I had to be strong for my Mama.
But losing my Mama, my last living parent … my biggest ally, my ‘love-me-no-matter-what’ friend (and I was a hard to love person for so very long but she stood by me no-matter-what) …she was ALWAYS there … EVERYDAY. During my last life’s crisis … she was there!!! She was there calling me EVERYDAY when Scott went to work in Maryland for 3 months… My Mama, my friend. And Lord knows I was not the best of her kids … I spoke my mind at every chance I got … I kept her up late at night when I missed curfew as a teenager (many many nights) …I didn’t call her like I should when I became a young parent cause I already ‘knew it all’ …but Mama was always there for me … she helped me raise my three kids when Scott and I were divorced … I depended on her support – I couldn’t have done it without her … babysitting, picking the kids up from daycare or school to get them here or there, taking them out for ’Happy Meals’ or Dairy Queen when she knew I couldn’t afford special treats, running over to my house at the drop of a hat cause I had some minor or major emergency with one of the kids, running over to watch two of the kids while I would run one to the ER, staying with Anthony during the day when he was in the hospital for a week in 3rd grade while I was at work and then being home with the other two at night while I stayed with Anthony, running over to take Alex home with her for the night cause he called her saying “I want my Nana” (whenever he got mad at me he ’wanted his Nana’), heck, running me to the ER time and time again for out of control migraines, and she was with me on September 13, 1996 (my baby boy’s 10th birthday) when I was admitted to the hospital after a week long migraine and they “tried” some medication on me that almost killed me … she was the one screaming at the nurse that “something is wrong” which saved my life, being there for me and Alayna day and night when my boys had to go to Pennsylvania for the summer, and then there was the summer ALL three kids had to go to Pennsylvania for the summer … OMG Mama was there … kept me busy, kept my mind off of missing my kids, made sure I was never alone. Mama put up with a lot of stuff from me and we were FINALLY getting to where we needed to be in our Mother/Daughter relationship … FINALLY! Finally reaching a point where I could GIVE back what she gave to me … but now she’s gone and I can NEVER repay her. Did she know how much I appreciated her? Did she know how very much I love her?
Mama LOVED life … lived it … lived it everyday. She did what she wanted, when she wanted … not much stopped her. Even when Daddy was living, she did what she wanted with or without him … she LIVED! After his death she just kept on LIVING … going on cruises, beach trips (she loved the beach), trips with family, trips with friends, trips with us (she went to Canada with us in 2005 when she was still healing from her second knee replacement surgery), a cruise in 2009 with Jackie and her family … she closed down the dance floor every night on that cruise …Mama LOVED to dance!!! She last danced at my Anthony and his Kay’s wedding in June … even did a little “bootie dancing” LOL …and most recently she drove up to Atlanta in October for a heart ablation at Emory with her two sisters and right after the heart ablation first thing she wanted to do was go see her newest great grandbaby, Brady, so I drove her straight up to Canton … man she and I had the giggles something fierce as we walked into the hospital …thought we would wet our pants laughing so hard …my aunts kept shushing us … she and I were like two teenagers, giggling!
Life is short and we take waaaay too much for granted … we always think there’s gonna be a tomorrow! A tomorrow to call … a tomorrow to visit … ‘oh, there’s always tomorrow‘.
I never got my TOMORROW … the night before I lost my Mama, after spending most of the day working on creating this blog, I thought “I need to call Mama” but after looking at my watch and noticing it was 10 pm I thought “she’s probably getting ready for bed, I’ll just call in the morning” but TOMORROW NEVER CAME.
We aren’t promised a tomorrow!
.JPG)
