Mother's Day Weekend

I must apologize to my friends at BE, they've already read all of this, but I'm too lazy to do much more than paraphrase myself.

I'm exhausted, but otherwise none the worse for wear. It did indeed go better than any of us expected (sad but true, we all had low expectations of ourselves as a group). We flew up Friday afternoon and came back Sunday afternoon, quick and dirty.

I don't really have anything exciting to relate. Everyone behaved themselves pretty well. Both my Mom and Dad were there, and even sat relatively close to each other, although I never saw them speaking other than a hurried hello. Mom told me later that Dad tried to talk to her (oh horror!) but she couldn't handle talking about my brother so she turned him away.

I don't know what I was thinking going into this thing, but I didn't think it was going to be the West Coast Memorial. I realize the death of my brother was the reason why we all gathered, but I didn't know it was going to be the focus of the entire day. My brother had brought back a lot of pictures and momentos from the funeral and had made copies of a lot of stuff for everyone. He first related the story of the accident (which was different than we had initially heard - he was wearing his seat belt, it was the overhang of the street sweeper coming into the cab of the truck that killed him), and started to cry several times during that speech, then later went through what happened at the funeral and cried several times through that too. Other than my Mom and my Dad (briefly) noone else seemed to be emotional about any of it.

Now, I'm no beauty queen, but I felt like an anorexic movie star in that room. WTF? Bad/missing teeth, bad/dirty hair, bad/dirty clothes, lumpy bodies, half of them live in trailer parks. Only me, my sister and one of my cousins brought their spouses. They served MEMORIAL CAKE. It actually said "In Loving Memory of _____" in the frosting, like it was a freaking birthday cake.

At one point my great-uncle, who was hosting the event, quieted the room and wanted to know if anybody had anything they'd like to say, or tell any stories. One of my cousins (who's been a stoner/drinker all his life) told the story of he and my brother waking up from a 3 day bender on a nude beach. Another cousin told the story of her ex puking out the window at one my brother's annual parties, losing his false teeth in the process, and my brother, ever the good host, diving out the window to retreive them from the flower garden. Ah, good times.

I'm sitting there, dry-eyed the whole time, thinking -- yeah, I gotta couple stories I could tell ya. Otherwise, I got nothin'.

In between all the brother stuff there was a lot of catching up being done. And a lot of drinking. That was the first thing my great-uncle did was take drink orders, and EVERYONE ordered an alcoholic drink, it was 2 in the afternoon. I kept a steady buzz going on white wine, which helped. Other than my immediate family, I hadn't seen anyone else in the room for at least 15 years, some of them 20+ years. My Mom and my Dad both said one completely inappropriate thing each in front of the whole group, but that wasn't bad, considering.

I left without wishing my Mom a Happy Mother's Day, and DH and I went out with one of my girlfriends to de-tox a bit after 4 hours of family. I called her from the airport the next morning but all she wanted to talk about was how sore she was from the long car ride and that my brother's wife had already called to wish her a Happy Mother's Day. I guess things are pretty much back to normal. Unfortunately.

I left feeling very, very lucky to have the life I have, the friends I have, and the husband I have. I managed to get through Mother's Day without a hint of sadness for myself. I don't know what that means.