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Showing posts from May, 2010

the secrets of mama siggie's roast beast

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Siggie is like a second mom to me and Barb. She has lived with Barb for more than 30 years. She also makes the best roast beef (beast) I have ever tasted...even better than my own mom's. It is so tender it can be cut with a fork. She usually makes it for me at least once when I am back there. Recently Siggie had a subarachnoid bleed due to an aneurysm. She had a bad headache for three days and was really sleepy. But she would not go to the doctor. She told me it was because she was waiting for the doctor she liked to be available. One of the doctors at that hospital pretty much decided my mom's fatal stroke was just an ear infection. Siggie wasn't ready to die yet so she waited patiently, with blood dripping into her brain and giving her a headache, until the doctor she wanted was there. When she got to the doctor, they evaluated her and gave her blood pressure medicine and told her to come back the next day for a CT scan. She did that and the doctor said he was su

in the land that made me me

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I am winding down another visit to my hometown where there are less and less living people that I knew growing up; most of them I visit at the cemetery on my morning run. It has been weirdly hot and humid for May here, when a lot of the time the dregs of winter are still hanging around. And apparently it is wood tick season. I found one on my clothes and my brother has had several. In a small town, you can bury your own dead. Barb, Ray and I finally buried my mom's ashes next to my dad's, after a year, where she sat on her dresser - or at least her "cremains" did as they call them. My brother, played Pall Bearer and carried the ashes down to the cemetery (about a mile away), while I ran there. The pretty cemetery is getting decorated for memorial day but no one is there at 8AM so Ray dug a hole, after a little discussion (or familial argument) about where she should go and where exactly we had placed my dad; and we rather unceremoniously placed her ashes there. Our fa

a balloon for my mom on mother's day

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My sister is very sentimental and her emotions run deeper than a lot of people know...that is why I love her - or at least one of the reasons. Today on mother's day she sent a balloon up to heaven to my mom with a note on it - only she knows what the note said. She emailed me this picture of the balloon on it's way and it made me teary. I actually thought year 2 without a mom on mother's day would be easier and in some ways it is. I thought I was doing really well until, when I was buying something at a store, the clerk said "Are you ready for mother's day?". She was just being nice, but I replied. "I don't have a mom". She looked stricken, so I said "but it is easier this year". She still looked like she needed something else so I said, "I am a mom though!". None of it worked and I bet she will never say that to anyone else. I felt bad for making her feel bad. I didn't mean to. This year all of the mother's day sal