It’s been a very long time since I last wrote. I have to thank my husband, Chris and my son, Garrett for encouraging me to start writing here again.
As usual, I’m sticking with my music-inspired titles – this time I’m borrowing Keane’s “Everybody’s Changing.” It’s an apt title as a LOT has happened since my last post, which was literally a couple days pre-pandemic shutdown when I ran the Los Angeles Marathon in March 2020. This was the last big city marathon that hadn’t been canceled yet and we all dealt with the shutdown globally, collectively, and in our own personal situations. This won’t be a pandemic post.
Since then, I have run more half marathons, 5Ks, 10Ks and both the New York City and Boston Marathons respectively. I will post separate blogs about those races later, which were good, bad and ugly all at once. This won’t be a race post.
The world around me is changing again and I’m terrified for my kids and me and all of us on so many levels. This won’t be a political post.
My kids are all in college now. They’re doing great and starting to find their own ways in the world and I’m a mother who is performing the tight-rope balance of letting them go, but still being a hand to hold if they need it. This won’t be a kid post.
I’m getting older and my body is changing and my health and type 1 diabetes needs are changing too. Although this is a type 1 diabetic blog, this won’t be a type 1 diabetes post either.
This post is about my mom.
My world changed irrevocably this past year and I don’t feel the same, as the song goes. I don’t think I ever will either, to be honest. My mom passed away on September 16, 2024 and time just sort of stopped for me too then. She was diagnosed a mere ten months prior with esophageal cancer. She did not want a big social media post, so my family and I have largely honored that. I am an only child, so I need to write her obituary, which is daunting, to say the least. It’s such a bizarre and insurmountable task to summarize a person’s life, particularly, a parent’s life. I don’t want to dwell on how awful her cancer or the treatments that never promised a cure, only the hope of more time, were. That’s not how I want to remember her or how I want her to be remembered. I was there as were my aunt and uncle and my two cousins. All three of my kids got to talk to her the night prior.
Grief is hard. There is a lot to process when you lose someone. Navigating grief is different for everyone. Everyone goes through it in their own way and at their own time. There are so many practical things that need taken care of when someone passes away. You hate doing all of it and it’s unreal how many obstacles you run into along that path. I truly don’t know how most people do this. It’s confusing and it’s expensive and it is so time consuming. What’s worse is that you are reminded every step of the way that your mom has died. Every phone call you make. Every letter or email you send or respond to in order to deal with finalizing a person’s life is retelling the story that your mother has passed away and that you will never see or talk to her again. Banks, credit cards, insurance companies of all shapes an sizes demand paperwork and explanations of things you don’t often have or know how to get. It’s agonizing. And you just don’t have time to grieve. So you cry in the shower or burst into tears when you hear a song that reminds you of her or when a commercial or show hits you just the right or wrong way. This was the first birthday I have ever had in my entire life that my mom didn’t call me at 10:35 a.m.(Eastern). It was the first Thanksgiving without her. The first Christmas. The first New Year. The first Mother’s Day yet to come. All these firsts are horrible. People I have told are very nice and have been sympathetic, but the world moves on. How can that be? How can the world just keep spinning and people keep going about their daily lives when my mom is no longer here? I’m slowly dealing with this and it’s not easy. Everybody’s changing and I don’t feel the same.
My mom, Linda Rose, was fun and funny. She was someone who took care of others. She was a homebody. She was an adventurer. Most of all, she was always there – for me, for my kids, for her family, for her friends and even for perfect strangers. I’m struggling to find words to describe my mom and who she was and most importantly, what she meant to me.
She was fun and funny. My mom loved to laugh. She and I shared quite a few jokes just between us or old family things that would crack us up. Ask anyone in my family to tell you the chocolate ice cream joke and you’ll get a hearty laugh (and you’ll also get the joke too!) I took my mom to Las Vegas one year and we got to see Brad Garrett at his club in the MGM Grand on a night he wasn’t scheduled to be there – we lucked out for sure and it was so much fun. We laughed ourselves silly. I have tons of inside stories that still make me laugh to this day. Those I won’t tell to the world, but they bring a smile to my face each time I remember them. We even have our own “Frag-ee-lay” story.
She was an adventurer. She liked to dance and didn’t get to do it as often as she should have. She could cut a mean jitterbug with the best of them. My mom introduced me to horseback riding when I was 2 years old. Granted, I broke my wrist, but I still love horses and she and I went riding every week at a place nearby for several years. She indulged all my wild musical tastes and even went with me to a couple Judas Priest concerts back in the day when no one would go with me. She heard me play Rick Wakeman’s “Journey to the Center of the Earth” so many times one summer that she finally had me make a cassette of it for her so she could listen to it at work. She loved Elvis and Simon and Garfunkel and Paul Anka. I grew up listening to her Neil Diamond records and I was able to take her to see him during his 40th Anniversary of his Hot August Night show at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. She was an extra in “Slap Shot” – the Paul Newman movie was filmed not far from where we lived in Pennsylvania. “Bohemian Rhapsody” was her most recent favorite movie and my kids laughed as she always seemed to be watching it. She and I flew, when I was 6 months old, on the same flight with Cesar Romero and Lynda Day George- apparently I was a hit with both. She talked to everyone and there are many more stories like that. My mom was an avid reader – mostly mysteries. I got my love of books from her, which is true gift..
Most of all, my mom was always there. I think this describes her more than anything else. She was always there. For anyone and everyone. For so many years it was just the two of us. My parents divorced when I was 10. I was also diagnosed with type 1 diabetes that same year (on my birthday, no less). It was a lot of change for me, but it was a huge life change for my mom as well. Probably more so for her than for me and I never really thought about that. She did her best to shelter me from those things. She just got on with it and made sure I was okay. My mother and I moved from Cleveland, Ohio back to Pennsylvania where she was from and where my grandparents still lived. Life changed then too – moving from a suburb of a big mid-western city to a very small town in Central Pennsylvania. My mom worked at the elementary school and stayed working there until she retired when I gave birth to twins in 2005. She came out to California to stay for awhile to help me with my 2-year-old son and newborn twins. She loved being a grandmother and, quite honestly, never thought she would be one as I was pretty adamant my whole life about not having kids. Again, things change and when I decided I wanted to be a mother after all, she was thrilled. She took care of me until the day she died. She always watched over me and helped if she could if I needed anything. She took care of my kids too. She took care of my grandmother. She looked out for everyone. She offered rides, ran errands, and always called to check on people. My mom gave up a lot for me. She gave up a lot for a lot of people.
My mom was the person we should all strive to be. I know I will never be as good as she was, but I can try. I’m struggling to realize she’s really gone. Everybody’s Changing and I don’t feel the same. I love you, mom and I miss you more than words will ever say.
