Ma… – Thoughts and Ponderances

Every Ma-Holiday I flip through my pictures of her, trying to find one that captures my moment in time, how I am feeling, what I miss about her. I flipped to this picture today and it tore me in two. So odd, a picture of Ma’s back. This was at the Prince, WV train station circa 2008, Mander and I were heading back to NY from WV and my parents and Al were seeing us off. The thing about this picture…I used to walk up behind Ma and drape my arms over her shoulders (easy feat as she was a bit shorter than me), wrap my arms around her and clasp my hands in front of her. I’d giver her a squeeze and she would reach a hand up and put it on my hands, over her heart. I hugged Ma scores of times that way. Scores. I’d give almost anything to hug her that way again. Stupid diabetes.

This is the picture of her from the front that day. Another oddity as during those years there are few photos of her smiling. Fleece jacket, tshirt…her regular wardrobe. She was actually a funny woman.

Funny without realizing it. I often times would step in (while in NY and she in WV) and call a doctor or a business who had brought about her rage to smooth things over or to go off on them myself. There was one time when she called me as I sat at my desk in 3 Park Ave. She was furious and I needed to call “these people” and tell them what she was too mad to tell them. She then informed me that she told them I was a lawyer for HIPPA. Um…Ma?

Or there is my fave story from my college years when I told her I wanted to be a thespian and she told me to hold off, my luck with men would get better.

This is one of my favorite pictures of me and my parents. Parental Units. If you look at the glass in the door behind Ma, you will see Christmas stickons on the window, from Christmas – you can see that this is probably not Christmas weather. Those stickons remain on that door to this day. They remind me of Ma when I see them. Someone once suggested to Daddy that he remove them. That person almost got an ass whipping.

In her last years, this is how you would see her – recliner with my Liddle Brudder in her lap. They were a pair.

Another one of my favorites is this one. This was the last time Ma got the turkey drunk for Thanksgiving. I would do it the next year and the following she was gone. You never know when something will be the “last”. One thing I wish – I wish that I had more photos of video of Ma (and not just at the end but earlier years when she was happy and not sick). Cherish the moments people. Even the outrageously silly ones like this.

And the last one. Because of Ma, I have a love of TV shows and all things social. This picture was from one of her visits to NY. I found out that just down the road they were filming Extreme Home Makeover and she LOVED that show. No brainer. I explained to Ma that it was highly unlikely that we would see the team and if we did it would be from a distance. She accepted that challenge. As we watched Paige from the show walk within earshot, Ma screams “Paige, how about taking a picture with a grandma that drove from WV to see you??!” She stopped, turned around and said, “sure”.