A revelation - of sorts

Sorry that I didn't post on Friday. I'm sure all 2 of my readers were devastated that I took a day off from my prolific posting. :)

The truth is that I was simply too emotional to post on Friday, even though I wanted to. But every time I sat down to write I ended up crying. When I'm crying it's hard to focus and I either need to give into my sadness or suck it up and stop the crying. 99 times out of 100 I suck it up. But when it comes to grief over my mother I try not to do that and just let the grief do it's thing.

Every morning after my shower I turn on the Discovery Health Channel (I think) and watch Bringing Home Baby. It's a show that chronicles the first 36 hours of a new baby's life and more importantly how the parents/siblings/pets handle the newest addition. I like the new baby part but hate the birth part of most of those kinds of shows (A baby story for example) and this show deals with POST birth so I'm a happy camper.

Except that Friday it dawned on me that my mother wont come to help me this time. In the past I always knew my mother was going to help me with my babies. I knew she would come and make my favorite foods and make sure I ate and slept and showered and she would make up these ridiculous songs for the new baby that she would sing as she changed their diapers or clothes or whatever. (I still know ALL the songs by the way. I have video of me singing one of my mothers silly songs to Lulu when she was 3 months old)

I guess that logically I knew I wouldn't have my mother to help this time but emotionally I kind of blocked it out. Until Friday. When I, in a very panicked way, asked Micah if he was really going to be home with me when I had the baby. Because I've never done a baby alone before. I mean, I've generally done it without a MAN around, but I've always had at least my mother and occasionally more women to assist me post baby. My 3 Aunts came to visit when Kylie was a week or so old and my mother in law and grandmother in law came to visit along with my Mother and Dora when Lulu was born.

For the record, Micah assured me he will take his week of paternity leave AND another week of vacation so I wont be all alone.

This thought though, it led to more thoughts. More revelations. When my mother came down when Lulu was born I specifically requested Meat Gravy and Mashed potatoes. I have tried to explain this meal to Micah with limited success, mostly because of the gravy consistency. She didn't get a chance to make it since her visit and my in-laws visit overlapped and she didn't have time.

So she promised she would make it when they came down for Thanksgiving. Except we never had time. She swore she would make it for me at Christmastime when they came down. Time escaped us then too. She was unsure if she would make it down for Easter because she was having surgery on her foot and would be using a lot of time off for that in January.

Except in February we found out she had Stage 4 lung cancer.

I went down in March to visit for Easter but she had no appetite. I don't even know that we had an actual Easter meal that year.

I asked her if she would tell me how to make it when we came down for Christmas. She said she would.

She never made it to Christmas.

It's a stupidly simple meal that I can't make right. I've tried. It's freaking hamburger, flour, water and mashed potatoes for crying out loud. I just can't seem to get it right.

My mother will never come see my new baby. She'll never make me that meat gravy and mashed potatoes. She wont make up silly songs or talk about her first grandson and threaten to dress him up in pink dresses.

And it's like I didn't know that until Friday.