One year ago today was the last Mother's Day I ever had with my mom. She was confined to her bed, and doing nothing but sleeping, and taking her pain meds every 4 hours. I got her a vase full of flowers from Target. At one waking moment, she did get to see them, and she commented that they were beautiful. Seven days later, she was gone forever.

I still have the vase. I only wish I still had her.

It was Good Friday, in name only. It was the first of the last 37 days of my mother's life. This was the day we went to her doctor for the follow up to the CAT scan done the day prior.

I had to sit in the waiting room while Mom received the news, and then she revealed it to me on the way back out to the truck. Everything that had been diagnosed so far (irritable bowel syndrome, flu, etc.) had been undone by the CAT scan, and the true diagnosis of pancreatic cancer was now official, and made into an ugly reality.

Every day now for a while is going to be an ugly anniversary of some sort. I'm going to have to do my damndest to not think about it too much, or at least try not to let it get to me.

Please, just bear with me for the next few weeks.

Erin Go Brawl, 'Irish John' Duddy vs. Anthony 'The Bullet' Bonsante

The Bullet managed to throw some good punches here and there, but the fight was dominated by the younger Duddy.

The Bullet's main problem had been an accidental head butt from Duddy early in the fight that cut open his forehead. For the rest of the match, Anthony was not only fighting Duddy, but also fighting blurred vision caused by the blood pouring into his eyes from the cut on his forehead.

The fight was stopped in the ninth round because of this. After the scores were added up, the fight was awarded to Duddy.

Some final scores:

PUNCHES:

                               Duddy                                             Bonsante

Thrown:                     536                                                    401

Landed:                      220                                                    139

PCT:                            41%                                                    35%

JABS:                    Duddy                                             Bonsante

Thrown:                     232                                                    267

Landed:                        45                                                      76

PCT:                             19%                                                   28%

I'm not really a journalist, much less a sports writer, so you'll be able to get much more detail in the actual media coverage. The best I can do is tell you that it was very heart wrenching to see Brittany and Derek, Anthony's kids, hugging him after the fight, disappointed that it wasn't a win, but still proud of their Dad.

I wish Anthony had won, but I still think he did a good job, all things considered.

I think the title says it all. There's nothing interesting for me on TV at 2200 on a Thursday; I've read everything in the house, and the Net has nothing new to offer. I'm not tired enough to go to bed, and I need some creative stimuli, so I grabbed this here keyboard, and commenced slapping my fingers over the keys in the dire hope that something would result. So far, I'm not impressed.

The last sentence in the preceding paragraph is largely why I decided to slap this small blurb into my little-used MySpace blog instead of posting at My Mid-Life Crisis--The Official Soundtrack proper. I have a couple of semi-fresh entries currently posted over there, and I don't need this little meaningless query into the point of all existence entry interrupting the flow over there.

I'm still working on ideas for the future of my blog proper over at the other site. I just have to decide on a couple of matters, i.e. do I wish to continue that one as it stands, do I want to change it completely into something else, do I want to abandon it and just start over, or some combination of all of the above? Time will tell. I just hope that the one or two of you who are reading me regularly will continue to do so after the New Year. No changes will be made until after December 31, and then again, maybe not for some time afterward. I want my current blog to run the course of a full year first, for good or bad.

I just took a look at this little entry, and I think I'll be doing everybody a favor if I pull the plug and just get it posted now. Technically, I shouldn't post it at all, but since I've already gone to the trouble of writing it, I'd rather not see the time completely wasted, plus, I'd like you all to see exactly what I consider to be a boring entry.

Please, keep reading my regular stuff over at My Mid-Life Crisis--The Official Soundtrack. My gratitude goes out to you all.

I've been suppressing a lot of my grief over losing my mother for a while, waiting to get all of the estate business closed and get on with my life first. I figured that the grieving process could somehow interfere with and delay any estate procedures.

Everything has been going smoothly so far in the estate dealings. We'll be closing the sale of Mom's house this coming Tuesday the 24^th. After that, it's only a matter of figuring up the last of the taxes that need to be paid, and then we can close the estate completely.

I'm discovering that suppression of grief is not one of the easier things in the world to do. Yesterday, I had to go over to Mom's house to unlock it for a cleaning service; the people who are buying wanted to have all of the carpeting cleaned before they move in next week. I let them in, and they proceeded about their business. I checked back after they left, and locked the house back up.

Today, I went back over to make sure that all of the carpet was dry, so I could turn off the ceiling fans and lower the temperature on the furnace. The carpet was dry, so I did all of the turning off and turning down. As I was heading toward the door to leave, it suddenly struck me.

This was the absolute last time I would ever enter this house.

The closing of the sale is taking place in an office in Baxter, and everything I need to do with the house proper is finished. I turned back into the house, and stood there, just looking at it.

The house is empty now; it has been for a couple of months. Still, in my mind's eye, I could see everything as it was when Mom was still here. I knew where the couches were; I knew where the recliner was; I knew where the TV and cabinet had been.

I walked down the hallway to her bedroom, the room she never left during the last month of her life. Fate had been unkind; Mom hadn't even been able to spend her remaining days in her own bed. For care purposes, we had rented and set up a small hospital bed, which is where she was when she left us on May 21. Once Mom was gone, we hurriedly got rid of the hospital bed and all medical equipment that had been on hand, so we could restore the bedroom to what it was when she was alive and well.

I don't know how long I wandered about inside the house, just looking around and remembering. I even looked inside the garage, and walked around the outside of the house one last time. I got in the car, Mom's car, and slowly drove away with the realization that it was indeed the last time I would ever be there.

The rest of my day is probably not going to be filled with a lot of laughs.

I've come to the realization that I need a creative outlet in my life right now. Yes, I know, I need a job first, but while I'm waiting, I need to do something. I need to get back into writing. So, since I've been doing some 'almost-writing' here for the past several months, I've decided to step it up, and get a real blog started. I'm keeping my title. Why? Because I like it.

For the one or two of you that have been reading me here, I'd love it if you followed me to the new page http://crisis-soundtrack.blogspot.com  There's only one entry at the moment, but then, I've only set it up in the past half hour.

I've always enjoyed writing, and maybe taking this step will help me get back into it.

Hope to see you there. . .

I'm not doing much these days.

It's been five weeks and a day since my Mom left. My first week passed fairly uneventfully, as my aunt, Mom's sister was staying at the house, so whenever I went over there, I was able to tell myself that my aunt was visiting, and Mom was at the store. A week later or so, I put my aunt on a plane back to Florida.

Then it happened.

I had to go into that empty house by myself.

It was weird. It was just like all of the old cliches.  I kept looking around the house, expecting to see her. I hate cliches, but I have no power over them, so I had to deal with that along with the rest of this. The rest of my visit that day went pretty much as you would expect.

As I've continued over the past few weeks, it's just remained weird. On some days, I have no problem with any of this, and I'm living a normal life. Other days, this is so crippling to me I can barely muster the energy to get out of bed.

I haven't been looking for a job yet. I'm in a place where I just don't really give a damn about anything. All I do is get up, prowl around my apartment for a couple of hours, and then go to Mom's house to check the mail, and just hang out for a big portion of the day. Then I get the house closed back up, and head home for the night.

Not an exciting existence I'll admit, but it's all I can really bring myself to do right now.

Anyway, I thought I'd post this, seeing that I haven't written anything since the day Mom left. I wouldn't want to lose any of my readers (neither one of you).

Hopefully, I can get back on track with this. It's an excellent outlet, and I need to do it more.

Until next time. . .

The ordeal that began on April 14, 2006, Good Friday, came to its conclusion this afternoon at 12:55 when my Mom finally left us.

I find it difficult to believe that everything occurred in only 37 days. This has been the longest 37 days of my life, so I can only imagine how it must have been for my Mom. It feels like several months have passed, and instead, it's only been about 5 weeks or so.

As much as I will always miss her, I feel better knowing that her suffering is now over.

Goodbye, Mom.

I love you. . .

The following Monday morning after the Thursday oncologist visit saw us make another trip in to see the doc. Mom had no stamina whatsoever, and seemed to be getting weaker. We asked the doctor what we could do to build up her stamina, as she needed strength not only for day-to-day activity, but she would also need strength once the treatments commenced. There is nothing we can do to make her stronger. As an added bonus, the treatments would only serve to make her weaker as well.

That made the final decision on treatment.

Throughout the week, Mom kept getting weaker; all she could do was lay on the couch and try to be comfortable. By the following Thursday, I had to go get her a little motorized scooter from the medical supply place, because just walking from the couch to the bathroom was an exhausting enough trip to require a 10 minute rest for recovery.

Saturday night, my step-sister stayed with me at Mom's to help me care for her. Sunday morning we brought her out to the couch, and that was no good anymore. Back to bed, where she's been ever since, except for trips to the bathroom. My aunt stayed and helped me on Sunday night, and my step-sister again on Monday. Last night, Tuesday, the two of them stayed and made me come home to take a night off.

I doubt we have 4 or 5 months, let alone 6. We may be looking at a matter of only weeks, and it is just tearing me apart.

At any rate, I need to get a shower, and head back over.

Thursday was the day we went to the oncologist. We have only one treatment option available. If it works, my mom can have several more productive years ahead. If it doesn't work, we're looking at less than six months.

Apparently, we're setting records. The doc said that mom's count was the highest that she (doc) had ever seen. I don't claim to understand how the numbers work, but I guess normal counts are somewhere in the several hundreds, with a count of 1000 being considered a high count. Mom has a count of 70,000.

I'm glad now that I'm out of work, as it gives me time to do things for her, and spend more time with her. People are now looking at my job loss as a blessing, or having been 'meant to happen,' so that I could have time to deal with all of this.

To my (very few) readers: I know that this blog has gone from the life of a weirdo, to an unemployed weirdo, to this. Hopefully, once we start treatments, I will be able to start posting something positive here.

Time to go. I need to get over to her house.

I'm still out of work. I don't care anymore, because events are happening that put that sort of thing into perspective.

My mom has pancreatic cancer.

We got the diagnosis last Friday, the 14th. The prior Wednesday, I had taken her to the doctor, who yanked some blood, and then gave her a take-out order of about 2 quarts of barium solution, to make ready for a CAT scan the next day, Thursday.

Friday, we got the news. The one thing we do know is that it's only about six months along. We don't know anything else as of yet. This past Monday, we went to the clinic so they could take another couple jars of blood. This Friday, we go in for a chest CAT scan, and the fabled biopsy; all of this is setting the stage for Thursday the 27th when we get to see the oncologist and learn exactly what we're dealing with.

All of this has pretty much curtailed my job hunting for the foreseeable future. As I alluded to at the beginning, there are things that are MUCH more important.

Here I am, still unemployed, and still harping about it. I gotta tell you, I really am trying to find a job; it's just that there is absolutely NOTHING out there right now.

Actually, I'm glad I have the time off right now, because my mom got sick a week or so back. I've been running errands for her, and just generally trying to make her life a little easier for the time being, something I wouldn't be able to do if I were working. So, there is one advantage to my state of unemployedness.

She keeps apologizing for taking my time to do stuff for her, but I really don't mind. It keeps my mind off of my own problems, and it lets me do something good for somebody else. As it is, I have to cut this entry off short, because I need to head over to her house.