Respect

Uncle John whom we call Zeke and me Grandpa Joe, his father, well, their relationship was rocky, if I may be cryptic and dance around the issue. Yet Zeke impressed me with his sense of decency when Joe passed. Riding along with me and me brother Phil as we drove to Jacksonville, Illinois for Grandpa's funeral, Uncle John became surprisingly open and introspective about losing his father. He remarked, "Me and that man didn't always get along. But he gave me life. I have to go to his funeral. I owe him this."

Zeke was a man with his demons, God bless him, but he knew right from wrong. He knew that he had to do what was right, and damn personal histories. I think I learned all I needed to know about him on that road trip to his father's hometown.  You do what's right by your folks. You owe them that.

Mom's been gone over two years now, and I miss our Sunday trips. I did them out of love and was happy to, but we need to remember that part of love, perhaps the most important component of it, is doing what you're supposed to do. Ideally you do this freely and willfully. Yet even then, part of it is recognizing obligation. There's nothing wrong with admitting that fact.

During a homily one Sunday the priest was lecturing on the Ten Commandments. The first three deal with our relationship with God; the following seven with relationships between ourselves. What's the first of those? Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother. Before we do anything else, even before we're told not to kill or steal, we're told to honor our parents. That's how important our debt to them is.

If five hour drives and McDonald's cheeseburgers made my infirm mother happy in her last years, I owed her that. I owe her much more, but we do what we can at the time. If the best Zeke could do at the time was attend his father's funeral, he saw that he owed him that. I say Zeke paid his debt. And willfully.

Two Years

Mom has been gone two years, almost to the minute as I type. As a matter of fact, almost to the minute that the paramedics apologized that there was nothing they could do. You want to know an image you can't forget? Watching from the next room as EMTs are doing chest compressions and working a large bladder to force air into your Mother's lungs, trying to get her breathing and restart her heart. It's indelible.

We should always pray, and I do for her. I trust in God for her happiness, but there's no real way of knowing her place right now. So pray. It can't hurt, and can help more than we imagine. She will in turn pray for us.

I love you, Mom. Godspeed. And, you know, it kinda gives me another Sunday with you this year.

Sundays Not Quite with Mom

I went and saw a West Michigan Whitecaps baseball game with an old friend yesterday. As he lived roughly halfway between Detroit and Grand Rapids, I went as far as his place and we rode together from there. Naturally, then, I rode home on my own after we had returned to his house.

Almost as soon as I started back I saw a sign which told that the next right took you to Hell. That's right, there's a Hell, Michigan in Livingston County. There's also a Paradise, in Chippewa County in the glorious Upper Peninsula. Yes, you can go from Hell to Paradise without leaving my home state, which pretty well sums up Michigan.

I took the side trip. Although I've been there before, I had not driven through Hell since I took Mom there on a Sunday ride a few years ago. My Mother's been through Hell with me. 

With that, I'm opening up the floor. Give it your best shot, readers.

Almost Two Years

Mom's been gone coming up on two years now. It's amazing the silly things which pluck recollections from the back of your mind.

Yesterday I went to the pantry for napkins, just run of the mill white paper napkins, the last of a monstrous multi-pack I bought at a warehouse store in August 2022. I don't even understand why that came to mind, but there you are. I then immediately thought, Mom was with me when I bought these.

I'm not really super depressed, to be honest. Kind of melancholy, yes, and certainly sad. How in the world dinner napkins could bring something like that out, I don't know. But images of her being with me, holding onto the shopping cart for support, and all those other Sundays with Mom just came right out. I honestly find it just a little bit funny too, so it's not all bad. There's a sense of wonder why involved. 

Still, something as mundane as getting a napkin from the pantry has me missing her. So it goes.

Mom at 90

Mom would have been 90 today. I'm still not sure whether I've actually come to grips with it or not. It's been almost a year and a half, September 22, 2022, since she passed.

I'm heading out to the cemetery before work to say a few prayers. It reminds me of a cold winter Sunday a few years back where she wanted to stop and see Dad. After a few minutes of quiet contemplation she said out loud, "I love you, Bill, but I have to go. It's cold!"

I'm sure he understood. I'll come back by when its warmer myself Mom.

One Year

Mom has been gone a year today. It went a damned lot quicker than the first without Dad.

You figure you love each parent roughly equally, right? But the grief is different. I don't know why.

Maybe because she went so fast and so suddenly, I'm still shocked even after this much time. 

I haven't lost it over Mom yet. That bothers me. I remember a day in Hessel where I came completely unglued thinking about Dad being gone. Every 'first' without him I was on edge. With Mom, it was more like being in constant disbelief. I'm still stunned.

Life is nothing if not ironic, eh? I dreamed for several years of being on the road all the time with me Pops for work as he would grow into his eighties. I ended up spending more time on the road with Mom, on Sundays but other days, as it were. I actually smile at that thought. Perhaps I needed to appreciate her more. Mysterious ways.

Or not so mysterious. I love you, Mom. Be at peace.

Last Sale

Mom used to have regular yard sales. When I was a preteen and through high school, she would have two or three a year. With seven kids I imagine it was more necessary than I appreciated back then. But she seemed to enjoy them too.

I didn't. I didn't like helping to make the signs, nor going around hanging them on light poles through the neighborhood. I didn't care to put the stuff out or put it back afterwards. And I was certainly too much of a youngster to have any interest in dealing with the people who came by. Yard sales just weren't for me. But I did my part because, well, a son is supposed to help his Mom. Even if he's a tad surly about it.

This past Labor Day was our neighborhood wide yard sale, on a Sunday for whatever reason. My brothers decided to participate, and I helped them a little. At one point, standing to the side and seeing various knick knacks and furniture of Mom's sitting across the front yard of her house, it hit me that that would be the last yard sale there. And I thought, damn. Just, damn.

Phil and Mom

I wasn't the only one who took Mom for long drives. Me brother Phil did the most often, truth be told.

He recalls that Mom had her little sayings, catchphrases which would come up while they were tooling about.

There was one regular phrase whenever someone would speed past them on the freeway. Phil would be doing maybe five miles over the limit when a car would shoot by clearly way faster than the posted speeds. "Shoulda left earlier," Mom would always remark.

Indeed.

Mother's Day 2023

The other day I took the last coffee pod from a box of 80 and, for whatever reason, it popped into my head that Mom was with me when I bought those pods last August. I sighed heavily. Strange how something as mundane as wanting a cup of coffee can trigger such a reaction.

Now, don't feel too bad for me, as I don't really mean to create melancholy. Yes, there was a sadness when it happened just as there is now as I type. Yet it was and is followed by a kind of contentment. 

I was fortunate to have had the last several years of Sundays to ride her around, seeing the countryside, cruising through old neighborhoods, eating cheeseburgers, and even buying coffee. We owe our parents that respect. I was glad to have the chance, and there were many great rides and reminiscent talks along the way. Whatever else I do today, I think I'm having a cheeseburger for lunch, and maybe buy more coffee pods.

Happy Mother's Day Mom.

She Didn't Mean It

I did have to chastise Mom once. Mildly.

A few years back someone gave her a bunch of small, magnetic voice balloons. They looked exactly like what you see in a comic strip when the characters spoke: a cloud of sorts floating above their heads containing what they were saying. They held short sayings along the lines of "I Love You" "That's cool" and such on each one. Mom used the stickers to hold things like birthday cards and what not up on her metal kitchen cabinet doors.

Absently mindedly checking them out as I visited one day, I saw that the one she used on a holy card with Joseph and Mary, Jesus' mother and earthly father, said, "Go away!"

"Mom!" I teased her when I saw it. "Look what you have Mary saying!"

She got up from her chair and walked over to the cabinet. Putting her hand over her mouth to cover an embarrassed smile (or was it a teenage smirk?) she said, "Oh my. I'll have to change that!" 

Wholly inadvertent, but funny just the same.

Friday Funk

I keep a bottle of vitamin D tablets on my nightstand, because I'm supposed to take one every day and having it right there helps me to not forget. This morning I popped the last pill in my mouth, from a container which began as a bottle of 400. Then, holding the damned empty green plastic bottle in my hand, it jumped into my mind out of nowhere that I had Mom with me in a WalMart when I bought it. "Those'll last you a long time, I bet," she had remarked then.

Not nearly long enough.

Hitching a Ride

I'm not sure I ever told this on Mom. But if I did, humor me.

She hated being behind trucks, and so did I. She especially hated car haulers, I think because it can appear as the cars upon them looked like they could break off and come towards you. It can seem daunting in the regard, truth be told.

We were behind a single level car hauler one day which had an open space at the very back. "You gonna pass that thing?" Mom asked.

"Well," I replied, "I'm thinking I might race up towards it, then pull up hard on the steering wheel while you and me both lean back into our seats, and lift the front of the van up so we can jump onto the truck and get a free ride." Then I kind of chuckled.

Mom didn't respond. In fact, she appeared to be seriously thinking it over, considering the idea in her mind. Surely, I thought, she doesn't believe we could actually do it. 

Finally she said, "You know, as much as I would like to see that, I think we should just pass the truck today."

So we did. But I still can't make up my mind: was she serious, or did she play me really well?

A Man's House

Dark blue houses. They would trigger Mom. 

I can't tell you how often, driving through neighborhoods on Sundays, Mom would sneer at them. "You can tell a man lives there!" she'd scornfully lament. Well, uh, men, in theory anyway, have to live somewhere, Ma. And I never was sure what was wrong with dark blue.

Still, we would cruise around a few blocks, whatever town we were in, and invariably there'd be a dark blue house. "Ugh. That's a man's house. You can tell," Mom would assert with disdainfully.

Well, all right then. As you like it, Mom. As you like it.

Can't Forget

Virtually every day this past summer, whenever we were cruising through a wooded area, me Mom would say, "I bet this is pretty in the fall."

"We'll have to come back here then to see," I would reply, trying to remember exactly where we were so that I could retrace our steps come October.

We lost Mom September 22. 

I drove up to our place in Hessel a few days ago, in early October. The fall colors were in great display, it seemed, on every inch alongside the road. Can you imagine how difficult it was to not think of those short talks? Do you know how hard it was to not forget those exchanges?

Damned hard. That's how much.

Sundays Without Mom

I really don't intend to be at all melancholy here. Intellectually, I knew this day would come. Then too, I've already not had the previous two Sundays with Mom anyway. That's just how things happened to play out. So today is the first real Sunday where I will not be driving her around looking at neighborhoods, going to Ollie's or Rural King, and eating the inevitable cheeseburgers for lunch with a large Diet Coke with no, mind you, no ice. You better have gotten that right.

At first I really wasn't sure what to do with my Sundays without feeling in the dumps. Now I think I'm simply going to take the next few and consciously do things I would not have done with her anyway, all to gain distance from the idea that Sunday was my day with Mom. Today the Tigers play at Noon, their last home game of the year, so that's my choice this week. I'm going to the ballpark.

Interesting story. She liked to watch baseball on TV with me Pops but never cared for actually going to a game. She went to old Tiger Stadium once, with Dad and me brother Ed as I recall, and never would go back. Yet when we would pass Michigan and Trumbull, the storied 'corner' where the Stadium once sat, she would without fail decry the fact that apartments now stood where it had for almost a century. "I can't believe they tore down a place like Tiger Stadium for those ugly things!" she observed every time. I emphatically agreed.

One weekend soon I'll go up to Hessel a final time for the season. Another, I might get out the clubs and golf. I haven't swung a club since 2019. Some say I never usefully swung one before then; you don't need to be quiet about that Ron. The Ohio Cosgriffs will be up in a couple of weeks for a weekend of picking apples and buying Halloween pumpkins for Jack O'lanterns, so there's that. Henry Ford Museum is another target; I haven't been there in several years. By that point six, maybe seven weeks will have passed without a Sunday road trip. The spell, perhaps, shall be broken.

Still, every few weekends I may just trek out to Romeo or Plymouth, Ann Arbor or Adrian, and look at the old houses. Just to do it.

Mischief Makers

Allow me one more repeat today, then I'll try to be more original tomorrow. Quiet Ron. 

Me Mom gets very repetitive these days. That's understandable and we all just roll with it. There are times where she realizes herself that's she's doing it, repeating herself constantly.

While we were out yesterday she must have asked me a dozen times in the first half hour, "Are we going to eat?" After about the sixth time she paused and cackled, "I'm giving you are a hard time aren't I?" After another pause she added, "But it ain't like you never gave me a hard time growing up!"

"Nuh-uh, Mrs. Cosgriff, that were them other boys of yours giving you trouble!" I protested playfully. Understand here that I have four brothers.

Mom got quiet and commenced to staring at me out the corner of her sharpened eye. When she had stared at me for several seconds she responded simply, "I'm sure you done enough mischief on your own."

What could I say? Moms know those things.

Formal Farewell

It's been quite a journey for her. Mom first stepped foot into her house in December 1957 and left it last Thursday. In between was the Purgatory of raising her brood. Those siblings of mine could be quite a handful.

Today is the, well, not really the final farewell as every memory in the future will surely bring about a flood of emotion. We'll be saying so long for the rest of our lives. So perhaps this is the formal farewell. Fair enough.

Love you Mom. Sundays without putting 150 miles on the new old van will be something of an adjustment.

Playing Favorites

So long as I'm replaying favorites, here's another, from about a year ago.

Yesterday was a good day. I managed to find what I was looking for at Meijer, namely Old Spice deodorant. Regular old Old Spice, not all the hipster variations which seem to dominate the brand lately. What in the name of all that is good and holy is wolfbane anyway? 

With such a difficult time finding it, having actually found what I wanted I bought four. That should hold me for a minute. Quiet Ron.

Being Sunday of course me Mom was with me. As we rode along she remarked, "I am enjoying this! I like the ride and the company!" Then turning towards me she asked, jokingly, "Who are you?"

"I'm your favorite son," I answered. It's become a running joke between us really.

But she got me pretty good yesterday. "Well, if that's what it takes to get you through the day we'll say it."

Give her a rim shot. She earned it. 

Where Art Thou?

I spoke yesterday of taking me Mom through the neighborhoods of Romeo, Michigan a couple of Sundays ago. God bless her, her memory had been fading for a while. She asked constantly, "Now where are we?"

"Romeo," I'd answer.

Mom would nod that she understood, then she'd smile broadly and recite happily, "Romeo, Romeo, where art thou Romeo?" This happened about every five minutes the entire hour or so we cruised Romeo's streets. I could have told her a different city, but then she'd surely ask, "Isn't this Romeo?" because that's what happens, right? I didn't feel I ought to play games with her like that anyway.

Still, things quickly reached the point where I thought, "If I hear Romeo, Romeo, just one more time I swear I'll, I'll..."

...I'll do absolutely nothing but chuckle at it again. Just like I am right now.

Ella Cosgriff

My mother, Ella Cosgriff, passed away suddenly yesterday. No matter how much you see it on the horizon, you can't quite grasp what's happened when it finally does arrive, eh?

I took her out most Sundays. She loved driving through neighborhoods and seeing the houses. Consequently, I tried to find areas she would enjoy. One of them was Romeo, Michigan. It has a lot of historic homes.

The last Sunday I took her out was to there. I wasn't sure I wanted to; it was nothing but feeling lazy. It's about 35 miles north of Detroit; not a terrible drive but a bit of one. I considered waiting for October to see the fall colors and the Halloween decorations. Romeo, Tillson Street in particular, really does itself up for October 31st, and she enjoyed it immensely last year.

Ah, take her to Romeo, Marty. You can come back next month for all of that other stuff, a voice told me. So we went to Romeo, and she loved it. Mom always liked the older wooden clapboard homes. 

I have to say I'm glad I listened to that little voice which had been encouraging me. If there had to be a last Sunday with Mom, that was a great place for it.