Ashes to Ashes

I thought long and hard about this particular subject and by all means I don't mean any disrespect, nor am I dwelling on the past. My mother's death anniversary is coming up this August. For this reason I've always had a love/hate relationship with the summer. The summer is suppose to be a nice break that is fun and relaxing, but the summer of 1989 was just pure hell. It's going to be 20 years this year which means I have lived three quarters of my life without her. It's crazy to know someone for a short amount of time but have a tremendous amount of love for them. It might be all coincidence, but around this time every summer I get sick.

Side Note: ** There was a point to this post and now I don't quite remember. I wanted to be funny and joke about the fact that I have my mom's ashes and instead of being the crazy cat lady, I'm the crazy girl with her mom's ashes.

A few months ago I went to San Diego to visit my grandmother. It had been a long time since I saw my grandma so I was overdue for a visit. Catching up with my grandma is always an experience. She is over 80 years old and is so vibrant and animated. Our talk got a little more serious and she said that she wanted me to take my mom's ashes home cause she was getting old and needed someone to take care of it. First off, my grandma isn't one of those weird ladies that stuffs her pet or anything like that. The story is more complicated and her apartment was the safest place to keep the ashes until we as a family decided what to do with them. When my mom died my grandmother flew my mom's ashes to the Philippines. My grandma wanted my mom's sisters to have a place to visit since they weren't with her when she passed. The ashes were to be buried on a plot that my mom's eldest sister owned. A few years later one of my aunts called my grandmother to tell her that my mom's ashes were taken out of the ground and the urn was ruined. She managed to take what she could, but there wasn't much left. My mom's eldest sister sold the plot for reasons I won't get into, and the new owners destroyed the grave stone and removed my mom's ashes and left it on the side. To make a long story short, the ashes have a new urn or box thing that I have.

From time to time I look at the urn/box thing and think that a huge part of my heart is in that box. I often wonder if I would be better not knowing and experiencing that kind of love and pain. I don't think I would be who I am today (not that I'm anyone special) not having gone through the experience of losing someone that I loved more than life itself.

Side Note #2: ** Two long paragraphs later, I still don't know where this is going.... hmmmm

Any who, tada.... sad story over. As one of my friends use to say to me with my random stories: "nice story, goober".