Some Frozen Peeps and Melancholy Memories...

I spent the last week with my dad. Every 6 months or so, he has an appointment to get his bladder scoped to make sure that the cancer that they removed from there a few years back is still gone. So, I go out to the beautiful town of Mesquite for a week or so, every 6 months and we take a trip to St. George, UT and he gets himself some really good pharmaceuticals that make him pretty much not give a crap that he's getting a rather thick tube stuck into and far up an organ that is not used to having anything solid in it and that usually everything that does pass through it is goin' the other way. Of course, a major upside to this is the trip back to Mesquite, which may be possibly the only time I can drive a car with my Dad in the passenger seat in complete, blissful silence is when he's completely zonked out from the drugs he gets at that doctors office.

The rest of my days I spend helping him do things like go to Vegas and get his SUV serviced, or get him up to speed on cool computer-related stuff like Facebook. Then there's the 2 or 3 obligatory visits to the local casino, where my father proceeds to (inadvertently) make me feel like a total teetotalling buzz kill. I believe I can say that the producers of Miller Genuine Draft owe my father and his indefatiguable liver a debt of gratitute, since that's his cocktail of choice. He says it tastes as good 10 or 12 beers into a night as it does when he takes his first sip. I'm not entirely sure that's a compliment, as, after I had a sip, ran to spit it out and complained loudly that it tasted like swill... but apparently consistent tasting swill, no matter how much of it one drinks.

I found out this trip that I have my mother's "pissed off look." Apparently, it's eerily similar, at least, according to my father. He and I had eaten a late breakfast at the little cafe at the casino and when we came out, he asked if he could stay a bit and play video poker, and I was cool with that, as it gave me the opportunity to go get a few grocery items I'd been craving, and tool around the really pretty town where he lives. So, I left him there around noon, and came back around 3 pm to see if he was ready to head back. He pointed to the $800+ jackpot over the poker machines and said that it usually never gets this high and was ripe to be won. I resisted rolling my eyes, and headed back home, where I watched a movie and made myself a sandwich. At 5:30 pm, I went back down and asked again, and he got mad and said that I shouldn't tell him what to do and to go back to the condo and that he'd call when he was ready.

Yeah... that probably wasn't the right thing to say to me, and apparently that's when he really focused on my face and saw that I am also the child of his wife. My mother (God rest her soul) would have probably given him the look I had on my face just then, right before she grabbed him by his neck and frog marched his drunken butt out of the casino. The look on my face had people making a concerted effort to get the hell out of my way as I exited the casino. I got back home and called my sister and told her what had happened and, ever so sympathetically, she said, "HA! Better you than me!" When I got off the phone, my cell beeped its voicemail message alert and I realized I'd missed a call, and lo and behold, it was from my Dad. He said he'd be heading back up presently and that he was sorry I was really pissed...

I decided not to pick at it anymore, and when he got home, I let him twiddle nervously around the condo for a bit before asking how he made out (purposefully leaving out the words "in the 6 hours you spent in the casino" from the sentence.) He shrugged non-committally so I assume he didn't win anything. Casinos are funny like that... most people don't win, no matter how ripe the jackpot is. Casinos epitomize the despair.com saying, "For every winner there are dozens of losers, odds are you're one of them." Also, my Dad tends not to understand the concept of walking away while ahead. I went down with him on Sunday and played the slots, and won $80.00 (I started with $20.). I saw that the machine had gone cold and just stood up and left. My father thinks I don't know how to gamble. I think I've got a good grasp on it, tho,ugh which is why I don't do it often.

This morning (Friday), I was getting my stuff packed up for my Saturday trip back to NC, when I mentioned to Dad that I'd had a bit of a sad time at Wal-Mart on Monday. I had gone in there to get a prescription filled and noticed that they had the front aisles set up with candy for Halloween. When I'd visited in March, my Mom and Dad and I had gone there to get her some new lenses for her glasses and, after accidentally losing my father in the women's clothing section of the store, she asked me to take her, in her wheelchair, down those aisles (they were set up for Easter at the time), so she could get some marshmallow peeps. As I stook there waiting for my prescription, I could almost close my eyes and hear what she said to me on that day as clearly as anything. It made me rather sad, made me really miss my Mom, and it seems odd, to get such a strong memory in (of all places) Wal-Mart and over something as silly and insignificant as peeps.

After I told Dad that, I went to my room and called John to see how his day went, and as I talked, Dad came in and set a box of peeps on my stomach. He smiled and said he still had all of the packs of peeps we'd bought that day in the freezer. My mom loved them, but after her blood sugar started to get too high when the hospice lady checked it, she was rationed to 1 or 2 peeps a day, so apparently there's a ton of peeps in the bottom of the freezer.

Now, as I walk around the condo, I just need to stop and close my eyes and I can almost see Mom as she was in March, sitting in her wheelchair next to the dining table and doing crosswords with my Dad, or laying in her hospital bed next to the big bed in their bedroom where I was laying as she talked with me about how I shouldn't be sad, since she had to go sometime, right?

It's not all sad memories though, I remember the good time I had driving with Mom and Dad as I helped them move across the country 5 years ago, and going to Mt. Zion with Mom, Dad and John just a few years ago, walking through that beautiful park and then stopping afterward to get some souvenirs at the shops in a nearby town.

I sit here typing in this melancholy missive and think, "There's not much that I wouldn't give to just have her back healthy and happy so I could tell her how much I love her and how important she is to me and how I wished I'd said that kind of stuff more often." Then I close my eyes and remember her laying in bed, looking up and me holding my hand the last time I was here as she talked to me about being sad if she died and I think that she already knew.

-BK