Mom passed away 4

We stopped off at the bottle shop to pick me up some whiskey. The open sign was not on, but the guy was in there reading the paper. It was raining pretty heavily.

I went inside, told him that his sign wasn’t on, and started looking around the shelves. He said the power had gone off just a moment before and that must have been what turned the sign off. I eyeballed a bottle of Knob Creek briefly on the recommendation of a friend, but it was $10 more than the adjacent fifth of Maker’s and not knowing ahead of time whether it was $10 better, I played it safe.

I paid, got in the car. My brother in law and sister were in the front seat, him at the wheel, and we pulled back onto the two lane county road. We were going along well, but my sister had to pull over to throw up. She apologized between heaves, but of course there was nothing to apologize for.

Eventually we made the trip through the back woods from my sister’s house to my mom’s. My sister needed to lie down, so she did. I went in to talk to her. She said that she had always been irritated with mom for being selfish, but that toward the end of her life she had really tried to make changes. I am unfamiliar with that facet of my mom, as she always treated me like a prince.

I guess there really is a big difference in the way a mom treats a daughter and a son, at least in my case.

We’ve now been through a lot of decision making. What should we dress her in? What jewelry should she wear, and how will we get it off of her after the service? The funeral home says she needs underclothes, so we’ve sent them along via my brother in law. Are these pearls real or fake? What is involved in an Estate sale? Who will take mom’s cat, Punkin? Should my aunt take the dining room table? What will we do with all this christmas china? And on and on…

We are all issuing convictionless mandates: “We need to just get a box and put all these pictures in it.”, or “You’ve got to drive, I don’t know if I can handle it”, or “Well I have to write what I am going to say at the service.”

My aunt just called back to me that the guy running the service has cut her speaking time down to 6 minutes. She feels cramped, she has 35 years of stuff to say.

I’m trying to decide if I should shave my beard or not. It’s itchy and spring is coming. Should I play a song at the service? Will there be a piano there? We don’t know. I know mom would like that in a way, if only because Sir Elton played so famously at Princess Diana’s funeral, but I don’t know if I can or should. The only song I can think of to sing isn’t really to my mom, it’s to a girl who doesn’t love me. It doesn’t seem very appropriate.

Speaking of appropriate, how much of these proceedings will be appropriate times for me to be having a drink? No one seems to know.