PYHO - I love you Mama, forever

Since it's October and I'm elbow deep in work with this event for Renee's Family I thought I'd talk a little bit more about my Mommy today for my PYHO post.  I wrote a post earlier this week about her, titled I used to be that little girl. 

I feel the need to talk about it again, because I finally feel open enough to share that part of my life and because talking about my experience openly and honestly has moved and motivated some of you to donate to Renee's family.

Also, if anyone reading this would like to participate in the event you can read this and get an idea of what is going on and you can email me at:
ZombieHousewifeBlog@gmail.com

 

My Mother was a beautiful woman.  As I said before she was always put together, never left the house without her makeup on and her hair fixed.  She always wore earrings.  She always put on some jewelry before leaving the house for the day.  I remember the way she smelled, like the perfume she always wore.  I would buy her a bottle of it each Mothers Day.  No matter what I would always pick out that same bottle for her, each and every year.  That perfume was an extension of my mother, of who she was.  I'll always relate that smell to her in my mind, without even thinking about it.  

I was in awe of my Mommy as a little girl.  How she would take a black pencil and line her eyes, so perfectly.  How her lips were always stained that perfect shade of color, a red-ish color.  How her hair was always curled just so.  The way her skin seemed to be the perfect shade, not too dark to where it looked like she had been baking in the sun for days, but not light enough to imply that she never left the shade in the summer.  She was the perfect color, I always thought.  She was a bit darker complected than I, but albinos are darker than me so that isn't all together surprising.

She always knew what to say, not just to me but to everyone.  She was friends with everyone.  Everyone loved my Mommy!  Even now when I happen across someone who knew her they will tell me how much they just loved Brenda, what a good friend she was and more than that what a good person she was.  When they say these things I am simultaneously proud, blessed and jealous.  I am proud because that wonderful woman they are speaking about contributed half of my DNA, and I know I share some of the same qualities that they are praising her for.  I am blessed to have known her, to be her daughter and to have both loved her and been loved by her.  I am jealous because they have memories of her, and I have just a cherished few, and I feel as though it is not fair that these people get to remember her more, know her better and have had more time with her than I did.  

I sometimes feel cheated because I only got to know my Mommy as a little girl knows her Mother.  I never got to know her as a tween or preteen, a teenager or a grown woman knows their Mother.  I never got to be her best friend.  I never got to call her immediately after I take a pregnancy test and it comes up positive.  She wasn't the person I called when Justin asked me to marry him.  She wasn't the woman to my left, holding my hand as I pushed her second and third grandsons into the world.  She wasn't the one helping me get ready for prom or teaching me how to put makeup on when I was finally allowed to wear it to school.  I didn't and she wasn't because she was not here for any of those things.

I miss her, but more than the things that I remember us doing together I miss the things that we should be doing together today.  Isn't it funny how you can miss something that never happened?  How you can miss your Mom holding your sons when she has never physically held them and she never will?  How you can miss calling your Mother when you have a problem with your husband or with a friend or when your son starts to walk, when you've never been able to pick up the phone and call her for any of those things?  I miss those things more than it seems possible to miss anything in the world.  I miss my Mommy.  I miss her so much that sometimes it physically hurts me.

I miss her like crazy, each and every day I think of her.  I look a lot like her, everyone tells me that.  I have a lot of her qualities as well.  I'm a loving and loyal friend, and I truly care about helping others.  I'm a devoted Mother and Wife, just like she was.  I try my best at every single thing I do, which is something I got from her as well, because she never half arsed anything she did she always put her whole self into things, and I'm the exact same way.  We share a mutual love of music, and I got my taste for Johnny Cash from her.  I also inherited her temper, which means that it takes a lot to get under my skin and really get me going, but when you push me there it's not pretty and you'll probably rethink your actions that put me there.  I'm very willing to

I was just a little girl when she passed away.  My Dad had a really hard time with it, he lost the love of his life and was left behind to raise a young daughter as a man alone.  With no woman to help guide him on how to raise me.  A lesser man may have crumbled under that pressure of raising a very little girl alone after she just lost her Mommy to cancer, but not my Daddy.  He truly rose to the occasion, giving me a better life than a lot of people have.  Just like the promised my Mom he would.  I know she must have been so worried about me and my older brother, who was already on a self destructive path.  If she were here, she would still be worried about him, but I'm worried about him & his kids enough for the both of us.  

My Mom was one of the hardest working people I've ever known.  She worked every day of her life either at home or at her job.  She did this so that she would be able to give her family the best life possible.  She always talked about wanting to take a year off and stay home with me, but that never came to be.  She passed away before she had the chance.  But I am forever grateful to have had what time with her that I did, because she has given me some of the most cherished memories that I have.  I hold each and every one of them near to my heart and even though I can not remember the sound of her voice anymore I can still remember my times with her.  Those special times that we shared as mother and daughter.  I don't remember a lot of them, because I was so young when she passed, but the ones that I do remember are beautiful and special.  

I love you Mommy, so much!  Even though I'm all grown up, you're still the most beautiful, kindest and most wonderful woman I know.  I love you and I miss you each and every day!  I promise to always tell my boys about you, so that they will know that they have a Grandmother up in Heaven looking down on them and who loves them more than anything.  Someone who would have thought of them as the most beautiful little boys to ever exist and someone who would have cherished them just as much as their Mommy & Daddy do!  You were the best Mom I could have asked for, thank you for all that you did for me and all that you did with me!  I miss you just as much today as I did when  I was a little girl and you were in the hospital.  You are a very special person to me, and I promise to do my best to make you proud of me!  I love you so much!

I used to be that little girl...

Has everyone read about Gucci's friend and her family?  You really need to read that post to fully understand this post.  Her friends husband has been diagnosed with a very aggressive cancer, and that family has lost their home and they have no income.  They have 3 children that need clothing for the harsh Montana winter, and basic items as well.  The Mom seems like such a lovely person, and such a giver.  I'm going to explain why it's so important that we reach out and help families like that today.

I can really relate to the little girl in that family.  Because I was that little girl.  My Mommy was diagnosed with Cancer when I was about 5 years old.  I didn't know what cancer was then.  By the time she was diagnosed her back had been hurting for about a year or so.  My Mother was a hard worker, she always had a job.  She used to say that her dream was to be able to take a year off of work and stay home with me!  She worked at a grocery store for as long as I can remember until I was 3 or 4 years old.  Then we moved from West Virginia to Virginia, and my Daddy bought my Mom the house she wanted, because she deserved it.  She got a job at Tultex, sewing clothing and such.  I can still remember how excited she was that she would be able to work sitting down, instead of standing on her feet each day.  When she worked at the grocery store, she was on her feet all the time, and often had to attend meetings late into the night because she had worked her way up the ladder at that store. 

I remember going into the grocery store, and the ladies my Mommy worked with used to let me ride down the checkout line on the belt thing that moved when I was very little.  I used to sit on it and ride down to the end, where I would give my Mommy a kiss & a hug when I got to her.  But my Mom was a smoker.  My brother & I begged her to quit.  If I had known what was to come I would have begged a little harder, cried a little more, and hidden her cigarettes and break them a little more often.  But I didn't know anything then, except that my Mommy & Daddy were my whole entire world.

We moved to Virginia and my Mommy got her new job and her new house.  She would drop me off at daycare early in the mornings, and each day we would stop and get donuts and a chocolate milk, or sometimes a Mr Pibb or Dr Pepper if I was really good and asked nice enough.  She would kiss me and I would get lipstick on my face, then I would wipe it off.  She always would say "Did you just wipe my kiss off, Ashlee"  and I would reply with the same thing daily "No, Mommy, I was just rubbing it in!" 

Then I started school.  We lived close by, and on my Mom's days off she wold walk me there and pick me up and we would walk home.  I always wore dresses, because my Mom always dressed up, she always looked so put together and had her hair fixed and her makeup done.  So I wanted to be like her, so I wore lots of dresses, and she fixed my hair daily.  I loved my Mom.  She baked my birthday cakes, she put ribbons in my hair, she took me shopping and she took my older brother and I to Wendy's to eat once a week. 

Soon though our shopping trips turned into doctors visits, and when I would walk into her bathroom to get my hair done in the mornings I would find her crying and sitting in the floor.  I was an emotional child, and my Mom crying made me cry.  More than that it made me worry.  Why is my Mommy so scared?  Why is she crying? 

Chemotherapy, radiation, doctor visit after doctor visit after doctor visit.  Then she was admitted into the hospital.  My Daddy quit his job, because he was and still is hopelessly devoted to my Mother.  He spent his days & most nights at the hospital with my Mom.  I spent quite a few nights laying beside her and cuddled up to her in her hospital bed as well.  I would get ready for school at the hospital a lot.  I always slept with my Mom at home, and it was hard for me to sleep without her.  Then my Aunts came in from Maryland and from Washington DC.  They stayed at my house with me for months, paying our bills, taking me to school, shopping, to the hospital daily to see my Mom.  The Church helped out too.  We always had everything we needed, because we were lucky enough to have family that was well off, and my parents did well.  We were lucky enough to have a Church Family that did anything they could to help us, and family friends that would reach out to us with open arms. 

I stayed with family, I stayed with my friends, I stayed at my house with my Aunts and I stayed at the hospital with my Mommy.  All she wanted was to come home.  So we started preparing for that.  We got her a hospital bed, it was in our living room and I slept in it.  We got her pills from the pharmacy, they were above the washer and dryer in the cabinet, hidden from my brother who was almost 17 at the time and had been getting high and drunk to cope.  We had everything that she needed.  We were just waiting.  They had already told me that she would die.  I didn't even know what that meant.  I cut all my hair off, so my Mommy could see me with short hair.  I got a bob.  It was beautiful, I was beautiful, that's what she said. 

When she died I wasn't there.  I spent the weekend with my friend Jessica and her family, because I wanted to go to Church, and pray for my Mommy.  She passed away, literally, while I was in Church that Sunday.  We got home and 10 minutes later my Daddy came to the door and talked to Jessica's mom.  Then my Dad, along with Jessica's Dad and Mom came down the stairs to her bedroom.  They sat me down, and told me that my Mom had went to be with Jesus today.  My Daddy was crying.  He asked if I would please come home with him, and I didn't want to.  I wanted to stay with Jessica, at least I thought anyway.  He left the house crying.  He didn't even make it off the sidewalk by the time I was out the door, running at him and yelling for him to take me home.  I was afraid that if he left me there, that I would never see him again either.

I still feel like I never got to say goodbye to my Mommy.  I still miss her, each and every day.  It pains me greatly that she will never get to (physically) hold my boys, my beautiful boys.  Though it is my belief that she held them both before I did, and sent them to me to help me.  I'll probably write about why I believe that at some point.  But not today. 

That family, those two little girls and that little boy, deserve to have what I had.  The deserve to spend time with their Daddy while he is sick without having to worry about what they will eat or where they will sleep.  Their Mommy deserves to be able to worry only about her husband getting better, not whether she will be able to get her kids clothing, a real dinner or winter coats.  They deserve to spend this time focusing on their sick loved one, instead of worrying about finding a job, a house.  They deserve to go through this tragedy without having additional burdens tacked onto their already weighed down shoulders.  They deserve what I had when I was a little girl, some stability in a very unstable and sorrowful situation.  Please help us all to give them that little bit of stability back, to let them worry only about their Daddy or their husband getting better!

These children are living in an RV outside of the hospital that their Daddy is in, they are using the Hospitals electricity, but that is a temporary situation.  They live in Montana, and the winters are fierce there.  They're growing out of their clothing so fast, and their Mom had been a homemaker, like so many of us are, for years and years.  Their only son is Autistic, like so many of our loved ones are.  Their Mother can't find a job, and it is my belief that she should not have to.  She should be able to spend time with her family right now, with her husband, they deserve to not worry about where their next meal will come from when they should only be worrying about that man getting better and wondering if he will be able to see his children graduate, get married and have kids. 

If you have ever lost a loved one to Cancer then you know how painful that battle is, you know how painful their situation is.  Now imagine watching you husband or your Daddy fight that battle while you're homeless, while you're hungry and while you're cold.  This man who is valiantly fighting this insidious disease is in his hospital bed right now, worrying not only about healing and getting better, but also about where his wife and children will live, what they will wear when the snows come and how they will support themselves when that has always been his job.

I'm not asking you, I'm begging you to help this family.  If you can give even 5 dollars, then give 5 dollars.  If you can give coats for the kids, please give them.  If you can give them some gift cards, for their basic needs, I'm begging you to give them!  Please, if you can do anything at all then do it! 


You can visit Gucci to read the in depth version of what this family is suffering!  If you want to help you can get in touch with me at LoveCommaAshlee@gmail.com or on Yahoo IM at Incurably_Ashlee@Ymail.com and I will fill you in on the many ways that you can help this beautiful family and put you in touch with Gucci!