read at my mom's eulogy

It's bad poetry in the aesthetic sense. It's meaningful poetry in the life sense. I wrote all but one stanza in 15 minutes this morning before the eulogy...her ashes will be scattered & buried this spring. Maybe I'll have some better stuff by then? But for now, this is what she has:

Read in the eulogy for my mom today:

Passing Down The Passion

Passing down the passion
of her creative art
was the song that Anny sang
from deep inside her heart.

She left us way too early
and left our heart strings broken.
But with every single one of us
she left a little token.

There was a beauty in the gifts
she made by her own hand
given to those in Christmas snow
and Florida's sugar-sand

Pieces of her heart
are scattered everywhere.
Ornaments and crafty things
were made with love and care.

I hope she's up in heaven
still sharing her crafting skills-
Passing down her passion
of arts & crafts & quilts.

winter

Winter

White, icy snow

Dripping death into the veins

That rest like the snow

On tops of trees

Each spindly branch by branch

This Christmas Day

Death comes over youth

Like a freight train in the night

A polar express caravan

Full of thieves

My mother passed away around 3 AM this morning. I've spent most of the day calling relatives and making arrangements with the funeral director (I meet face-to-face with him tomorrow) and talking my dad through this. She was 61.

It's been just over a year...

...since I last posted here. I'm not exactly sure what I want this blog to be for, is part of it. Hella overtime is another part of it. I haven't had a lot of time to write. Yes, I participated in...and won NaNoWriMo in November, but it was very lackluster for me. My brain wasn't fully wrapped around my novel like it usually is. I was still working hella overtime, and my thoughts centered more around my daughter's college tuition, bills, health, healthcare, etc.

I am estranged from my parents. They were pretty abusive when I was a child. And by abusive, I mean, I didn't ALWAYS fear for my life, but I did sometimes. And, worse than that, I had pregnancy scares-from age 11 on. As an adult...and not until we were forced to move back to Illinois because we had nowhere else to go when my first husband and I separated and divorced, did I realize the atrocities, and how I didn't want my own child subjected to these monsters. Thus, I've been estranged from them since my daughter was about five years old. I don't think I realized what a fucked up life I had until I needed to protect my daughter.

My parents were in a motorcycle wreck in Florida about 3 weeks ago. Broken bones, broken ego...all seemed okay until last night. Apparently, a blood clot from the injury went to my mother's heart and one of her lungs. Of the two evils, she is certainly the lesser one. And as much as I hate with every fiber of my being what they did, I can't escape loving them. What a conundrum, huh? I actually have some happy memories of her.

My emotions are all over the board. Anguished. Angry. Hopeful. Loving. Hating. Numb. I don't even really know how to feel right now. She's only 61, so it's not like I thought she'd be gone so soon. I expected my biggest worry to be...what to do with them when they're elderly and in need of 24-hour care. I'm an only child, for which I am eternally grateful. Some higher power must have thought another child wouldn't have made it.

I've made my mistakes. Enough that maybe my daughter will hate me too when I'm 61. My worst mistake from my point-of-view? When I first left her father, I took her to their home-my parents' home. The place I was lucky to escape from. I will always live with that guilt. I kept a very close eye on her, but, man. We would have been better off with the Y! =(

But, I will die knowing that as imperfect as I am, I wasn't as bad as them. I think that's what makes it so hard for me right now. How can you love someone who didn't care about you when you were most vulnerable? And then...my mother is like a child right now. Helpless. Alone.