My Mom unexpectedly died on March 10th, 2009. On the first year anniversary of her passing I flew to Idaho to go to her grave on the 10th of March. I was newly pregnant and just getting into the throes of morning sickness. I had 15 month old Kara with me while dealing with morning sickness. My sister was late picking me up from the airport. We got lost looking for a restaurant and couldn't find our way back to the interstate for over an hour. My sister's car that I was driving overheated while I was driving it en route to my Mom's grave the next morning. We had to nurse the car from tiny Bancroft, Idaho alllllll the way to the bottom of Utah to Cedar City. It took over 11 hours to make a trip that shouldn't have taken us anywhere near that long. I got intensely sicker while I was at my sister's house that week and had an active 15 month old that I still had to chase after and take care of 24/7. When it was time for Kara and I to fly home we hit a horrible snowstorm between Cedar City and Salt Lake and ultimately decided that it was unsafe for us to continue on after I had about 100 coronaries (I have a little ptsd in regards to driving in the snow since our car accident in the snow with newborn Kara when she was 9 weeks old) on the blizzarding drive so we turned around and drove back to Cedar City. Delta wouldn't refund my flight or even credit my account because they said that it's not their problem that weather stood in the way of me getting to the airport so I was essentially out that money. So I had to buy a $350 one way ticket to get Kara and I home. All that equaled 1 insanely stressful trip. I figured if I tried to go back the next year that it could only get worse and we'd probably get in a place crash or something. So I opted out and stayed on this side of the mountains for her second year passing anniversary. But that got me thinking about what could I do to honor and remember my Mom that year since I wouldn't be there to talk to her at her grave on March 10th? In a moment of inspiration I had an impression that I needed to write and share a memory of my Mom. Then I took it a step further and decided that I would ask my family to email me any random memory they had of Mom and I would compile them into a 1 email and send the memories out to everyone. So I've done this now for 1 year and I'll continue to do it for the next 50 on the eve of the anniversary of her passing.
I thought I'd share my memory of my Mom that I wrote for her 2 year anniversary passing:
chelle's Mom memory 2011:
Altruism and
socks.
Dean, Kara, and I were
driving cross country to ultimately end up in WA for a week so Dean could
interview with a bunch of chiropractors to try to secure a job for after
graduation, and of course we wanted to make a 3 day pit stop at Mom’s on our
way there so she could meet her newest 7 week old grandbaby, Kara, and of
course because I wanted to see her and spend time with Mom because I hadn’t seen
her since we found out we were pregnant with Kara when Mom was visiting us for
her first and only time in Iowa in April 2008. ((We actually found out we
were pregnant the day before Mom’s birthday so we gave her the positive
pregnancy stick to open (no worries, I washed it off first) to let her know her
baby was finally having a baby. She loved it and totally cried.))
I loved my time at
Mom’s house, and I’m not just saying that because she’s gone and I only want to
remember the good but I sincerely had a good time for the 3 days we were
there. She had a bag of cheesy popcorn waiting for me because she knew it
was my favorite. She made her infamous a-little-too-dry pot roast with
carrots and potatoes. We watched the movie Enough. We went to
church with her, and she was so proud to introduce us to everyone and wanted to
show off Kara to everybody she knew there. We went out to eat with Tawny
and some of her friends. Tawny and I sneakily went through her second
bedroom and threw away a bunch of junk that Mom didn’t need, and we may have
taken a couple misc small items we wanted because we knew she wouldn’t miss
them. Mom held Kara a ton, and I caught her several times just staring at
her new little grandbaby while smiling. We laughed a lot. We gossiped
about any and all family members. We had a genuine good time together.
February 23, 2009. Our
last night staying at Mom’s. She had insisted that Dean and I sleep in
her bed the whole time we were at her house since it was a queen size, and we
also had Kara in a pack and play, and she was still getting up to eat every 3
or 4 hours, so it just was simpler for everyone, and Mom happily slept on the
couch. We went to bed just before midnight that night because we were
leaving to drive the final stretch to WA at 6 a.m. the next morning. I
fed Kara, put her to sleep, and then I went to sleep. Around 1 a.m. I
woke up and noticed a sliver of light shining under the bedroom door from the
hallway, and I just figured Mom must have forgotten to turn the hallway light
off before she went to sleep on the couch. So I went back to sleep.
Around 1:45 a.m. I woke up again because I heard some rustling in the bathroom,
which shared a common wall with Mom’s bedroom, and I figured either she or
Tawny must be using the bathroom in the middle of the night. So I went
back to sleep again. I was woken up again around 2:30 a.m. from more
bathroom rustling. Man, someone really must have an overactive bladder.
Back to sleep I go. Kara woke up to eat around 4, and the hall
light was finally off and the house was completely quiet. I fed her,
swaddled her, put her back to sleep, then I went back to sleep.
Six a.m. comes, we hit
the snooze button for a couple of minutes, and then I finally muster up the
gumption to drag my tired post partum body out of bed, and get ready to drive
another 12 hours in the car with a newborn who hates long car trips. I
quietly walk out into the front room to go finish putting the rest of our
clothes in our suitcases while Dean got Kara ready and put away the pack and
play. Mom very groggily opened her eyes and sat up, and I looked at her
and said, “Mom, holy moly, you look so tired. What time did you go to
bed?” “A little after 3 a.m.” “What? Why?” “I stayed up
washing all of your clothes.”
I look over to
where our pile of dirty clothes were sitting the night before and they’re not
there anymore, instead in their place are piles of our neatly folded clean
clothes, socks, and baby blankets. I had just planned on throwing our
dirty clothes in a garbage bag and I would wash them once we got up to WA where
we were going to be for a week, but instead my altruistic Mom who knew she had
to be up and out the door by 7 a.m. to head down to Cedar City with Tawny and
Inge stayed up over half the night to do her youngest daughter’s laundry.
I told her she didn’t
have to do that, but thank you so much for doing it because now I didn’t have
to worry about not having any clean clothes to wear. I then told her
about how I woke up a couple of times throughout the night because I thought I
heard someone in the bathroom each time, and Mom said it was her stain treating
our clothes and Kara’s spit up soaked baby blankets and then she’d throw a load
in the washer, go watch tv until it was ready to be switched to the dryer, then
she did the same thing for the next load. Then Mom proceeded to tell me
that in addition to doing our load of darks and blankets, she did 2 loads of
whites for us even though we didn’t have enough to warrant doing 2 loads. She
said that she washed our garments separately from our white socks because she
didn’t want our socks to ball up and pill on our garments. How incredibly
sweet and going the extra mile is that!?!?!!!! I was even more amazed and
touched when she told me she did that, and I gave her a huge hug and told her
thank you and she smiled and said you’re welcome. A half hour later I
took one last picture with she and I, tired eyes and all, and that was the last
time I ever saw her alive.
After our car wreck a
week later on March 5th, 2009, the horrid Greyhound bus ride home,
getting the phone call that Mom was passing away less than 24 hours after we
walked in our door from our 2 week job hunting vacation, turning around and
going back to Idaho to plan and attend Mom’s funeral, Dean missing National
Boards on the day of Mom’s funeral, staying at Mom’s after everyone else left
to go home so we could get her house ready to put on the market and go through
more or her belongings, trying to find a van to buy in Utah since we were now
completely carless from the accident and having that be unsuccessful, and also
having a newborn who dictated every second of our days and nights and I was
still learning how to be a first time mom amongst all of this turmoil, we
finally gave up and flew home to Iowa feeling completely defeated and broken.
I was exhausted.
Dean immediately had to go back to school and clinic. It was just Kara
and I most days. Between bouts of bawling my eyes out, it literally
hurting to breathe, and telling myself to wake up because surely this was
a dream because no way could I possibly hurt this badly in real life and no way
was my Mom who I only got 27 years with gone from my life, and then an hour
later going completely numb because that was the only way I could survive and
effectively take care of my daughter for a little while, and then then process
repeating itself several times per day, so needless to say it took me a couple
of days before I unpacked our suitcases. When I finally did start unpacking I
came across a pair of foreign socks. They were tucked down in a corner of
my suitcase where I had my
I’ll-only-wear-this-if-I-have-absolutely-nothing-else-clean-to-wear
t-shirt, which I obviously never had to wear on my trip, thanks to Mom
doing my laundry. I pulled them out, unrolled them, and saw they were a
pair of ankle socks. Better yet, they were Mom’s ankle socks. (I
know they were hers because I didn’t own any ankle socks, and I also saw a
couple pairs of these socks at her house while we were there) Mom did my laundry
in the middle of the night, including matching and folding all my
socks, and she felt like she needed to hide a pair of her ankle socks in
the dark recesses of my suitcase when I had at least 5 clean pairs of freshly
folded ones that she folded with her own 2 hands on the couch waiting to be put
into my suitcase in the morning.
I sat there holding
Mom’s socks that she wanted me to have for whatever reason, and then time stood
still and I could picture with perfect clarity Mom taking off her socks that
she wore the last full day we were together after I went to bed, putting them
in the washing machine along with Dean’s and my socks at 1:45 a.m., and
then folding them once they came out of the dryer at 3 a.m., and then thinking
she’d be funny or nice or even both and walking over to my suitcase and
stuffing them in for me to find and then call her and ask her how in the world
I ended up with a pair of her socks when I finally discovered them.
I never got to make
that call. I didn’t find the socks until it was too late. But I still
have them. I wear them sometimes, and Mom is definitely more in
my heart when I do.
I love her. I
miss her. She is my one and only altruistic Mom, socks and all.
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