I want my momma back

Allison said, simply, "write it out."

Yes. That's what I do. It's who I am. If I grok anything, it is writing.

I want my momma back. Over the past 48 hours I have no idea how many times I have thought that, whispered it, said it or screamed it to the cosmos. I want my momma back. As Lori said, I am rolling back the years to when I was just a tot and got hurt. I want my momma!

I think this would all be easier to bear if I'd been with there in her last moments of this corporeal existence. The last time I saw her in person was the Thursday before the wreck.

I spoke to her in the hospital and the rehab center she went to afterward. Never got to see her in person. The last thing - correction. NEXT to last thing I actually did for her was to take her two burgers from Checkers - she loved those hamburgers - and two bags of veggie straws. That was at the nursing home. Her brother, Buddy, let me know she got them.

I want my momma back.

The last thing I did for her was to tell the doctors to let her go. She was emphatic about not staying on life support.

"I'm not afraid of dying," she said some years ago. "I'm not ready to."

When doctors at the hospital discussed putting her on a ventilator, she said yes because "There are some things I still want to do."

One of those things was to see her granddaughter marry a good man.

The others, not entirely sure what they were.

I want my momma back.

When I saw her, she'd often complain about the arthritis pain. Some nights she just sat in her recliner and cried from the pain.

I found source for marijuana edibles and got her some. I still wonder what Dad would think of that, considering how much he hated that plant. He literally threatened to kill people if they ever gave me marijuana. Eh. Mom and Dad got divorced when I was a teenager. He died when I was 18 so he really doesn't matter, except in my mind.

She said she'd eat some and then sleep.

That's not a problem, I replied, happy that she was able to sleep. I know what it is like to have so much pain that sleep will not come. If she poked government in the eye, munched an edible and slept, awesome.

She had to sleep in a recliner. She couldn't lay flat on her back. She tried that and, well, she was barely able to make a phone call for help the next morning. Aunt Jeanne called me as that's who Mom called. She described Mom as speaking very slurred, confused and obviously in distress.

Aunt Jeanne also called the Tift County 911 and they sent out an ambulance and a deputy. They had to break a window in the door to get into the house. After that, we made arrangements.

One of the arrangements was an emergency call system. She wore the button on a chain around her neck. She used it too. Several times. Each time the paramedics came and picked her up, she said. "I'm not a frequent flier." FF is the term used, back when she worked in Florida as an EMS grant administrator, to describe people who called an ambulance regularly to go to the emergency room without an emergency.

She also refused to go to the ER each time paramedics lifted her from the floor.

The last time she fell, the ambulance crew said if she fell again within a week she WAS going to the ER.

I still want my momma back.

I hear what many of you are saying.

She's at peace.

No pain.

A better place.

I truly appreciate the sentiments behind those words, words which I have used myself in speaking to others in their time of loss. I've even tried to use them on myself over the past 2 days.

To say they ring hollow is an injustice, an insult to those who are reaching out as best they can to comfort me.

But, dammit, part of me does believe they do ring hollow. My momma is gone, I want to scream.

I want my momma back.

I have to explain that comment, to me if no one else. I am in the midst of a hurricane of emotions because of the situation. This confuses me and sometimes angers me. I was in my late 40s when a professional finally delivered an official diagnosis of something so many other people have seen but didn't quite understand. I am a very high functioning autistic. I simply don't get things. I can't. It's hard wired into me. When I get into intense things like this, it confuses, angers and scares me, which makes matters worse. I have to find a way to let the storm play out. I am also a kind of solipsist. In situations like this, yeah, it makes matters that much rougher on me. I need to write. I need to hunt. I need to fish. That's how I slowly peel away the layers of stress and discomfort until I'm back to my normal.

So, when I want to scream I want my momma back, part of me does not understand why other people can't feel my loss as intently as I do. This brings anger. I know other people can't experience exactly what I am going through, even others who have lost their parents, like Michael, who called me Sunday to talk. I know this is an individual and highly personalized walk. No one can take it for me. No one can carry me. No one can force me. I have to do it myself.

Part of me does understand it because they went through the same thing. Shag is. People all over the world right now are going through it. You could not find a difference between their pain and mine if you got down to the quantum level.

Reconciling the two ain't going to happen.

I scream. I cry. I take a towel and smash my face into it so I can howl as loudly as I need to and no one will hear.

Yassee, someone would try to bring me comfort. Someone would try to come share my pain, my grief and my agony.

I don't want that. I want my momma back.

I don't want anyone to hurt because of me. Rather, I want to take the pain from other people. Then, let me bear my pain until it becomes an old frienemy like the back and knee pain I've dealt with for so many years.

And yet, I need that support. I need because I know I won't make it alone. Those of you who are offering support, you are the bulwarks against which I rest when I am too overwhelmed to continue. I can find solace in your support. I truly do. It has stunned me at times.

Ben Baker, not me, another one and one of the Fraternal Order of Ben Bakers (yes, a real group; we have brothers all over the planet) reached out to me and wants to send flowers. I barely knew how to react when he offered I was so stunned.

Others have called, messaged, come to see me. So many have said, "If you need me, I'm on the way."

And I still want my momma back.

People have come to me and said they cried at the news. They read my first post about her and cried. This is comfort to me; misery, after all, loves company. A more diplomatic way of saying the same thing is: a burden shared is lighter.

Thank you for trying to take some of the load from me. I feel you lifting. I feel your strength and it renews mine.

This is another time when words fail me. They are so inadequate for the task at hand. Yet they are what I have. I try to forge coherency from a stream of loose ideas on an anvil of language then quench and temper them in a stream of consciousness that flows at light speed and ... I fail. Iron cannot be gold and lead cannot be silver.

Like the little drummer boy, this is all I have. This is the best I have.

Thank you.