Pretty good chili, too. Trader Joe's vegetarian plus some zucchini I cooked up and threw in. With organic white corn chips and a frosty can of pepsi you could say my lunch was almost perfect. I say almost perfect because there isn't any sex after. Well, later. And maybe some mint-cookie Ben and Jerry's. And, Netflix tells me that I have more Season one of Monk waiting at home for me. That should be a great night. Do I need beer? No, I still have shitloads of booze and mixer left over from last weeks' kickass party.
So last night I went out to the old timey gangster bar near where I work and as I stood warming my hands at the fire I looked up at the giant photo of Al Capone and was comforted somehow. This place used to be a great hangout during the Prohibition, and it still has cheap fucking drinks and a good atmosphere. They have a cd jukebox with Ben Folds on it, for fuck's sake, how can they go wrong?
Some of the gals from work, a random boyfriend or two, and a friend of a friend showed up for drinks. I like a mellow time out and that was it. I was talking with the new girl about losing a parent, and she waxed on fairly heavily about how hard it would be to lose her mother because she's the best mom, so perfect, etc. - and I started thinking about how that has nothing to do with how much losing a parent hurts. I couldn't stand my mother and we fought constantly until almost the end of her life. She was the shittiest parent imaginable, and yet when she died I completely lost my shit for a long long time and still I miss her. And what I miss is not her potential for being a good mother, because I gave up on that particular wish when I was still in grade school. I knew better.
I believe that it really really sucks to lose a mom no matter how fucking horrendously she parented. I can imagine Christina Crawford had a hard time when her mother died, and can you imagine a worse parent than Mommy Dearest? If you never met my mother then probably not.
My mother's birthday would have been on the 23rd, so she's on my mind a bit more right now.
I lost a parent myself a long time ago. And he too was a dick, well he used to beat the crap out of us all for no reason. It was so bad that as a kid I used to pray for him to die.
ReplyDeleteIts strange as much as i hated his guts, I still miss him and think about him 15 years on. Even though he was such a bad parent you know you still love the person its strange.
The only thing I can really say is that it gets easier with time.
'some zucchini I cooked up and threw in.'
ReplyDeleteI must admit that the first time I read that my mind moved the 'up' and 'in' around.
FM: I can identify with your story - although my mom was less physical and more mental. I would not agree that it always gets better with time. It's been since 99 that she's been gone and it's still rough sometimes. *hugs*
ReplyDeleteDave: You're right. It reads much better your way. I'll change it immediately. ;)
Isn't it strange how our brain works.Even if you had a crappy childhood you can still miss your Mother. Despite all evidence to the contrary about their positive influence, it still trys so hard to forgive our parents..
ReplyDeletealmost as if it is white washing their litany of transgressions because it may taint or contaminate our own self image...
so just in case we have any of those dormant, inherited and learned behavioral predelictions lurking in our own attic, our brain starts sweeping.
I suppose that after hundreds of thousands of years of fine tuning and tweaking, our brains have figured out how to leave the shiny/happy files alone when it scrubs our browser.
This makes sense because harboring animosity eats away at your internal organs and makes us physically sick..especially when there is no fight or flight option and just the stress induced chemical imbalance terrorising your immune system.
We crave that sense of continuity and belonging because this world, as you are well aware, is not exactly set up to celebrate our existence...
unless you are a sociopath, in which case everyday is a combination of YOUR birthday/christmas/new year's eve.
xxoo
Oh Homey - I think you nailed it. Our bodies simply cannot hang onto such negative stuff in the long term or we suffer physically inside.
ReplyDeleteThe people who live into their 100's all say that they always moved on from the bad things that happened in their lives. I've always thought how amazing it must be to have that skill, even though as you say, it's probably a life-saving adaptation we've developed for a reason.
I think we *want* to remember our parents fondly because we are conditioned by society to love our Moms and look up to our Dads no matter what pieces of crap people they actually were.
What I feel most of the time when my mother appears in memory is a sense of anger that she let me down. I hope FM (BannedAccount from above) is correct and over time I'll let that go some more.
As always, thanks for commenting.