Mom

 Mom

Taught me

to 

Be With God

24

hours a day

One of my mother's friends said of my Mom that: "she doesn't need a religion because she is living with God 24 hours a day!"

This was true of my mother and in some ways also true of me.

We both live with God and Angels 24 hours a day. 

It's true it took me time to master all this and I wasn't entirely comfortable with being alive in my body until I was around 30 to 33 years of age.

But, once I had mastered being "ONE with God 24 hours a day" I was okay in life.

Before this it could sometimes be terrifying to be alive as I learned all this in reality.

But, eventually I found I was at peace 24 hours a day pretty much no matter what happened in my life or anyone else's life.

When you gain the momentum of "LIVING WITH GOD 24 hours a day" it tends to stay like that waking and sleeping ever after.

By God's Grace

Mom

My mother died September 2008. It was a difficult experience when she died and has been difficult since she showed the first signs of senile dementia around 1999 when I took her to Europe. When she wouldn't come out of the motor home--EVER-- as my kids and I, my son's friend and my Mom traveled from Munich to Aoste, Italy through Austria and Switzerland.  I drove a 6 passenger diesel 5 speed stick shift motor Home that we rented in Munich and since it was my first trip to Germany, it was very paradoxical to have my mother become so strange during that part of the trip.

She had been fine in England and Scotland where her mother and father were raised in Clydebank and Ayre, Scotland respectively.  My mother's parents had married there and had immigrated to the U.S. around 1910 and settled in Omaha, Nebraska along with most of my grandmother's 11 other brothers and sisters who worked on the main newspaper there at that time. After my mother was born, the youngest of 3 girls, they got into a Model T Ford and came to Seattle and settled in Alkai Point.  My mother, who was born in 1919, remembered being 5 years old and going to the picture shows (movies) walking there with her Dad and two sisters and also swimming in the Puget Sound in the summers. Later she told me of how her oldest sister won a beauty contest in high school and worked at that same local theater in high school.  I think her oldest sister married pretty soon after high school and her husband started a supermarket. after my uncle died, my aunt ran a restaurant and put all her three kids through college.

When I was five,  her older sister would visit us in Tujunga,  California.  Her youngest son was one year younger than I, and when I was six, he accidentally got hit in the head with a rock and I got blamed for it even though it was my next door neighbors' fault.

I remember Mom singing a lot when we lived in Seattle. It seemed like it was always cloudy or dark or rainy or snowy all the time we lived in Seattle at Lake Forest Park from 1948 when I was born until 1952 when we moved to San Diego.  My father was an electrician and worked for his father and hated working in the rain all those years. So when I was 4 and he was 36 and Mom was 33, he packed us all up and drove down in his 41 Century Buick, owned previously by my dad's brother who died in a plane crash in 1942. It was a really fast car and sometimes my father street raced with it, with mom and me in the car, especially in Southern California. People thought a lot differently about that sort of thing back then than they do now.  Or maybe my family took more risks. The whole world seems to be a lot more fear-based now than then.  I remember my parents being so alive.

I remember standing up in the back seat of our 2 door Century Buick like this one.  Dad's was originally blue.  There were no seat belts or standard green, yellow and red lights at intersections back then in Seattle. There were only stop and go signs that operated a lot like railroad crossing signs
so there were always many more accidents and deaths on the road. When Dad turned a corner fast, often I would just hit the  door wall and bounce off a doorknob because I was standing up on the rear seat behind the driver's, pretending I was driving the car. I might whimper from the pain but usually if I was with my Dad I had to be tough like a man even at 3 or 4.  I just held in any pain I felt from injuries when I was around my Dad when we were driving somewhere.

Mom, Dad and I

Once Mom, Dad and I were the three Musketeers
One for All and All for One
But Mom and Dad are gone now
And the boy I once was
is like an echo inside a man

It's hard to live as an echo
what's my identity?

I am father, I am husband
But no longer son

Happy Mother's Day, Mom

7 of us went to see the new "Star Trek" movie today which was really excellent and much better than I expected, which I found to be sort of a "religious experience" because my family originally bought its first color TV so we could watch Star trek on TV in color because it was one of the best Color shows on TV by then with all the special effects during the mid 1960s.

Anyway, as soon as the movie was over I was hit with a really crazy depression and nothing seemed to bring me out of it except an unexpected call from an old friend for the 1/2 hour that we talked.
But finally, tonight I said to my wife, "What's wrong with me I can't figure out why I'm so depressed. She said, "Honey, It's your first mother's day without your Mom alive."

I just couldn't believe that I didn't even think of that and on top of it, it's a full moon to make matters even worse. But if you can name what it is eating you then somehow you are okay. Before this I just thought I must be losing it until I realized what was really bothering me. My MOm's gone and it's my first Mother's Day without her on the planet. (Even though her ashes are still sitting on my grand piano in the living room).

My mother was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1919. Her father was a minister and a cabinet maker and he did some of both over the years as my mother grew up. She and her two sisters and parents drove from Omaha, Nebraska in a Model T Ford all the way to Seattle where my Mom mostly grew up around Alki Point. She mentioned swimming in the Puget Sound and going to the movies in the early 1920s from the time she was 5 years old. She said the movies were only about a nickel then.

When the Great Depression hit she said the family had a hard time keeping a roof over their heads but that somehow they managed even with leather hinges on the doors and a home converted 50 gallon drum made into a wood stove to keep warm nights. Her sister who was the oldest got a job at a local movie theater and got married before she was 20 because she was so pretty. Mom was the youngest and turned 20 in 1939 but didn't get married until 1946. She supported her Mom and herself from age 18 until she got married. After she graduated High School she got a job making ladies hand bags and then worked for Bell Teleophone in Customer Service.

Dad and she met in church and married in 1946 and then I came along in 1948. We all moved from Seattle in 1952 and we lived in Vista,El Cajon, Tujunga, and then finally Glendale, (all California cities) until I grew up (I was 21 in 1969).

My mother was a very kind person and this kindness rubbed off on me. My father was a very intelligent and intense but humorous and always laughing person and his intelligence and intensity also rubbed off on me. If I'm ever humorous then I got that from my Dad too. He's been gone now since 1985 when I was 37.

Happy Mother's Day Mom. The world is pretty lonely without you and Dad in it.