mom & dad's anniversary

Today always makes me sad. I called to see how my dad is doing today, and he was on his way to the cemetery with flowers. I called him to comfort him, and I end up a soggy, red-eyed mess. Not very comforting I'm afraid. But he said it was comforting just for me to call.

I still haven't dealt with this yet. I always just have my crying jag, then push it to the back of my mind so I can take care of everything going on. But that means that every time it makes its way to the surface, I fall apart. Her birthday, mother's day, their anniversary, the day she died, thanksgiving, christmas... Even my birthday, because she always sent a card and bought me something off my amazon wish list. Which was particularly funny when I hadn't kept up with that wish list and it had gotten out-of-date, so I was like, "huh?"

I miss her, and I miss them, and I miss us.

family album up on flickr

To give you an idea how special this is, let me tell you how close we came to losing these photos forever.

We had collected all these photos for Mom's memorial service, and taken one to be blown up and framed. I also wanted one of them copied and framed, so I took the envelope of folders with me. And they disappeared into the netherworlds of my "filing" system. I thought I'd sent them back, no one else remembered receiving them... And about a month ago, there they were, in plain sight, with a few college photo albums. So I took them out, looked through them, cried a lot, and resolved to get them all scanned and put on CD. When I had time to do it, I couldn't find the envelope.

We searched high and low. Looked in the cars, scrutinized my desk at work. This took two days to go through everything twice. I was at wits end - I finally found them, and they were gone, this time forever. JR realized trash day was the next day, and as a last ditch effort, he went and got the bag out of the trash. He brought it up, opened the bag, and started digging through; immediately, I recognized the mailing envelope and tore it out of the trash. I was sobbing with joy - a couple of photos were a little creased, but they were here! We figure they fell off my desk into the office trash can and got swept up in our big spring cleaning.

While I wasn't looking, JR took them to a camera place to have everything scanned, including slides, which came out incredible. So I've uploaded them to my flickr family album. I'm not done, but here are most of the really precious old ones.

mom's birthday

April 10th is my mom's birthday. She died (suddenly, unexpectedly) November 11th, 2005. I expected all of us (Karolyn, my dad, me) to have a hard time, but we were all relatively OK. We all called each other to check in, and there were tears, but none of us came to pieces. I don't know if I feel better or worse about that.

When I called, Dad was going to Steak and Ale for dinner, because that's where Mom always wanted to go for her birthday. Now that's his tradition. He did the same thing on her birthday last year.

Mother's Day is coming up, and that hurts. I used to send her flowers. She loved that. She'd talk about how much she loved them for months. This is the hardest thing about not being in San Antonio anymore; I can't take flowers to her grave on special occasions.

Dad bought a house in San Antonio on March 1st, and he still hasn't moved in. I think he's having trouble leaving their home in Oklahoma City. It was the last place they shared. And they had so many friends there, such good people. I think he's afraid of breaking that connection. They had lots of friends in San Antonio too, but that was so long ago at this point. He'll have the Jag club again, which they always loved. Right now he just can't seem to set a date for packers to come and move him. It's probably hard to be there and hard to leave. I don't know how to help him.

I came across some old photos recently, including some slides taken when they were just going out or maybe newlyweds. They're so young and beautiful and happy. Full of life. That hurts my heart. I wish I'd known her at that age. I miss her so.