750 words - day 9

 Well, today is 5 years since my mother died. Or so it's believed. Somehow I have records showing that she died on the 19th of January. Both my family tree record, and her gravestone shows it to be the 19th. But bro insists its the 18th. Which means I somehow screwed things up, as usual, and had the cemetery put the wrong date on her stone. I do remember it being a Friday night when she died in 2018. Okay, I just looked at a calendar and rolled the dates back to January of 2018. The Friday night that week was the 19th. So maybe it wasn't Friday night she died. Maybe it was Thursday? But I think my bro has always been telling me on Fridays that it's been such and such many weeks since she died... I guess the evidence leans more towards him being wrong here... he has possession of her death certificate. So that would be the hard proof. Here's the end of this though, I don't want to be in a discussion/debate/argument about this at all with him. Or a debate about anything with him so I always let everything slide the way that he wants things to go. So for this year, we celebrate mom's death anniversary a day early. It's fine. I'll have a good talk and celebration with her when the time is right.

So what is life like, five years since she's been gone? It's definitely not as bright as it used to be. Even though I was never able to fully open to her about my thoughts and ideas, she was great to have as an activity partner and there were so many things that we enjoyed doing together. So many of those things we used to do I barely do at all anymore. One thing I am grateful for in my life is that I have the one person in all the years of my life that I am more capable of speaking openly to out of anyone I've ever known, and that's my friend Scarlett. Yet I cause her grief when there are times like now when I struggle to enunciate my feelings and thoughts very clearly. If I didn't have her to talk to about the things that are important in my life, I'd be in sore trouble and surely would be swallowed up into depression.

Listening to an astrologer on Coast To Coast AM this afternoon giving advice to someone that called into the show, the caller asked about what she had to look forward to in the upcoming year. He called her out on something that he must have intuited, that she fails to set goals for herself. He could have been saying that to me though. I am the worst person for having no goals. After the decades of failures I've been through, I just feel more safe not imagining a better life for myself. So I just naturally stopped dreaming about a better life. Stopped making goals. I don't know if I'll ever be able to start thinking that way again. All I do now is survive and live with what's placed in front of me. Maybe the rest of the world would look at a life like mine and say, "Alas, what a waste...", but for me, I find joy in each moment and in the in-between spaces of moments... Why aspire? Why?

Another thing I feel bad about is that mom never had an obituary published. Not even a paragraph announcing her passing. I wrote up a lengthy obituary for he and showed it to my brother and he said, "Why bother?" I was the one that prepared her memorial celebration, and along with Billy pulled that event together. Thank goodness there was such a good turnout for her. She was the last great member of this family. My son is different. He'll have a funeral of global significance and hundreds will be moved and in attendance, so I'm glad he's picking up the ball of living a popular life. Even my dad had a good turnout at his funeral. I've let go of all the connections I've had to people over the years, except for my oldest best homeboys. They'll do something for me when I'm gone, and I do hope I go before any of the rest of them... which won't be for another 25 years tho, right??!! RIGHT!!! Okay I'm going to go meditate now and check in on my folks and grandparents and great-grandparents, ad infinitum...