Lunch With Mom

My parents got married when they were both just 19. My sister was born nine months after the wedding. I was born just 11 months after her. Needless to say neither of us were planned.

I used to think their lack of parenting skills were due to their age and immaturity. My father used to love to say “we grew up with our kids.” As soon as I was old enough to understand what he was saying I was bothered by it. At 10 years old I remember thinking, “If you’re not a gown up you shouldn’t be having kids.”

Don’t get me wrong I am not ungrateful. I am very thankful for what a had as a child, both my parents worked very hard to make sure my sister and I had everything we needed. Life turned out pretty well for us, which is an achievement since we grew up in a place where things could have gone very badly.

On Sunday I had lunch with my mother. I had spent the morning with my brother-in-law swapping stoves between the house my parents bought and the house they are selling. My mother was anxious to get the stove out of the old house before it was seen by a perspective buyer. I didn’t realize an oven makes or breaks the sale of a house.

In most instances I try to avoid spending time alone with my mother. Mostly because we quickly run out of things to talk about. After we go through the list of what’s new we struggle for something more to say to one another. Then there are times when she says something so insensitive I don’t know how we could be related.

On Sunday we talked about my how nice it was to see my mother’s cousins, who are the children of my Great Aunt who passed away last week and how sad the circumstances had been.
“Yes, it was nice to see them.”

“It terrible we only see them at funerals.”

In the past six months they have lost both of their parents. It has been an extremely hard year for them. In addition to the funerals my cousin’s son Dennis had a horrible accident which left in a coma for four days the week before his grandfather died.

He is in his twenties. He suffers from schizophrenia.

My cousin’s family lives on a dairy farm in rural New Hampshire on the border with Vermont. Dennis had not been taking his medication. No one is sure what the details of the accident were but from what they were able to ascertain got scared by something. He though someone was chasing him. In his delusion he jump off a bridge, under the bridge was a dry river bed.

Because my family is more interested in drawing their own conclusions then getting the facts I don’t know the details of his injuries. All I do know is the fall nearly killed him and put him in the coma.

I asked my mother if she knew how he was.

“Well I know he is taking his medication now. There was something wrong with his hip. I don’t know if he broke it or not but it’s better then it was. I get my information from your grandmother so you know how that goes. They have him in a some sort of day care so that‘s good.”

“It so tragic. The poor kid.”

She nodded at and added.

“I mean I can’t imagine going through all that work to make sure he survived the accident, and still having to deal with his illness. They should have just let him go. I mean could you imagine having to deal with that.”

If I am ever in a coma and you are there, please make sure she is as far from the plug as possible.