See, I commute every week to go help my mother, who lives by herself one state over and, after being treated for cancer and a staph infection, recently went on hospice -- meaning I spend more of my time being a caretaker than a newlywed these days. Driving back and forth nearly 500 miles to her house each week is what I do in lieu of my real job in marketing and PR. Instead of sitting in a gorgeous office in the city with creative and fun work friends, I sit at my mom's kitchen table and play-scold the dog and cats about what lovable nuisances they are. Instead of brainstorming ideas for clients during the work week, I'm brainstorming what food my mom might be able to keep down and lamenting the fact that she, a master chef of all Southern cuisine, barely {though not maliciously} taught me how to boil water! Instead of trying to coax my husband to our bed, I'm doing everything in my power to drag my mother out of hers. Instead of mixing us up a couple of vanilla mojitos in the evening, I'm measuring out morphine and doling out Ativan. And most pertinently, instead of humoring all three of you readers on THIS blog, I'm updating my mom's small army on her widely-read Caring Bridge site.
Lest you ever doubt it for a second -- despite the stress-induced acid reflux, despite the fact that my 2007 tailbone fracture has come back to haunt me in ways you don't even want to know from so much time in the car, despite the sadness of what this transition will mean, despite missing my husband and my DIRTY home and wishing our first few months of marriage were "NORMAL" like everyone else's, despite these and so many, many, many other things -- I'm happy I can do this for my mom. She has forever been so AWESOME to me, and I know I will have countless days to spend with my own family when she is no longer here. I'm so grateful for this chance to pay homage to my wonderful mom, a woman who always loves me no matter what --- but who would never have allowed good bacon grease like this go to waste.
