Surrender

Mother's Day was a motherfucker.

I'm still reeling from it. No big surprise I guess. It was my first Mother's Day sans Mother. But still, I tried so hard to brace myself against all that. I didn't want to give in to it. I didn't want to take anything away from the other Mother's in my life. My Lovely Bride. My Mother-In-Law. My Grandma. I thought I could, I thought I would, be able to weather the storm.

I was wrong. I didn't realize how wrong until I walked Ruby the dog the Saturday evening before Mother's Day. That's when synchronicity jumped out of the bushes and kicked me in the nuts. Hard.

You see Dear Reader, I associate certain songs with the death of my Mom. Kite. Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own. One Step Closer. Those songs are my soundtrack.

The way it went down is like this. My weekend started off on a positive note, literally. On Friday, I took My Lovely Bride to see The Old 97's, play the new House of Blues Dallas. A day before the show, I set my iPod, which is how I listen to music in my car, at home, to an Old 97's/Rhett Miller playlist.

That is where it stayed until Saturday evening when I walked Ruby the dog. At that point, I'm not even sure why, I decided to switch the iPod to my U2 playlist. It contains (I recently purchased the Boy and October albums) 113 songs.

All of my playlists, actually anything that plays on my iPod, shuffles. That means songs play in a random order.

On that Saturday night, walking Ruby, song number 10 (out of 113) was Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own. That song always gets me, but the fact that it was song 10, when Mom's birthday was October 10th, and the night before Mother's Day, I cried. There I was, walking the mongrel around the block, crying. Fuck me.

I looked goofy. I certainly didn't want to return home in that state so I extended the walk. We went far enough to reach song 17. It was Kite. That was more than I could take. Half way through I turned my iPod off, dried my eyes, and went home.

Fast forward Sunday morning coming down. Mother's Day. My Lovely Bride took the Boy(s) to Sunday school to give me some space. Home alone with time to kill before 11am services, I decided to go to the health club.

As you've read, I listen to my iPod in the car. I also killed Kite, mid song the night before. Thus, when i fired up my iPod on my way to exercise it was in the middle of Kite. It being Mother's Day, I decided to listen to the song from the beginning.

I cried. Fuck me. Crying and driving as I made my way to 24Hour Fitness. In fact, I was crying hard enough that I didn't hear the low intro for song 18, which was none other than One Step Closer. I damn near wrecked my car.

On that day, Mother's Day, my first since Mom died on October 18th, One Step Closer was the 18th song.

A week later and well, I'm still reeling from it. Like someone ripped a scab off an old wound.

My distress was visible to the rest of the Team. At some point, on Mother's Day, the Elder Boy asked his Mom how to write something for a card he wanted to make me. He's just five, so his ability to read and write are just beginning. He can spell his name. He knows how to read and write Love. Other words, well you have to write them for him and he copies them when he makes a card, or draws a picture.

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Monday morning coming down, as I was giving E a kiss good-bye, he handed me the card.

On the front were hearts that he had drawn. On the left inside panel there was a smiling face. I guess it might be a self portrait of him. I'm not sure, I wasn't able to ask him at the time because of what he'd written on the right inside panel.

Written there, in his tender, five year old style was this: Daddy, I'm sorry that Granny Died. Ethan.

Until I BLOG again...It's in the street getting under my feet, It's in the air, it's everywhere I look for you.