I Didn't Even Remember.....

 It was the morning of May 19, Wednesday, and I couldn't sleep which is nothing new to me.  I had tossed and turned and finally picked up my phone off the bedside table.  I checked FB, emails, text messages, and finally looked at FB again.

This time I clicked on the Memories button.  As I scrolled through posts and pictures from years past, I was stunned by one.  It was a picture of Mom and Dad's gravestone in the Wooster cemetery.  I looked at it and I was 'stunned' that I had a picture of it on my Memories for that day.  Soon I replaced the phone on the bedside table, rolled over, and returned to sleep.

The next morning when I checked FB again, Hilary had posted a Memory, text and pictures, of Tessa and her program for her last day of pre-school at Geetingsvile.  As I looked at the post and the pictures, the wheels began to churn again, then it all made sense to me.

I didn't really remember much about her program that day.  Hilary and Blaine were not pleased with the things that were happening with the instructors there and their treatment of Tessa, so they were contemplating moving her to a different pre-school for the next year.  But I don't remember much else.

You know the way the brain works.....suddenly I remembered.  The pieces fell into place.  Early that Friday morning, as we were getting ready for the trip to Pymont to go with Hilary and Blaine to Tessa's program, the phone rang.  I was in Megan's old bedroom, picking out the clothes I would wear, when Gary answered the upstairs phone.   I knew from his voice what had happened.  It was Greta.  Late the previous night the nurses had called her from the hospital and strongly suggested that she come to be with Mom.  Sometime in the night Mom took her last breath and passed into the next world.  I remember Greta telling me that she sat there for a while before pushing the button to summon the nurse because she wanted to be sure Mom was gone...not breathing....dead.  

Somehow I finished dressing.  I imagine I called the girls to tell them.  I don't remember much at all about Tessa's program.  In fact when I looked at the pictures Hilary posted, I didn't recall anything about it except that I know we were there and that Jan and Fred both said something to me about being sorry to hear that Mom had died.  I do remember returning to Hilary and Blaine's house and calling my cousins. I remember both Dale and Ralph telling me that they loved me.

Thinking back on seeing the picture of the tombstone filled in a few more pieces, but I had to look at it again.  Then the 'thud' when the impact hit me again.  Mom died four years ago that day.  I didn't even remember it.

As NYEve approaches each year, Dad is always on my mind.  I have a tough time the morning of that day, remembering Mom's call to us at the hotel, standing with the hospice worker over the toilet and pouring the remaining tablets of Dad's medications, then flushing.  I remember standing in the living room and watching the two funeral directors carry Dad out of the house on the gurney, his thin, frail body totally lifeless.

On March 31 many memories flood my mind as I recall Leo's death.  The phone call from Agnes as we were getting ready to take her and Dad to the doctor's appointment for the results of her biopsy.  Seeing the red lights flashing as the ambulance sat in the drive at the house while I was speeding down 14 trying to get there.  Listening to Keith Hauptli tell Gary that his dad was gone, that taking him to the hospital was a formality since the fire dept couldn't pronounce him dead.  Trying to think of a response to Agnes when she kept saying that Dad was going to be SO upset that we were taking him to the hospital in Winamac since he really disliked that hospital and why couldn't we go to Monticello or Lafayette.  All the time she was questioning us, I was trying to text E. Anne that we needed Jim at the hospital.

In November the memories return from the days I spent with Agnes during her hospice care.  It was another phone call from Sandy in the wee hours of early morning that cold November day.  We were in the room with her when Sandy fed her some ice chips, turned to talk to us and the hospice nurse, then turned back to check on her mom and learned that there was no breath, that she had died.

But Mom?  There was no approach of the date with a countdown or a remembrance of 'what was I doing four years ago today before Mom died.'  Nothing.  It didn't even really hit me when I saw the picture of the tombstone in my FB Memories.

Am I a bad daughter?  Or even worse, I am just a bad person all around?

I posed that question to Hilary and she said no, that as part of the pain of that day, I had blocked it out.  Megan said nothing about it at all; neither did Greta. 

One of the Dotti's friends mentioned that she never remembers The Date; rather, she remembers good times, favorite sayings or words of wisdom, or conversations they had, plus how much she misses her mom.

With my mom?  Good times were rare.  Words of wisdom?  Not from my mom.  More like criticisms and blasts of things I had done wrong that she never forgot.  Conversations?  Oh yes.  I do remember them, but the dialogues are not pleasant memories.  Who wants to remember "You might have TWO degrees, but you have NO COMMON SENSE!"  And missing my mom?  I don't.  Not once have I wished I could pick up the phone and call her.  Never have I thought about things I need to take along to show here on our next trip to Wooster.  

No, I didn't remember.  And what bothers me now is that I am more upset that I didn't remember than I am about her death.