texified

I got a call at work thirty minutes ago…my father said that my beloved mother and his precious wife left us at 9:40 pm CDT.  She was surrounded by all her children (except me) and by almost all her grandchildren.  I was not present because I thought I’d work a bit more to earn the money to fly down in the morning.  There is a lesson here.

I knew that I had made the wrong decision when I called my father at 3:30 pm, and found everybody at the hospital.  He said that it was about time for her to go, and everybody had gathered to say their last words to her and to comfort her with their presence when she left.  Everybody but me that is.  I was not there for my father because I put my priorities in the wrong place.  I was going to fly out of here this morning, but decided to work instead and fly out in the morning.  If I had done this then I could have shared this experience with my family.  Now, I have a few more bucks in my pocket instead.

My sister-in-law called a few minutes after I had talked to my father.  She said that the hearing was the last to go, and that if I wanted, she would put the phone up to my mother’s ear so I could say my last words to her.   So I did…

After that I called my daughter to tell her that her Granny was very sick in the hospital.   My daughter cried bitterly and said that I would never know how much she loved her Granny, because when she visited her in Texas, and left the hell-hole in which she lived, it was one of the few times that she could relax and be a child and bask in the love and attention that was always denied her.  She didn’t put it in these exact words, but I remember that when she was a tiny, little precious girl, she said something to that effect, and I knew that was what she was expressing now.

She also cried over the fact that she had meant to visit her Granny these past two years and hadn’t.  I told her that it was just human nature at such times to blame oneself for what one could have done.   “If we do anything,” I told her, “we should remember the lessons that we learn during these times so that we can always show our love and our affection for each other in the future.”

Later I called her and told her that her precious Granny had passed on.

I’ll finish working tonight.  I am debating whether or not to tell anybody that my mother has passed away.  There’s really nobody that I care to tell.  There’s no use in going home either.  What would I do at home?  So I’ll stay on here until 2 am, pay somebody $20 to take me to the shuttle pickup at four,  and will catch the plane at 7:40 am tomorrow exactly 12 hours after my mother left us.