A happy day

I found some pretty pictures of Mama the day of Jennifer's wedding.  She was very very smiley that day. :-)

The getting back of things important (or at least a smidge of them)

A door at my grandparents house. Taken by me.

So yesterday I went and bought a small, basic, starter supply of art supplies (i.e. acrylics, brushes - as all of mine are in the black hole called Townville -, cheap watercolors, water color paper, and small cheap canvases).  

Today, I used them.  And I feel the best I've felt in a while.  I sat in the floor, put on some Sufjan Stevens and painted away.  It's nothing extraordinary, but it made me remember I have something that makes me feel better.  I like to play the guitar, but I'm not dedicated. I used to play the violin, but the first and only time I played it since Mama left left me sitting in a puddle of tears and snot wishing things were different.  So I have art.  

I remember after Mama's first diagnosis, first semester of my junior year of high school, I had just started the audition-only art class at West Oak.  Everything that was happening spilled out in acrylics and pastels and charcoal and ink.  It was truly therapeutic.  Then when I went back to visit my art teacher (the one I met for a lunch last weekend) after Mama's second diagnosis she told me, "Remember you still have something."  She didn't have to tell me what I had.  And it's taken me nearly two years and a motherloss later to remember it.  

So here it is, the first painting I've done in at least two years.  

About my birthday (yes it's far awayyy)

So I've been obsessing about my birthday. It's still quite far away, roughly 5 and a halfish weeks to be exact. I'm excited, but dreading. Again, another event without Mama, but excited that fate would have it that the first birthday without my mom I can legally drink my sorrows away. There's a silver lining to every little dark cloud isn't there... :-/

And I know it sounds really immature and kind of stupid to most people, but that's exactly how I plan to spend it. Doing everything the way that Mama wouldn't have done it. Because if I do it differently, then it will be as if she wasn't meant to be there. It won't be so obvious that she's missing.

I don't want a family celebration. I don't want a birthday cake. I don't want balloons or stupid presents. If you want to buy me a present, give me the cash and I'll add it to my alcohol monies jar (no that wasn't a joke) or go buy a fabulous pair of shoes. And btw, I blew my budget even more tonight by buying two pairs of shoes tonight...but they were oh so on sale, little blueish granny loafers that look like they collided with a glow stick, and fabulous BCBG black ("stripper"...as Karee called them haha) heels. Every girl needs sexy heels, right?

And I just realized the last few posts where I've actually written something it's been about the very thing I don't want to think about.... Uggggghhhhhh....

Anyway...sleep time for me and more Sigur Rós (yes I'm in a phase, I also just priced tickets from Atlanta to Reykjavik, Iceland, and the price is doable if I plan ahead...oh how heavenly that would be...)

Feginn fann ég þar
Þökkum ákaflega
Í skjóli neyðarhúss
Og við sváfum
Stórviðri ofsaði út

A Toast to the Fourth

[This is one of those posts, the kind I hate reading because it makes me shift uncomfortably in my seat. sorry...but not really...]

It’s 4^th of July and I know that everywhere, under every single boom that I can hear through my painted-shut windows, there are smiles and people together, because they want to be…even if maybe at first they weren’t happy to be there, those sparkles in the sky are keeping together for one second. One second, and then it’s gone, and if someone came after they’d be too late, but these people are there together under that one explosion of light and color and bursts of a feeling of childhood all over again.

I know there are other people who feel the same as me. But for some reason this is worse than Christmas was. Much worse. At Christmas there were all of us, every single one, but the 4^th of July was always different. It was spontaneous and uncertain, we never really had plans, and the ones we did have were usually broken. But there was a certain factor that held it all together – Mama.

I remember last year we chased fireworks around Anderson. Of course by the time we always found them there was nothing but smoke, but I remember sitting in a grassy field next to the civic center, all of the cars pulling out, nothing but tail lights and head lights and brake lights and people leaving. But we all stayed, doors open, the top to Bobby’s little beamer down and we played oldies, and Mama took pictures. There aren’t any pictures of her from that night. Like most of our occasions or strange moments, she was the one with the camera. I wish I had a picture of her. And I remember on the way home, after dropping off the sisters and the brother-in-laws at their respective apartments, she and I stopped beside the lake and watched the lights popping up all over the shore lines and I stood on the sill of the door, holding on to the luggage rack with my face to the sky, and she had the window down with her head out yelling for me to get in, but not really caring because she was smiling too.

I miss her so much. I don’t let myself think about it very often, because it cripples me for days, takes me hours to scrape myself off the floor, to paint my face back on. I feel like I should have it together by now, but I think I may be realizing for the first time how permanent this is. By now I feel like she should’ve come popping through the door, that crazy wide grin on her face and a “Surprise!” Like this is the cruelest joke ever pulled off, and every part of me wishes it was. And the reality: it isn’t.

Happy Birthday America. If you were a person I’d share my bottle of wine with you

Secret's out!!!

Okay so apparently Baby doesn't have (or rather ISN'T ) a secret anymore. :-)

Sarah & Bobby are officially going to have a baby! Yay!

I figured the silence on the couch with the laptop lap top should've had something to do with a massive blog announcement. But check it out here for the details.

8ish months and counting until Baby Rettew-y is here! Hooray!

P.s. Did I mention that this news came on Mama & Daddy's (would have, was) 32nd Wedding Anniversery. Let me just say it was only the second time I've seen Daddy cry (first time being on the front steps after Mama died...). It was the perfect gift, and the perfect way for her to let us know she's near-by. :') (that was a teary happy face in case you were wondering...)

Goodbye Uncle EL

I haven't blogged a lot lately. I haven't felt the need or the desire too. And it's not because there's a lack of things to write about.

There's everything to write about.

New people. Old people. People dying. People Living.

Literally, all of the above.

And on some level I feel numb to it.

Last night I got home from hanging out with a certain someone and Sarah and Bobby didn't really say much but both of them kind of trailed me to my room. That's never a good sign.

"Jennifer talked to grandma today, Uncle EL died." I just kind of looked at Sarah and processed it and literally what I wanted to say was, "Oh well..."

That freaked me out. I am sad that Uncle EL died. He was always one of my favorites. He was one of the ten siblings of which my Grandma was a part and he was literally crazy.

He was funny beyond belief, sometimes to the point of making people uncomfortable if they weren't completely familiar with his sense of humor. He always wore his demin overalls. He sang with his sister Carol. When they were in school people thought they were twins. I feel very sad for Aunt Carol, they were so close. He lived "in sin" with the woman named Polly, aka Aunt Polly and no one even cared... out of our crazy, ultra-religious family, no one cared. Because he was Uncle EL.

And I didn't realize he was getting close to 80. That was probably the biggest shock out of all of this. He was in his late 70s. Kind of a wake up call that people are growing older, my grandparents are growing older. My mother was 50, by no means older...but to some people 50 is everything.

And what's more, he died on May 1st, Mama's birthday. (A bad day for Grandma to be sure)

I feel at peace with it. He went "missing" in the woods on April 30th, but the coroner said he actually died May 1st. As soon Sarah told me this something became very clear to me. Mama was EL's favorite niece. I truly believe that she was with him in the woods. That she took him home. I don't think he died some terrible death, I think he simply stepped out into something more. And that Mama got a wonderful birthday present, Uncle EL to keep her company until the rest of us get there.

And in a sense, I feel that maybe this was Uncle EL's last prank. I mean, it DID take a police search party, numerous search dogs, and at last, a helicopter to find him...

six months

yesterday's sunset after tornadoes touched down

tomorrow is a day i have been dreading for a while. Well, the dread really starts today because i guess that's when we realized what was actually happening.

Tomorrow is the six month anniversary of mama leaving.

I constantly think about those last two days. Sarah's favorite word is "haunted", and I guess we all are. Absolutely haunted. And it's not even the big leering 17 on the calender that takes us further and further away from her and the life she lead, but it's small things. There is a tree in the back yard and it's beautiful and I want to know what kind it is. Mama would know. If she didn't know she would have a vague idea. but I can't ask her, she can't tell me, and I had to resort to googling, comparing pictures on my digital camera to the one's on the internet... and I still don't really know if it's actually a striped maple - or if that's even a real name of a tree. I don't know and Mama would and she can't tell me.

Yes we are haunted by the big gaping hole. Hole isn't even a good word, more like chasm, abyss, ground zero, the fallout, the zone that's been shut down because it's too dangerous because you might get exposed.

This is the do not enter zone. When mama first left EVERYONE was there, the people we loved, the people we wished would get the hell out, the vultures that lurked around our house waiting, just waiting, that pretended to care about us after they had not darkened Mama's door in months and years, when they knew she was getting more and more sick. And they were around a few days after, even a few weeks after. And now they're gone... not just the vultures, but everyone.

To most people the car crash is over, that horrible pile of twisted metal, the gore and horrific scene that you just can't look away from. It's over. Six months over. And we're left here to wander alone.

Now to be honest, in a way I'm glad, because through all of this we have understood who are true friends are. I have a few true friends, people that have stuck by me even though they don't understand, and maybe they have tried, or maybe they're upset that they don't see exactly what's happening, or maybe they've just recognized that they don't know what I'm going through or why I act the way I do, but they're here just the same. I cannot, and never will be able to express my gratitude to them. I know now who my true friends are.

But even all of that doesn't change the fact that today six months ago I called my sisters and told them something wasn't right, that this was different. And tomorrow six months ago, to the day, Monday September 17 - Monday March 17, the day my world was ripped from me, the day we were shoved out of the safe warmth, the comfortable dimmness, and stood blinking stupidly in this glaring thing called life.

Tomorrow is not just the anniversary of the death of my mother, it's the anniversary of the end of my childhood, the end of life, the end of the relationship with my extended family, the end of so many friendships, the end. the end. the end.

Needless to say I'm taking Sarah's advice and calling into work tomorrow and I don't really care if they think it's a good excuse. I don't care. Tomorrow I'm getting up and calling Daddy and making him come over, or Sarah and I are driving to get him, then we're going to go get Jennifer and Maggie and we're going to go to the park where we used to play when we were little, where Mama used to take us, and we're going to have a picnic and we're going to be together.

unknown tree in the back hard