Baby Steps

ok. so now what?

my life has changed forever.

i guess that means this blog, however infrequently written and lightly trafficked, has changed forever as well.

right?

(echo.)

but where do we begin? where do i take this thing?

ok. let's see.

uh...

how about...

my dad, wading slowly slowly slowly into the cold waters of a Life Independent, has suddenly decided to do away with call waiting on his line. he says it's because he thinks it's rude to interrupt a phone conversation. i think maybe it's because he's still not 100% comfortable with how to activate the whole process. also, making a decision like that is probably symbolic of something.

probably.

regardless, while we all wait for him to call the phone company and cancel it once and for all, he's taken to just not picking up if he's talking to someone else. frustrating? sure. but he's calling the shots solo now, and i don't want to begrudge him a single thing in his life.

too trivial?

yeah, i know. and it looks like i'm kind of taking a shot at him. which i'm not. i'm just venting. (selfishly, perhaps.) lord knows what he's going through alone in a house in which he was never ever alone for 39 years.

ugh.

so are we going to take things in that direction? sadness and mourning? woe is me and pity on the widower?

maybe.

there was a moment today when i was driving to work when i instinctively wanted to pick up the cell and call my mom for a chat.

yeah.

you can't do that when she's dead, dummy.

*sigh*

uh...

the baby's learned his letters.


there is nothing he likes more than having you sit with him and watch while he rummages through his little tin suitcase full of consonants and vowels and picks them up one by one and identifies them. that's pretty cool, i guess.

oh, and i'm going to shoot at a mud wrestling event in el monte on thursday night for work. should be interesting.

hmm.

also...

i've gotten a couple of emotional web comments from parents of children with prader-willi syndrome taking me to task for making a flippant joke in the title of a recent post at the expense of those suffering with it. the first one came in the day before my mother died. i read it in her hospital room while i was waiting for a song she always associated with a few very special memories to download from itunes so i could play it for her one more time. the way i felt as i read it redefined the word "shitty".

so, to those of you who i have upset, let me offer a sincere apology, one that i would have offered regardless of when your notes would have reached me.

wow.

*mops brow*

how about a joke lifted from a zach galifianakis interview i read in rolling stone during one of my cross country flights?

a doctor says to his patient, "you're going to have to stop masturbating."

the patient asks, "why?"

the doctor says, "so i can examine you."


remember when i said "bear with me" a couple of days ago?

yeah, it might be a while.

9/14

you'll have to bear with me.

my mom died two weeks ago.


she was a great woman.

and if losing her wasn't bad enough, i swallowed my gum at her funeral.

that's about as bad as it gets.

---

the truth is there's so much i want to say about my mother, but i just can't bring myself to do it just yet. it's just a physical impossibility.

at the service before she was buried, i offered my brother a line to close his eulogy.

"and now my brother would like to get up and make a few loud sobbing noises."

he wisely chose to omit my suggestion to his remarks.

---

the boys took the news hard, but rallied as it became more and more evident over a week of sitting shiva in new york, that they weren't alone in their love for grandma carol, and, just as importantly, in their feelings of loss.

it also helped that my mom, being who she was, gifted in the ways of sentiment and always aware that her multiple myeloma would prevent her from ever becoming an old woman, set up a system long in advance of her passing for my boys to feel her in their hearts after she left.

a star.

a star on which they could wish, whether she was by their side grinning though her tears of joy in los angeles or 3000 miles away in new york, or god knows where, i guess. a star they could all drink in at the same time no matter where they were.


she was pretty smart.

----

the night of my mom's funeral, i sat on my the front steps of my parents house and was treated to the most beautiful sunset i have ever seen in new york. truly.


it was on those steps that my mother first taught my brother and i to take a moment to appreciate a beautiful sunset.

the next night, ab asked to join me on the steps while i waited for a orange and purple repeat that never came.

"dad," he asked, "is grandma the sunset?"

what i wanted to say was

damn right, she's the sunset.

she's in every sunset you and i will ever see for the rest of our lives.

she's the star you and jb wish on every night - only for other people, never for yourselves, just like grandma taught you.

she's in the way your brother, jb, tears up when he's very happy. just like his dad does. which is something he got from his mom, who got it from her dad, who gave you your name. nothing would have made her happier than hearing jb talk about how he started to cry when his 5th grade big buddy hit a home run at school. she lived for that shit.

she's in your baby brother's curls and grey eyes. he may not be lucky enough to have the memories of her that you and your brother will, but whenever he looks in the mirror, a part of her will be staring back at him.

she's in your heart and my heart and in the heart of everyone who was ever lucky enough to get to know her.

she never gave up. she fought and fought for 11 years when she should have died after 3. after all, she wanted to meet you.

and after she did, it didn't take long until she loved you more than anything in the whole world.


that's what i wanted to say.

if i could have spoken.

but in the end, it didn't matter. it didn't matter one bit.

ab just looked me as the tears welled up in my eyes and put his hand on my arm to reassure me and we watched the sun go down and the stars come out.


lymysys, mom.

Still Here.

he's working on his tom ridge as we speak.