My Trip Through the Twilight Zone

My whole trip to Oklahoma was weird. Aside from it being for a sucky reason lots of little things happened that I didn't see coming. And here I shall detail them. This post might bore the shit out of anyone who's reading but maybe if I write about them they won't seem so weird to me anymore. Maybe I'm weird and these happenings were normal. Maybe I should learn to stop rambling!!!

I learned where my evil streak comes from. I thought it was from my Dad's side of the family but it's definitely from my Mom. My Mom is the best person I know. My parents divorced when I was 13-ish and my Mom worked at least 2 sometimes 3 jobs to keep everything afloat. (this was something she did before the divorce also since my Dad had a hard time keeping a job. he just didn't like working for someone else. much better to be your own boss and be fucking broke and make your nice wife work her ass off. oh wait. i digress) After the divorce my Dad moved away and ended up living about 3.5 hours from where my Mom is. My Grandma also lived in the same town as Mom. None of Grandma's kids lived near here, my Dad was the closest and everyone else lives in California. So my Mom has been taking care of Grandma (her ex mother in law) for about the last 15 years. Missing work to take her to the doctor, held her hand while she went through chemo, etc. Because Grandma's kids were just too busy. And Mom loved Grandma. But still, it pissed me off because I felt like my aunt and uncles and dad should have stepped up and done some of that stuff.

About 3 weeks ago Mom called Dad to tell him how sick Grandma was and I guess she yelled at him about not coming to see her. So he hung up on her. She tried calling back multiple times to apologize and discuss some of Grandma's business with him but he kept hanging up on her. (i think he welcomed her yelling so he could use it as an excuse to not talk to her about grandma) Mom and I are at the funeral home on Friday night visiting Grandma one last time and I know it's getting close to the time that my Dad is gonna be in town and I feel it would be best if we didn't all meet. But Mom's having a hard time leaving and next thing I know there's Dad and my Stepmom. I give them hugs, they give Mom hugs. They are all three standing at the coffin hugging and I'm thinking "Whew. This is going much better than I'd thought. Almost good in fact." And of course it then turns into a Jerry Springer outtake.

Mom looks at Dad and she's crying and starts saying something about how she tried to tell him Grandma was sick but he wouldn't listen. I kinda tapped her on the back and asked her to not do this here. And she was silenced for a moment. Then she took the arm that was wrapped around Dad and started smacking him with it while hysterically telling him that she told him so and why did he keep hanging up on her and why didn't he come help her because there were so many things to do to help Grandma that she couldn't do alone. And my Dad ran from the building. And after crawling out from under the plant where I was hiding I escorted Mom out. She tried to apologize to Dad but he just yelled and told her he knew she wasn't sorry. This isn't the part where I learned where my evil came from. It was just one of those weird things I never expected to be witness to.

On the ride home I told Mom I understood how she felt but I didn't think the conversation happened in the most appropriate place.
Mom: Well I tried to tell all her kids how sick she was and nobody listened.

Chickie: Look Mom. Dad just walked through the door and sees his Mother in a casket. He now knows she was sick. So sick it killed her. I don't think you need to reinforce the point.

Mom: Okay. I won't talk to her kids about it anymore. But I needed to say it. I'm sure that Grandma wouldn't care. Her feelings were so hurt that none of her kids would come visit. It was the truth.

5 minutes later...

Mom (with tiny smile on her face): If I could do it all over again I'd still tell your Dad that. I hope he cries his eyes out even harder now.

Me (thinking to myself) Holy shit. I see where I get my vengeful streak. I'll have to tell Sweety I discovered it.

Later after the funeral Dad thanked Mom for everything she did and he accepted her apology.

I completely think my Mom was justified in her feelings. My Grandma's daughter J, takes a cruise every fall, a big vacation in the spring and lives in a million dollar house. But can't find the time to get to OK at least once a year.

And about aunt J. I almost poked her eyes out with my thumb. She didn't get a rental car while she was in OK so someone had to tote her abrasive self everywhere. I'd given Grandma some pearl earrings for Christmas and I said I would rather have her buried in them instead of me getting them. So I took J to Wallyworld to look for a pearl necklace. I'm walking over to the jewelry counter and they have one pearl strand for $35. I think that's reasonable, I'm glad we found something that would work. Not aunt J. It costs tooooo much. She walks over to the fucking costume jewelry aisle and picks out some fake pearls made by Jordache for $5.97. And thinks they will work just fine. At first I thought she was joking. (for the record, i have nothing against costume jewelry. i wear it. i just thought if you were buying something to bury your mother in you'd go a little nicer.) I wanted to offer to buy the $35 necklace but I knew it would cause problems so I kept my yap shut.

Aunt J also seemed to think that my sister and I were looking to raid Grandma's vast fortune that she left behind (insert sarcasm here). Whenever my sister used the bathroom J would be hanging around in Grandma's room (the bathroom is connected to it. she was in one of those old people apartments) and would leave after my sister left the bathroom. Every time anyone would go to the bathroom she'd station herself in Grandma's room to protect her sweaters I guess. Mom mentioned to her that Grandma thought she'd lost $40 a couple of weeks ago and whenever Mom was boxing stuff up aunt J was right at her fucking heels seeing if she'd found any money. From my best guess Grandma had about $3000 when she died. And it's being split amongst 4 kids. Gee, now they can all take that dream vacation they'd been wanting. And maybe I'm in the wrong, but I kinda thought they should have offered it to my Mom. My Grandma told her one day that she (mom) shouldn't be there, that her daughter (J) should be doing the things that Mom was doing. My Mom ran herself ragged making sure Grandma was okay. Whenever she had a doctors visit mom was the one to take her, grandma had breast cancer a few years ago and mom was the one to help her with everything, after she couldn't drive mom was the one to take her anywhere she needed to go. (this usually meant taking a day off work without pay) The last few weeks Grandma was forgetting to eat and once she accidentally overdosed on her meds. She was getting really confused. One day Mom made 7 trips to her house because Grandma wanted to see her. Mom lives about 15 miles away and gets by on a shoestring budget so I know it was costing her an arm and a leg just in gas.

I'd call Grandma pretty often and go see her in the summer since I moved down here but I still feel really bad that I didn't make it to OK before she died. She knew that we were coming to visit in June and Mom said she asked all the time when in June was it going to be. Every time I talked to her she'd ask how my new dog was doing (tiny dog Oy). Grandma used to be the owner of Chi Chi (who lived with me and my sister now) and she loved her dog. She told me she couldn't wait to meet mine and that she just knew that Oy makes me as happy as Chi Chi made her. Grandma was REALLY hard of hearing so when I'd call I knew to yell everything slowly and to cup the phone receiver in my hand. For some reason her kids couldn't master that so their excuse for not talking to Grandma very much was that she just couldn't hear them. What the fuck ever.

About the same time I landed in OK my former sister-in-law, Red moved back. With my wonderful nephew (J), my genius niece (L), and my newly hatched nephew (Fattie). So I got to see all them while I was down. It was nice. It seems that my exhusband is really regretting divorcing me cause I also got to have 3 messages relayed to me that he still loves me. Oh goody. (My heart is infused with a warm tingly feeling, no wait, that's just my heart doing it's job pumping blood.) He called my Mom to offer his condolences and told her he loved me and she told him I was very happy now, thank you. I answered the phone and I had an odd feeling that it was him. I haven't spoken to him in about 5 years. Since before our divorce. And then the other night some guy that we both went to school with was killed and he bugged Red to make sure and call me so I'd know. Gimme a break. My Mom had already called me with the news. I'm going to tell Red it's okay if she doesn't relay any messages or news from him. I'd never said anything before because he wasn't doing it so much but I guess having his sister living with him for now gives him easier access to talk about me. And it probably doesn't help that Red says my nephew J talks about me a lot too. J by the way, is the most great kid. He was the first baby I knew. I used to take him all kinds of places. He came to Florida to visit in Dec. 2003 and it was an awesome trip. He was calling Sweety "uncle" after a couple of days. I can't wait to go see all the kids this summer and have some time to do things with them.

On Sunday we (me, my sister and her fiance) all go to church with my Mom. She goes to a tiny country church and there were maybe 7 other people there. The pastor starts off by saying "now, i don't have anything against catholics. some of my best friends have been catholics. i just wanted to be clear on that". I'm wondering what is the old man who is obviously in the midst of dementia fixing to talk about and he commences to give a sermon about how the Vatican is evil and the next antiChrist is coming from the Vatican. I'm just thinking "am i really hearing this?" I told my sister that you just have to know when he wrote the sermon he had no idea there were going to be guests at the service. My sister's fiance is Catholic and he told her later the sermon really made him mad but he didn't say anything because he didn't want to disrespect my Mom. Sweety was raised Catholic. I told Mom I was going to fly home and put a stake in his heart just in case he was the devil. She didn't think that was funny. It was the perfect church service to end a strange week for me.

I'm really going to go speed tidy the house now. I think the main reason I'd rather Sweety didn't read my blog is that he can see that I've really just been typing shit when I should be being productive.