Healin' right along, if I do say so , myself. Maybe it's because she took her time in leaving. Maybe because we were all so lost in her going, and she was just so tired, and so very ready at last, and I could see it for what it was. Her time. Oh, I come, and I go, but by and large, I surprise myself, by how well I handle myself. So far, that is.

I fill my days keeping these old dogs of mine alive. Literally, putting Peggy Sue, the Boxer's ass in a sling after carrying her outside, so she can prance about with her two front good paws and stop to do her business & I can try to keep her from falling in it. On a good day it works. But, lately, she's getting sick in the yard, 2 days now. Let's not jump to any conclusions. She's always been a puker. Aw, but my good ol' Baby Girl is a-fading.

And Mom's Spitz-mix, Rex. There never was a better boy-so smart, so considerate...tumors affecting his breathing when he is excited...more & more as time goes on. My sisters concluded my mom's obit of survivors with..."and her beloved dog, Rex." I hope he comfortably lasts the month. As long as he does not get excited, his breathing does not seem labored.

And I come, and I go, and I have my moments, but overall, I think that I do pretty well.

I get uptight cleaning the floor. Always so much dog hair, and no matter how good a job I do, there is always something I miss. Bubba throws Pig Skins at them, wanting to treat them their last days, and what can I say? Pig Skins? ugh! and Milk Bones...he will wake them up to throw a Milk Bone their way, pleading spoiling them, as they "walk the green mile." So I clean the floor & it never stops & my nervous tension mounts...& I stop, crank up the A/C. sit in front of the fan, deep breathe, take a shower, back in front of the fan, watching the swirling dog hair that I missed, deep breathe, count inhale, exhale twice as long...wonder why I ever gave up a single glass of cold Chardonnay (9 1/2 yrs. now)...and grab a DVD and some Ben & Jerry's.

Always, Peggy is scooting herself around the floor (no rugs) following me, flirting with skin tears. I put her on a puppy pillow, on the bed-but, she never stays, as,she has to follow me. The other dogs, maybe, one or two, here or there, just to keep me humble. Thus the early surrender. Stay in 1 room with ice cream...

Remembering the time I was pushing mom in her wheelchair & she started singing that crazy old song from the Depression days...if every thing happens for a reason, then the reason my mom started singing that song that day, the reason it stuck so hard in my head, the reason it was even written at all was to remind folks (and that so includes me, you see), that you just can't sweat the small stuff & you have to enjoy today, make a deliberate choice to make the best of the here & now, because litterally, that's all you have got.

"Are You Having Any Fun?" (my mom sang)

"Are you having any fun?
What you getting out of living?
What good is what you got,
If you're not,
Having any fun?"

The song is longer than that. Some of the lyrics were not so kind to a sweet lady over 8 decades when she paid attention to them, but that first stanza remains a doozie. I keep trying to let it work for me. I did some research & found it was by the Hoosier Hotshots, but a friend made a CD for Mom & I'm pretty sure it was Old Blue Eyes & Dino kidding around on the mikes...or somebody in their league.

My mom knows I have been in sorrow for her long enough & she would want me to capture as much joy as possible from my remaining years. I "ain't gonna live forever..."

AH, but she was lonely, and doggone, if she did not make the best of it.

She had known rejection. Her entertainer charming ex husband had had many suspicious situations which in hindsight were all probably affairs that she had allowed him explain away. She had indeed, been crippled by rejection finally, and she had floundered a bit, then got her head about her, and came up swinging, with a dignity known to few.

She fought for her children to keep them fed,and warm, while her ex moved in her ex-best friend into their home, with out missing a beat, and remained drinking buddies with the judge who handled the divorce. Her settlement was shameful. But she survived them all.

Out of the 5 children that she had given him, only 2 remained at home. A boy & a girl in their mid-teens, eager to blame, eager to rebel, eager to forgive and make friends.

Her eldest daughter fled. Joined the service, came home for 2 weeks after basic, only to confirm her worst suspicions, then did not come back home for more than 2 years.

Her middle daughter had a new born daughter of her own in a marriage that was in trouble before it started.

Her eldest son, who had been drifting away from all of them all of his teenage years was working out his own troubled marriage in Arizona. So far away, it may as well have been Venus.

And basically, she was on her own. And she threw herself into her work. And she shied away from nothing. And worked hard, and worked many hours of over time, and quickly rose to be an executive secretary to one of the VP's of the company that ran the small town that kept their little berg alive.

Eventually, she met a kind man that walked her to her car every night when she got off work. She had been to college, but he had only finished the 6th grade, but felt he made up for any shortcomings in his gentleness and fidelity. He worked Security at the plant that ran the little town, had his GED, had fought & been injured in The Great War, and she felt they could make a new life together.

Funny thing, her second husband became one of her 1st husband's number one fans. Drinking in his bar, showing up @ clubs where the ex husband was entertaining, enjoying his charisma. If only he knew the nasty things they said of him behind his back. Liquor never brings out the best in anybody.

And it did not do so for her new husband either, who liked to sit in their garage and drink, and who quickly built a bar in his basement just like the ex husband's, so the kids could gather to drink there too, at his invitation.

And they were all lonely. All 4 of them. The entertainer consumed with guilt, the step mom, so insecure, jealous, and conniving.., never trusting her husband, even escorting him to the Men's Room when he was entertaining & waiting for him outside the door...shoo-ing away all of his friends, insisting to the entertainer that all of his friends had made passes at her, until it was just the two of them against the world.

And she put up with the new spouse's liquor. And the stupid remarks and insults. And she worked hard. She lived for her work until she finally retired. She had a good 10 yrs after retirement, then, her health began to fail. Her eldest daughter had come home just before that, but something between them had changed...they could not always talk closely as they did in the early years, and she was unsure why. and it was just all so confusing. and she was alone in a crowd.

One day, she woke up surrounded by old people. She had forgotten how she had gotten here. There were nice ladies who looked in on her & young girls took care of her, but again, it was all so confusing, and she was just so tired, she figured she'd figure it out later, after a nice, long nap. And another nap. Then another nap. Familiar faces visited. Sometimes, her daughters. Other times, she thought maybe her daughter's visited, but she could not be sure. Maybe her son and his wife were there on occasion. There were so many strangers. It was all so confusing. What do you do when you are alone in the dark? Some whistle. But she sang. She knew so many wonderful songs from the 23 yrs married to that entertainer (who told her she couldn't carry a tune in a bucket)...well, he wasn't around now, so she sang her heart out. Sometimes, when her eldest daughter was there, she'd give a "Rock n Roll!" rebel yell, trying to find that lost closeness between them.

"Sometimes they ask me to sing, and sometimes they ask me to stop," she once said...we never wanted her to stop. But she had to, I guess. She finally needed that long, last nap. Word has it, that should have put an end to her loneliness. And now, all four can forgive and forget and laugh at things life threw their way, way back when. And now, only the children are lonely.

An old Steve miller tune that won't leave my head, "Sister will do the best she can, when the mother is gone, but there's so many things the sister don't understand, Lord, Motherless children have a hard time when their mother is gone, Lord."

And It's all about me now. How I handle the pain, the loss, the loneliness. Granted she has actively been leaving me, little by little for nearly a decade, now. But she was always there in one sort of body, one kind of mind, some semblance of spirit...and now, there is nothing.

Memories, while they last. Of her face when she was young. Of her talking to me when she was so hurt & betrayed by my father & her best friend, she & I parked in a park by a stream, both of us crying in disbelief...see mommy getting out of the car, to hug this big Oak Tree, ""I come here to gather strength from hugging this big ol' tree Sometimes it just makes me feel stronger when I hug it & know all it has been through..."

My mom majored in English Lit. at Butler College. Like me, her first love, the written word.

And she was so beautiful.

And the last Friday in July, she slipped into a coma. And August 3, a week shy of her 83rd birthday, after I requested an increase in her Ativan through Hospice, she quietly died with my sister at her side. I had just left an hour and a half before, my day shift, begging her silently to die, reading aloud to her from a Reader's Digest Depression-Era story for almost 8 hours straight.

"Please Mommy, don't die when Jan comes. Go ahead and cross over now, and not when poor Jani comes back..." Mom came out of her Morphine earlier in the day & made eye contact w/Jan...and Mom looked so afraid...and Jan totally lost her cool.

There are days when I am a total loss. Days when I am a little better. Days when I am numb, robotic.

And the days, they fly by, and I don't know where they go. My heart aches all the time.

I often wish I had had children. But now I know, I I did O.K.- I will never have to put them through this Hell, and they will never have to become "Motherless Children" and spend days and nights reflecting on how they had let me down and how they should have lived their lives differently in order to please me more... All of my life it's been all I could do to take care of myself, kids were just not an option. I was never as brave as my mom, Mother of 5.

I could never do what she did. Keeping all of us out of jail, most of the time...Ah adventure! But she took ours in stride.

She & my ex hated one another at first sight & fought all the way back from the airport to our house when she flew out for wedding. She was such a wise woman. Later, she told me, that she thought that we had "just not lived together long enough." Which was true. He had only let his mask slip once in the 9 months we had lived together, and that was when he had had a fever, so I let it slide. Our wedding night, he turned into a mean stranger, and I became chattel, & my mom saw it coming.

Enough for now.

My 82 yr old neighbor delights in forwarding Obama bashing e-mails. I have come to deleting them w/out opening them most of the time. In my personal experience, I have found, that nothing sucks the love and laughter out of life quicker than politics, unless maybe, it is sour grapes politics. In the past, a glitch kept him from forwarding these juvenile Democrat-wide insults to our Methodist preacher. Somehow, he recently fixed that glitch, & sent on a really nasty one to Pastor Ed- one which really lit Ed's fire, & had Ed shoot off responses to everyone on the mailing list who attended our church. Ed said that "our words, too, could be taken out of context at any time, and as Christians-it was our job to go forth and love, and not entertain any type of hate mongering." Wow! I needed that! Lowell is a great neighbor-kind to me, and a good friend-but I just did not read his email any more. Which was a shame-as all of it was not political, but, as many titles were deceiving, I just ended up saying "what the hey!" & deleting them all...

Not everyone thinks the way that you do, sweet neighbor, and you are not going to change their minds w/racial slurs & hateful tirades. I have tried to give Rush Limbaugh a listen once or twice, but found the hate so obvious, that I could not stay in the same room. Life is too short. I could never be that crass or that cynical. Color me hopeful in a hopeless world. Color me, hopefully, kind.

And color me the polar opposite of the love of my life, Bubba. He is from a family of 6 boys. Mostly raised by his mom, as his dad was the town fallin'-down-drunk. His dad blamed his drinking on his WW II P.O.W. trauma, but it did not stop him from fathering the 6 boys & coming & going, as he pleased. Mom was just 15 when her soap opera started, and my 82 yr old neighbor tells me that her father, a mild mannered school teacher went looking for Papa Clyde with a shotgun.

Anyway-it was a tough life for Bubba & all the boys-more than I can imagine. Bubba, the eldest of the six, brags about skipping school and the fact the he has never read a book. Ever. Not Once. The school staff all knew his plight, and from what I can tell, just passed him along, through the grades, until he graduated, because that is pretty much what they did back then. He is smart, brilliant, funny, bright, literate, and he designed & built this house & detached and attached garage-all, with his own two hands. For all my reading experiences, I can't see my lasting 30 years on the line @ Cummins, & building my own residence on my own lil' green acre. He is in no way anything less than his own way a genius.

But yesterday, he learned that his brother lost a grand child in a car accident. A second grand child airlifted to a trauma hospital in Indianapolis. His brother's daughter had been driving. There is another child involved. I heard a waitress freaking out about the accident @ Applebee's before I knew Bubba's family had anything to do with anything. We do not know the condition of anyone else-the daughter, the other child, anyone else-who the waitress might have been talking about. She may be related-as I can find nothing in the local papers today. The whole accident may be far away from here-I dunno.

Here's the thing: Bubba is so mellow about this. Not calling his brother....not trying to find anything out. Not calling anybody. Waiting to be called, if he's called. Now this is a daughter from his brother's first wife...but...well...I guess I just don't get it, do I? If I were in Bubba's position, I'd be on my brother like stink on...garbage. But what do I know? I guess I do not know the meaning of mellow.

He says if his brother needs him, he will call him. Huh. I probably would not give him the option. Because guys have that thing about not asking for help, ya' know what I'm saying here? But that's what makes me, me, & Bubba, him.

3 of the 6 boys do not help Bubba with their mom @ all. This brother helps on occasion, and another one helps primarily because he is paid. Their mom's Alzheimer's is pretty much advanced & come sundown, the boys have a 50-50 chance or less of being recognized by her. It is far beyond awkward and uncomfortable. Somebody has to stay with her every night & some Saturday nights this brother does help...but Bubba is there every day, Fridays, Sundays & when called twice a day, many nights. Maybe that has something to do with it, I don't know. You know, I don't know anything.

I have been messing around with face book for almost a year now.I have embarrassed myself playing silly games & advertising it on my home page. I have found many old friends and lovers-it has been an exciting and embarrassing adventure-but I do not feel at home at all there. I cannot be myself there. I cannot be anything less than glib there, as that is all anyone really wants to see-a little bit of happy, happy, joy, joy, collect some "atta girls" and go on about their way...and well, my life just does not work that way.

My mom has Pneumonia again. It has been many months since she has eaten well, and as there has been no appreciable loss of weight, the staff has not seen the need to order an appetite stimulant. It's her "core strength" that worries me. Sure, she is still a largish woman, but she is more frail & weaker, now as her intake as been less & less as time has gone by. Past bouts with Pneumonia have worried me, but this one takes my breath away...she is fading, and I feel less sure of her bouncing back this time. You can't write about this stuff on face book.

My K-9 kids are all Senior Citizens, as well. No one on face book wants to read that your Boxer is losing control of her hind legs & that you have to carry her down the back porch and into the yard. It is not why they log on there. They want a quick laugh and then to go on with their lives-they do not really want the low down on your life-and who can blame them?

Why would your friends want to hear that your Boxer and your Spitz have both inspired the Veterinarian to give you the "knowing when to recognize the absence of quality in their life's" lecture? Or that the two are neck and neck in tumors and medications, and that all 3 dogs' medications put together ensure that this household will remain on antennae TV and dial up computer until further notice, beyond imagination? It's just not face book drivel.

So, it was long over due today, that I visit the VA to claim my right to take an anti-depressant. I have to see a shrink to do that. I thought I had just given myself the winter off & that, in and of itself was excuse enough. But the lady insisted I had taken an 11 month hiatus-since last June since I had checked in. Who knew? Time flies. Does not seem like it. I don't keep records-they do(however shaky).

My appointments slips showed my appointment for today-their computers showed my appointment for day after tomorrow. Since I made the trip, they fit me in w/a stranger, which is cool-the usual shrinks are practically strangers anyway, w/5 minute & 25 minute sessions that are over almost as soon as they begin, and spaced 6-8 weeks apart at a minimum. My next appointment is at the end of August-the fill in doc today could not have found me very depressed, although, she did advise a light for the winter (not for tanning, but for my "eyes") and she checked my thyroid, which I took for granted had been done with my past physicals (not).

Most of the time, I do not think that I am any more depressed than the next guy, but other times, I know better. And I do worry about the roller coaster sensations...and the hopelessness...the utter defeat-and so what? But later, I feel better about it all, make the best of things & get on with life-I mean what's the big deal? Don't we all go through this to one extent or another?

So, tomorrow, I meet my angel sister at the nursing home so we can check out Mom. This is enough to enter for today. I'm beat.