Little Children

I've often felt like I was having a Kate Winslet moment - you know the one - from the amazingly brilliant movie "Little Children" where she is sitting in the park - both pretending to watch her kids, pretending to read and not quite pretending to interract with the other mothers.

That scene is so brilliant because it is so true to life. I always am the Mom on the side, the one that forgot to bring a healthy and nutritous snack containing all of the essential food groups needed for healthy growing children. My kids don't want to wear the right clothes or say the right things - and damnit if I can make them. I figure part of growing kids with healthy self esteem and stong minds is allowing them the tenacity to make their own pig headed decisions. Whether I'm going to like it or not.

While Kate doesn't enjoy these other women - she might want them to like her - although doing anything about it would be against her nature. Their permapress coordinated outfits and soccer Mom hair isn't wrong it just isn't her. I understand this. If I am going to all the trouble to put on lipstick - it won't be to wear it to the park.

In this movie, we are given the horrifying news that her lover doesn't think that she's beautiful - he prefers his skinnier more polished working wife. Where, in reality, isn't Kate Winslet - normal sized girl - just beautiful? Wouldn't any of us give our left arm to be as beautiful as Kate? So, what does that say about how we feel about our own appearance every day? Do we imagine that the permapress soccer moms and their working counterparts are not only more together and on the ball than we are but that they are also better mothers and more beautiful than we are as well?

All of these questions came to me while I was sitting on a park bench yesterday. I was surrounded by gaggles of Moms watching even bigger gaggles of kids.

The Indian Moms all stick together and mutter in a language the rest of us can't understand. I don't want to think this but, I always imagine they are laughing at me or talking about me - the same as I imagine when I go to the nail salon and Amy the Vietnamese nail goddess smiles at me and laughs with the other nail goddesses. The Indian Moms always seem to have extra children more than they would normally be able to fit into the tiny townhouses on our street.

Then there are the baby sitters - who also tend to congregate together. These are the Moms so superior to you and me that they get to look after other people's kids and get paid for it. The have menus and activity plans. They walk every where (because they care for more than the legal number of kids and can't fit them all in a minivan) and are therefore far more fit and capable than I could ever be.

The other suburban Moms have been coming to the park at this time of day on this day for eons. Far longer than I who have only begun as unemployment dictated. And - by the way - I am far too disorganized to go anywhere everyday at a certain time. They are the ones who look pityingly in our direction as I failed to produce even a peice of gum for my kid who was both hungry and thirsty. My "we live 2 minutes from here - lets just go home" even got a little shake of the head from one of them.

But I kept thinking of Kate Winslet. Because in the movie she got the super cute guy (if only for a little while) and in real life she got nominated for an Oscar. Who will be laughing when that happens to me, I ask silently to the super competant Moms? Who will be laughing then?

You can't go home again

I went home today - to Stratford and it brought back all kinds of stuff. Stuff. Just stuff.
Back in the day - I left home immediately after high school to move to Toronto - I couldn't wait to get free. So much so that I graduated high school a year early. I can't say just what it was that pushed me out or enticed me away but there was something and it was urgent and important.
When I lived in Toronto I would come home on the train. As the train got closer and closer to Stratford - closer and closer to home - I would get more and more nervous. I would leave my seat and make my way to the train washroom and check my makeup - make sure that everything was just right. Toronto Sandra needed to cover up what needed to be covered up and fluff what needed fluffing. I always freaked out about my clothing and worried that I was dressed right - making sure that I looked my very best.
It wasn't that I was trying to impress anyone in particular - mostly I was just trying to make sure that I had all my chutzpah before I landed at home. I needed to be Toronto Sandra before I got there so I could hold it together. Stratford Sandra held nothing together.
Stratford Sandra was different than Toronto Sandra.
Stratford Sandra remembered the summer between grade 13 and University when I had an interview to work at Kmart. The lady that interviewed me actually told me that she couldn't hire me because I wouldn't fit into the uniform - which at that time was a horrid polyester overblouse with gabardine pants. Because of my gigantic girth I couldn't be a cashier at Kmart. There went my career plans.
Today - as I drove towards Stratford two decades later - I actually put on lipstick while drive 100km/h on the highway. And strangely it brought all that junk flooding back. I had that panic again today - that I'm not good enough - I'm too ugly - too fat - too stupid - MUST get out....must be Toronto Sandra because the uniform doesn't fit Stratford Sandra.
What would have happened if I'd stayed?
As I sat at the Erie Drive In waiting for my battered mushroom lunch I looked at the giant mouth breather amish-looking guy - waiting for his fish burger - and driving away in his big man pick up truck. I bet I could have gotten some guy like that to knock me up. I could have been his dutiful wife popping out babies and keeping a decent (although not likely clean!) home and making my family jams and preserves. We would have gone camping every summer and it would have been just what I wanted.
Or - conversely I could have been a great single mom - living in the city housing out by the old drive-in - watching as my kids ran shoeless across the parking lot towards the broken down playground. I could have whipped up nutrient rich meals with my cunning use of condensed milk, bologna and frozen veggies. I could be the teller with a heart of gold just working my ass off to make a living for my poor fatherless brood, hanging out at Classics on a Saturday night trying to find them another daddy.
Or I could have gone back home - taken that University degree that I never finished and got myself a good job as a paralegal. I could have scrimped and saved and bought myself a nice decent townhouse in the good part of town behind the new fire station. I would have tastefully decorated with a pleasant mixture of innovative paint techniques and figurines. On Saturday nights my old friend and I would sit with popcorn and big glasses of gin and tonic and watch sad girl movies sobbing out our eyes for the loves we never found and the boys that never felt us up.
But none of those things happened. None of those Sandras materialized. Not that I'm saying that Toronto Sandra is any great shake. She has her share of ups and downs and her life certainly never turned out like a plan or a novel that anyone would purposely make. She still makes the effort though to pretend to rise above the rats ass girl she left behind.
Stratford makes me slightly nuts. I'm a mix of emotions the whole time I'm there - full of memories and regrets and insecurities. I like to keep the visits short. Very short.

The ugly truth about dresses

The Christmas after I left University for the first time, and yes, I left 3 times, was one that just lately has come to make a lot of sense to me.
That year, I was working my very first full time job. I was rocking it working at Pennington's (a clothing store for fat ladies) in the Toronto Eaton Centre. Premier mall in the biggest city in all of Canada and I was selling mumus to all the best fat chicks in town. I was working my ass of for $278 every two weeks - and that's full time hours brothers and sisters - it was a LONG time ago. And I was only 20.
I had my own apartment - $275 a month - right beside the train tracks in one of the worst neighbourhoods in town. The entire apartment could fit inside my kitchen in my tiny townhouse now but I thought it was amazing.
Back to Christmas - I saved up and bought my mom a dress for Christmas. This was no small feat - finding a dress that would suit my Mom. My Mom had a weird body. She was big on top and also had a HUGE ass - the kind that we called a "shelf bum" - like you could sit trinkets and ornaments on to display them.... She also had a uniform that she rarely strayed from. She wore gabardine stretch pants in either brown, black or navy - a brightly coloured sleeveless shirt and a co-ordinating overblouse that covered her bum. We were all to check that the bum and gut were always covered over....
So, I thought I was stepping my mom out. My mom thought she had her own style - and in retrospect, although it horrified me - I guess she really did.
This dress I bought her was a two peice = short sleeved longish top and elastic waist A-line skirt. All in a tasteful black and white and green pattern that if I close my eyes I can still see although I find it quite impossible to describe without having it sound hideous.
My mom seemed happy enough when she opened it. I forced her to try it on because I wanted to see how wonderful it would look on her. Now, I had bought a size 28. For those of you not in the know, that's about as big as it got at the time - there was no where but smaller to go from there in the land of larges.
My mom tried it on and it didn't fit. The top was too small and the bottom wouldn't go around her.
I was sure that there was something wrong - I checked the tags - I kept saying that there must be some mistake.
And my mom broke down. She cried. I'm sure NOW that she was upset with herself - like I am when my "fat pants" turn out to be just "pants". But she started screaming... How could I do this to her. How could I ruin Christmas for her - for everyone. I am so selfish - everything has to be about Sandra. We all have to be impressed that Sandra can afford big gifts now that she has her big city job...how could I do this to her?
I spent Christmas day in my room. I couldn't even talk I was so ashamed. Why. What had I done this for? Why did I want to hurt her?
At one point during the day, my cousin Janice came up to my room - we're close now, we weren't then - and said to me that not only had I hurt my mother with my thoughtless gift, I had ruined christmas for her and everyone else.
My mom didn't speak to me for the rest of the day. I left the next morning for Toronto to be back to work on boxing day sales.
I took the dress with me. Turns out, it was a 22 mislabelled as a 28. I exchange it for the 28, mailed it to my mom and we never talked about that dress, that fight or that Christmas again.
I try not to think about that Christmas ever.
Christmas was my mom's favourite holiday. She spent 2 months preparing for it and a month cleaning up after it. Now that she's gone, I've tried to recreate the Christmas that she use to - but I just can't. Rick tells me every year that the Christmas I long for no longer exists. I almost think that it was the one horrific Christmas - the one that I inadvertently ruined by being an underacheiving over-acheiver that stops me from being able to.
I have this paralyzing fear that at any time as I try to make everyone love me (or at the very very least really like me) by giving anything and everything I've got to make sure that everyone is happy every minute of every day that at any second any one of them is going to turn to me and say "you ruined it all". And all I was trying to do was help.

Raised by Wolves

I don't know where my head is at lately. I swear I'm teetering on the precipise of manic depression. My highs are unreal and my lows are heartbreaking. And my blogging is like homework. I want to do it because I know I'm learning stuff - about me - about being a better writer - and about the people who read my blog and share their feedback (which by the way I so totally love - gobble it up like keg-a-beer as it were). But I just can't seem to find the balance to make the stuff I'm writing not sound like crap.

So lets see how this goes - lets choose a topic for the day. Hmmm. Let's choose family.

You know I have parents, who are dead. So needless to say I haven't seen a lot of them lately. I have a brother. He's an interesting one. But we are "estranged" - I just like that word because it sounds cool and kind of like we are in a french detective novel. How did that happen? That's a good story.

About 6 years ago my Dad got sick. His leg was so sore he could hardly walk. Turns out he had end stage lung cancer that had metasticized into his bones. At the time when the doctors gave him 6 months to live, he was living in Goderich, about a 3 hour drive from where I live. Since he couldn't drive, and needed to be closer to civilization, hospitals, etc. I convinced him to move to Stratford, into a ground floor apartment.

At this point, I had been driving from Ajax to Stratford (just 2 hours each way!) once or twice a week. I drove Dad to all his doctors appointments, did the banking, bought the groceries and took him for lunch every week - even to the nasty Chinese Buffet in Mitchell that had all you can eat liver and onions and Chinese food! I also ran all those pesky get drugs and oxygen errands! Little things. I couldn't handle the other bits and peices so I arranged for meals on wheels 3 times a week and set him up with someone to come and clean.

Dad didn't much like meals on wheels. He said everything was tasteless and white. He was right - it totally was. So, I would make him his faves - chilli or lasagne and freeze them in margarine containers (cause the man had a million - he never threw anything away). I would haul these to Stratford on that wendesday too - take the empties and refill the freezer. He ate those at night and on the other days. Lots of people who visited brought him food too - I had SO SO SO much support from my great extended family!

Meanwhile, back at the trailer park, my brother and his family had moved in to my Dad's house. Good that it wasn't sitting empty. And since they only had one car and my Dad's van couldn't be driven (oxyconton and driving don't mix my friends!) why wouldn't they use Dad's van too? It just made sense.

So, on we go with the illness - and my brother did visit Dad - I'll give him that much. Once every couple of weeks he'd try to haul dad out of the apartment in his wheelchair to church. Now, my Dad was NOT a churchgoing guy. He used to say that he went to the round church - so the devil couldn't corner him. Oh no, not when people asked him about church - he just used to say that all the time!!! But, my brother was really involved in the church - he was a lay minister at the correctional centre and big into the Dutch Christian Reform Church. Or was it the Baptist church that week? Maybe it was the Pentacostals. He was an equal opportunity religious freak.

Dad didn't like going to church. It made him angry for the whole week. But, since my Dad did think until the day he died that the sun shone out of my brother's ass and lit up the world, he went because it was his son!

Long story shorter - on the night my Dad is dying (which by the way was 6 months and 2 days after the doctors told him!) - we show up at the hospital and so do my brother and his wife. Sit up all night waiting for Dad to stop breathing. Seriously. Just the 4 of us sitting there in the most surreal horrific firghtening circumstance, waiting for my father to stop breathing. It was one of those awful awful things that you never would wish on your worst enemy. I literally sat there making deals with God - saying "please let this be the last one" and "no don't" "yes please just put him out of his misery - please just let it stop".

Morning rolls around and my Dad is still breathing when his fuckwit of a doctor shows up. Is there anything we can do I ask to help him go, well, frankly, faster - he seems to be suffering so much? Yes, the doctor says - you could just take away the oxygen mask. Take it off and he will die in minutes not hours. Will he be in pain? Will he suffer? No - he has medication for the pain and we won't stop it. So the four of us talk and basically the three of them say - whatever you want to do - like we are picking a restaurant for dinner or something. So, its my decision. My decision when Dad dies. And let me tell you, just because you can make decisions doesn't make you a bitch - it makes you decisive.

So yes. Lets do it. Lets help him go. I took off the mask. The nurse shut the ozygen off. And the room was silent with the exception of Dad's laboured breaths. My brother and sister in law said "okay well this could take a while, we're going to get some breakfast" and they left. They left us there. And it took about 3 minutes. My husband held my hand as I watched him stop breathing. There was no dramatic death rattle or last big gasp. He just stopped like the timer had literally ran out. And Wayne left me with him alone for 10 minutes while he went to find a nurse in the cursed understaffed hospital. And I sat with my dead father and screamed that silent scream in my head that you are sure that people can actually hear but they can't. I sat and just let the tears fall down my face without wiping them away. I couldn't function.

But, when everyone was back, I was okay. I made the calls. I made the arrangements. No funeral. Immediate cremation. He and I had talked about it many many times and even met with the funeral home. If people hadn't come to visit him when he was alive, he sure as hell didn't want them showing up when he was dead. Funny old fart.

We had a party at his apartment. And everyone ate my aunt's dainties (since it was days before Christmas) and laughed and, I hope, had a good time.

On Christmas day we always have a dinner with my big extended family. My brother didn't show or call. We waited for over an hour for him before eating. The next week we cleaned out the apartment. I kept the photos and let my brother and family and friends have everything else. I kept telling myself it was just stuff. Funny, now I think I should have fought for some of the stuff.

My brother got the house. And the van. Although my Dad did ask my brother to pay me $2000 for the van - he never did. I was the executor of the will. I got the bills and the debt. And an annuity of $4000 - so really - totally split down the middle......or not. Its just stuff, right?

I called them a few times during the year and always spoke to my sister in law - he never wanted to speak to me. But, in one loud horrible telephone fight my brother said I was a pushy domineering bitch who had to run everyones life and I ruined Dad's. Apparently I always have been. I forced Dad to move to a place that he hated. I treated him horribly. I hung up first.

When the ground thawed it was time to bury the cremains. I had the funeral home dig up my Mom's ashes and mix in my Dad's so that they would always be together. Sweet but also very financially practical (you know, if you are making plans of that nature...). My sisterinlaw wanted to know if there would be anyone speaking graveside. I said I didn't want to (frankly I just couldn't) but she and my brother could feel free - they brought a minister from their church.

We arrived on the day just close family - Dad's brother, his wife and his sister, close cousins, my Aunt, my husband and I - and no kids (hello - its a cemetary and my kids were 1 and 4). The minister spoke - can't remember what he said... My sister in law read 4 full pages of typed bible verse. We were all a little stunned by that and no one knew just what to say. She asked if anyone else would like to say anything and one of my Aunt Jean's (I have 4) spoke a few sentences about when they were kids.

Then it was my bother's turn. He talked of all the times that they had spent together driving back and forth to the doctor... and of how Dad had accepted his illness. He talked of the difficulty of providing him with his groceries and how hard it was for he and my sister in law to take care of Dad. He talked of how near the end of his life Dad had found Jesus Christ as his personal saviour and accepted that he would be with him in heaven.

I tell you what - I was gobsmacked. None of those things happened. Not once. My cousins and Aunts and Uncle all stood with their mouthes open. Afterwards at Tim Hortons (because where the hell else would we go after - really? Seriously?) they all said that they knew it had been me and not Craig. My response was this - we all need to believe what we need to believe to get ourselves by. My brother needs to believe that I am a bitch and that he is the great saviour son so that he can cope with his Dad being dead. I'm going to give him that one.

In the 6 years since I have tried to keep in touch - cards, emails, calls, never forgot a birthday.... And now that he and my sister in law are divorcing, I have heard from her that he truly hates me and never wants to see me again. Why? I don't know and I don't care. I have a relationship with the SIL and my neice and nephews and its all I am going to get I guess. My Dad would be super mad (and lets not even think how angry my Mom would be!) if he knew that we are "estranged" but hey, I did my best - I truly believe I did. And you have to believe what you have to believe to get you through stuff - right?

Funeral Pickles

About 17 years ago my Grandmother died. It wasn't any huge shock or great tragic event. She had been sick and old since I was born and it just seemed like she wasn't really "there" anyway.
Her name was Mary. When she was 16 she married my Grandfather Alvin. The two of them lived in a farmhouse in Embro, population 60. Six of those 60 people were her kids. Each and every one of them born in the stone farmhouse, just down the road from the volunteer firestation.
The first time my Mother met my father's parents (who were by any definition of the word "hicks") my Dad brought her to dinner in that farmhouse. Everything took place in the kitchen - the woodstove heated the whole house and cooked all the meals. Later, when they had tv, that would be in the kitchen as well. My mother met them in that kitchen.
My Dad, knowing my Mom was really nervous asked her what she though they were having for dinner - what could she smell? Well, my mother had no idea. Dad said, open the woodstove and check. No way was my mother brought up to open other people's ovens - but with Dad's family watching her - she really had no choice.
So as my mother told the story, she walked to the woodstove with everyone staring at her, opened it up and SCREAMED! Inside a wooden box lined with a towel were half a dozen live piglets! The sow had given birth that morning and they were keeping them in the woodstove because it was winter and no one wanted them to freeze. Of course they were. And dinner was sandwiches. It scared her to death. Actually, thinking about it now, its a wonder she ever at pork again!
Back to Grandma's funeral. My boyfriend, now my husband, and I drove to Stratford then followed my parents to Embro along the snowy back roads. This place is the bermuda triangle of the snowbelt and has some really wicked winter weather. Really bad. And, as we were driving our mustang to the funeral, we drove off of the road and into a ditch.
Because my parents were up ahead, of course they didn't see us get ditched. The just drove along on their merry way.
I suppose that I could have pushed the car, if I really wanted to, in my funeral suit and sensible pumps. But I didn't want to. So Wayne, in his funeral suit and dress shoes, got out and pushed us out of the ditch. We made the funeral in the nick of time although its not like she was going anywhere.
Six months later, at my Auntie Anna's funeral in Embro (my Dad's sister) we had more car troubles. At the burial at the cemetary in town (I know you are thinking 60 people? how could they need a cemetary? but they did!) my parent's locked their keys in their van. Of course everyone had already left by the time they figured it out and this was well before the time of cell phones. Eventually someone missed them and went back to help them out.
The point I'm trying to make is that in my family - the funeral itself is never the event. Its the coming and going that are the things you remember. The bright greenish blue sweet funeral pickles that the ladies of the legion make and serve at funerals. That's the memory maker!
A couple of years ago in a drunken diatribe I said to my friends - "when I go, you will all remember what a good person I was - what a great mom and an excellent friend. You're not going to sit around saying she kept the messiest house ever!" And shockingly one said - "Oh yes we will! We say that now!" I just hope that when my time does come someone goes into the ditch, locks their keys in the car and the guy that thinks I'm a terrible housekeeper chokes on a funeral pickle!

Easter Dinner

Eleven years ago on Easter Wayne and I took the obligatory road trip from our apartment in Toronto to Goderich where my parents were. The had moved from their house in the metropolis of Stratford to a mobile home in a trailer park outside of Goderich – which is actually crowned “Canada’s Prettiest Town”. My family had morphed into actual trailer trash!
Wayne and I slept in the tiny back bedroom that barely fit a double bed. It was right beside the somewhat stinky toilet. Whatever. They loved the place.
My family is not religious. Not in the least. I have often joked that Easter is the holiday where we celebrate the day that the Easter Bunny killed Jesus and then came back to life to curse the bunny by hiding all his eggs every year. I think I’m right.
My brother hadn’t come home for Easter that year. He and his wife were living in Alberta at the time while he explored his inner cattle rancher. They did call though during Easter dinner.
Now, my Mom, in her tradition as the world’s worst cook, had prepared a fiesta of ham, scalloped potatoes, mixed veg, cabbage salad and rolls. MMMMMMM. Okay, not really mmm but okay. She never really cared to try, God bless her.
Anyway, my brother called during dinner. We passed the phone around the table and everyone talked to Craig. It is my opinion that my parents sincerely believed that the sun shone out of my brother’s ass and lit up the world. Whatever.
My Mother inevitably started to cry. She missed having my brother around so much and it was especially hard at a holiday – any holiday. She hung up the phone, and came back to the table. She kept crying and we were all just trying to be supportive, “you’ll see him soon” “at least he’s doing something he loves!”
And then we all turn and look at Wayne. My husband is eating his dinner. Not saying a word. And he has two baby carrots – one shoved up each nostril. And he’s just eating his dinner. My Mother laughed and laughed and laughed. We all did. And Wayne just looked at us and said, “what?”

Its an especially happy story for me because it was the last time we spent with my Mom. Shortly after dinner, we left to head back to Toronto. We never saw her again. I’m glad we left her on an insane note. It just makes sense that way.

Just another Thursday

It was a Thursday like every other Thursday I guess. I had gone into work not very motivated to do anything. At that time I was working for an insurance company in the customer service department as middle management. At about 10 am I was feeling out of sorts and made up some excuse about not feeling well to use to cancel my dentist appointment that I didn't really feel like going to. At 11 I went to a meeting. I think it ended about noon.
When I returned to my desk, one of the service reps popped their head over the partition that separated our desks.

I remember exactly what she said. "Its a women's voice but she said to tell you its your Dad calling."

I took the call and heard my Dad's voice. He said, "Its your Mom. She's gone." And my natural response was "Gone where?" I seriously thought that she had finally left him. Good for her.

Before that second, that day my father had never called me. Ever. The extent of all of our phone calls had been very limited. If my Dad answered the phone I would say "Is Mom there?" and he would call her. If she had to walk far to get to the phone, he would then say one of two things "what's the weather like there?" or "How much is gas today?"

But today he called and said my Mom was dead. I didn't ask for details. He passed the phone to my Mom's best friend and neigbour, Anne. She asked if she should call anyone else and I said that NO, I would call everyone and I would be there as soon as I could.

The details of the rest of the day I can recall like it happened yesterday. I called my cousins who one by one made the one hour journey to my parent's place. I called my husband who met me at home and we made the three and a half hour trip from Toronto. I called my brother who was strangely out wrangling cattle so I had to tell my sister in law.

I muddled through the hundred or so phone calls that had to be made. Each time I told some one that she was dead and heard their condolences and their shock, I barely believed what I was saying. "Hi, its Sandra calling - Darlene's daugher. I'm sorry to have to tell you this but my Mom died today. Yes, it is quite a shock. It was very sudden. We think it was likely her heart."

I handled the transportation for my brother from BC and my other family from Alberta and organized all the arrangements: private family viewing (which I did not attend), cremation and memorial service. I cleaned the house and fed everyone and made it through the five days of post death crap. I cried like I would never stop. But I am the person who you want to go to in a crisis - I am a star under pressure.

Before that day, my Mom and I used to talk every single day. I left home at 17 for University and work and we were never as close as when we were far far away. She used to keep a pen and paper near the phone and she would write down things to tell me when I called.

People used to say how alike we were. How we looked alike and talked alike - which is odd since I'm adopted. But if I showed you a picture of us, you'd say we look just alike. No one told me what a HUGE hole in my day that one missing phone call would leave.

From the time that my parents brought me home when I was 15 days old I was the most wanted kid ever. According to my mother they brought me out of the adoption office and she immediately handed me over to my grandmother - panicking "I don't know what to do with her - you take her!" My mother had only had 2 days notice that she was getting a newborn - I can cut her some slack.

My birth mother (if that's what we're calling her) was only 13 when I was born. I doubt very much that I was the product of promiscuous teen sex. Not many 13 year olds in rural Ontario lived the 60's life of free love. I've often speculate that I was the product of rape or incest but actually it never mattered - it was just a way to get me to my real Mom.

My Mother hadn't been healthy for years. Lets face it, my mother could never have kids. If we go all the way back to when I was 11 - my Mother took me with her to Weight Watchers for the very first time (some time later I will tell you of my ongoing hell of the continuous revolving door relationship with the weight loss industry). I started weighing 135 pounds and I ended up weighing 165. Obviously not a plan for growing children. But my mother gained weight too. We switched to TOPS (that's taking off pounds sensibly) and the same happened there - we both gained more.

She had her first heart attack at 38. I remember sitting in the hospital out of my mind with worry (my grandmother had died of multiple heart attacks and I had just lost my grandfather 6 months before - I was freaked out by illness). In the memory in my head, my Dad isn't there. He was likely home drunk or upset - my memory can't decide. I remember the doctor telling her that she should stop smoking and it would be better to weigh 350 pounds than to smoke another cigarette. She tried her level best to attain that weight and never did ever smoke again.

She was also diagnosed with diabetes right then. No drugs - straight to insulin. I was diagnosed several years later. But wait - didn't I say I was adopted? Yes - its just one of those divine ironies of our relationship. It turns out that my birth mother was diabetic and so was her mother who had died from complications of diabetes (so my birth mom was motherless at 13). Non-hereditary hereditary diabetes was just a coincidence really.

My mother was very funny. She had a lot of friends, especially from those groups of weight loss chicks. She always drove a bunch of people every where they went. Of course all outings centred on food. It was always fun to be with Darlene! She had a great sense of humour, a good hearty laugh and just loved to be around people.

But she wasn't all sunshine. She had been on "nerve pills" to calm her frazzled nerves since she was 16 so basically had been doped up on valium for 40 years. She never seemed dazed but knowing what I know now - she must have been in a little bit of a fog all the time.

She was the world's most unimaginative cook - hated it and was bad at it. Our family tells stories often of her legendary "thickened hamburger". It is basically hamburger, salt, pepper, starch and water and you will have to trust me that you DON'T want the recipe!

She did some funny stuff. She would call me and tell me about jobs posted in the newspaper to work in the restaurant owned by a guy I had a crush on for years. She always assumed that if I would just move back home, work at the restaurant that he would magically fall in love with me and all would be wonderful. She never did know that I'd been sleeping with him on the sly for years.

When I was little, she used to make us wear nasty matching outfits. I have photos (and NO I will not share them) of the two of us in baby blue checked flare leg polyester pants, matching blue patterned shirts with BIG WIDE collars and baby blue sleeveless vest that had giant swans on them. We were a styling Mother and daughter team.

She carried herself well for a 300 pound plus woman. She had a HUGE ass. We called it her "shelf bum". We would joke that she could set little trinkets and collectables on it and display them. She wore two uniforms. One - plain polyester pants with a sweatshirt that had some kind of kitty cat or sparkly thing on it - sometimes it had a turtleneck under it and sometimes not. And two - the same plain polyester pants with a shell (sleeveless tshirt to you and I) and a loud colourful polyester overblouse. This last outfit was accompanied by matching jewellery - earrings and necklaces - equally loud. This is likely where I developed my devotion to the big jewellery that matches each of MY outfits.

She was sometimes mean - just Mom mean - but mean. She would let me wear the same outfit time after time and then say "you're not wearing that, are you? That always makes you look fat."

And she was hysterically funny. As I was going through the planning of the funeral, my aunts, my mother's friends, cousins - just everyone called me. The conversation went something like this:

I don't want to upset you dear (dear is optional) but your Mother
always said that she didn't want pallbearers at her funeral.
Yes I know, she didn't want people sitting around after the funeral
talking about how heavy the coffin was.
That's right - and she doesn't want to go to Joe's Funeral Parlour
(names changed to protect the innocent) either.
Yes - I know - she went to school with Mrs. Joe and she doesn't want
her to see her in her underwear.....

She was the master of organization. The keeper of lists - in shorthand. The holder together of the family and friends. She was my family's glue.

Once she was gone - we lost our glue. I lost my glue. And a lot of crap happened that she would not have liked.

My Dad fought with her brother a week after the funeral. We had cremated her and buried her above her parents. Then we added a block to the headstone thus creating a family plot. Her brother didn't like that. My Dad told him to fuck off. It was the first and last time he ever told anyone to fuck off. We haven't seen my Uncle since. He didn't even send a card when my Dad died.

There were divorces, weddings and births that she missed. That would have pissed her right off. She wanted to have grandkids more than anything.

For weeks after her death, while sitting at home or at work, I would pick up the phone, dial her number and stop myself part way through. It was almost as if my head didn't want know she wasn't there. And of course, at that point I would burst into tears. Even now 11 years later I am a blubbering puke everytime a Mom dies. Finding Nemo. What dreams may come. Pretty in Pink. (Okay, well the Mom didn't die in that one but she wasn't THERE. )

I haven't yet told you the story of how she died. My father told it about 100 times at the lunch after the memorial service (and there were no pallbearers btw). It goes something like this (although it is better in my dad's voice):

Darlene went into the bathroom right as Price is Right
started. I was sitting in my chair and fell asleep you know.
Next thing, I wake up and hear the end theme music for Price is
Right. I think, Darlene'sbeen in there a long time. I
should take her a magazine. So, I
picked up the flyers and I took
them to her - and there she was,
dead. On the toilet. So I
threw a towel over her and
called 911.

My mother would have been suitably horrifed. First because she died on the toilet and ick - who wants to do that (it was sudden cardiac death - her weight and her heart and her diabetes did eventually get her). Secondly that my Dad told the story to EVERYONE he met, for years and years.

I've often wondered if my Mom knew she was going to die. The night before she did die, we had talked on the phone (of course) and she had give me this big speech about how she had always done exactly what she pleased and had never lived her life wrapped in cotton wool because of her health. Weird at the time but after words appropriate. In the weeks before she died, she had made me set up pre authorized payment for all of her and Dad's bills and given me her sewing machine for no reason. BUT, the reason that I think she didn't know, was that there was one peice of eldeberry pie left and she loved eldeberry pie - she never would have left it behind.

My kids are at a funny age now. They've seen pictures of my Mom -and they will say things like "Is that your Mom? She's dead." Very blunt and to the point. When they ask me how she died, I tell them she died from a broken heart. Its true kind of because I know that on that normal Thurday my heart broke too.