There’s a photo I took of my son as a young kid, red sweater, red backdrop, laughing, framed on my living room console table. Last week I noticed a small sliver of yellow paper sticking out of where you put the photo in, so I opened it. Behind the photo was $50 and a post-it note from my mom that simply read “I love you son”.
My friend Jimmy flew to Oklahoma to join Nathan and I on the summer road trip to Colorado this year. It was kind of Amazing. Nathan was less of a son and more like “one of the guys” on this trip, despite his tempered pain of a kidney stone.
Nathan and I drove to Colorado to meet some friends and ski just west of Denver, CO. His first time to ski, I was truly impressed. Never had any trouble getting off the ski lift. Took a bit of a wipeout on a blue run, but he did a blue run on his first day ever to ski.
I was walking to school. The high school was about five to seven miles from my home but it was a beautiful spring Colorado morning and it felt like the only logical choice to do with my time. My car was broken down, somewhere unknown in Albuquerque, New Mexico with little hope to ever get it back. My mom was pissed off that I had lied to her about driving to Texas to see my ex (first) girlfriend who I was still trying to win back and who never failed to break my heart every time I made an effort. This time, it was her prom. She asked me to come to hers and despite my car breaking down in the middle of the New Mexico desert, I scraped my remaining money together to get a one-way bus ticket to still make the event. Right after the prom, the inevitable played it’s part and I was once again left heart broken, this time stuck in Plainview, Texas.
You have no idea what you are doing when you have a child. You learn and you grow and after you get the basic needs and care down you start to wonder what kind of person do you want to teach them to be, which in-turn shapes and defines the person you are. You take lessons from your own childhood and you correct or you amplify. You make mistakes, how you deal with those mistakes is more important than trying to be perfect.
2014, has been one of the best and worst years. I’ve lost too much family this year; I lost my mom. Life was so busy with work that I didn’t really have time to properly grieve and when I got the time, it hit pretty hard. I’m still very sad that she’s gone and at the same time I’m thankful that she knew what she meant to me, to all of us.
Saturday night, on May 10th at around 8pm, my sister Beth and I lost our mother Eleanor. She had been fighting cancer for the second time, this time it was too aggressive for her to overcome. I will miss her greatly and deeply saddened not to have had more time to say goodbye, but I am thankful her fight is over. I am thankful she knew she was loved. Rest in peace mom. I love you.
I wasn’t going to ever post this. I never wanted to remember her this way, and in general I don’t.