An end of an era…

It’s 11 weeks today since my mom’s passing.

I don’t cry every day anymore, but still find myself, at times, getting weepy for what seems like no reason. Watching t.v., making dinner. Nothing tangible to put the sadness on to. Just…grief.

Life has moved on.

Case in point, I closed on my parent’s house recently.

Miraculously, it sold. I say miraculously, because, in all honesty, I never thought it would.

Shows you how wrong I can be about stuff.

My parents lived in 2 trailers/mobile homes during the past 20+ years. The first one was destroyed during Hurricane Irene. They were left homeless.

I didn’t know this. It occurred during the time frame my mother and I weren’t in communication. When we reconnected she told me about how they watched the water from the nearby creek rush under their front door. In no time at all they were standing in a foot of it. No time to pack anything. They were evacuated by the local fire department and could only bring the clothes on their backs. Luckily, my mother had the foresight to grab all their personal papers.

For three days they were put up in a local motel, wearing the same clothes, depending on the kindness of the Red Cross for food, and then allowed to go back to their home once the water receded.

Not much survived the flood. Some clothing, their mattress. The rest was destroyed by water damage.

As luck would have it, FEMA gave them money and they found another trailer, where they lived for the last 16 years of their lives, until circumstances made it impossible for them to do so anymore.

I’m ashamed to say this but the thought of them living in what was a glorified ( and not really all that nice) trailer made me a little…well…embarrassed. And I hear in my head how horrible, elitist, and prejudicial that sounds. There’s absolutely nothing wrong or shameful about living in a mobile home.

Nothing.

But…it was just another facet of their lifestyle that made me realize how poor they really were. I think that’s the thing that shames me most of all. Their relative poverty. For all my life and all their adult lives and marriage, they could never get ahead financially. They lived paycheck to paycheck and sometimes not even that long. They didn’t live an extravagant life, either. No cars, no vacations. The cheapest food. It was simply the cost of living out-cost their take-home pay.

“New” clothes were purchased at the Salvation Army. My mother took to wearing shoes that were a size too small for her simply because they “looked nice” and were only a quarter. All she could afford.

When I was clearing and cleaning out their house so they could move into the nursing home I saw their bed, unmade, for the first time. There was a huge depression in the center so that no matter what side you were on, you rolled to it. My mother said they’d brought the bed with them from Brooklyn, bought when they were newly married.

They hadn’t lived in Brooklyn since 1968. That meant their mattress was over 55 years old.

Think about that for a moment and then think about your own, comfortable, probably NOT 55-year-old mattress.

And then think about the fact that mattress survived a flood.

She suffered through, and survived, so much in her life. I wish I had been more understanding, more compassionate about all her mental and emotional issues.

I wish I had been a better person; a more empathetic, understanding daughter.

A better human.

11 weeks. Still so raw.