May 24th is coming, which is my Mom’s birthday. \u00a0I would wait to write this until then, but I know that May is going to be a very busy month for me. \u00a0If I’m going to write about my Mom, I should do it now while I have the time and the strength of mind to do this properly.<\/p>\n
My entire life, I knew I was adopted. \u00a0They never made that a secret. \u00a0Until my early teens, I didn’t know anything about my biological parents, and I didn’t really care. \u00a0I had parents that loved me. \u00a0They made it clear that I was special. \u00a0That I was\u00a0chosen<\/em>. \u00a0I felt loved and spoiled, and that was enough.<\/p>\n In my teen years, I acted out a little. \u00a0I didn’t show proper respect. \u00a0I didn’t clean my room when asked. \u00a0Honestly,\u00a0my teenage rebellion was exceptionally mild.<\/p>\n But I did have a smart mouth. \u00a0Upset with the way I was talking back, my Mom decided to drop an ounce of truth on me. \u00a0She let me know that my biological mother was alive, she knew who she was, and that maybe I should be a little more thankful for the family I had.<\/p>\n My Dad was not present for this conversation. \u00a0I don’t think he would have let it get that far.<\/p>\n Knowing that my biological mother was out there did not do good things for me. \u00a0But\u00a0I’m not writing this to talk about me, or the psychological stress of holding onto that particular truth. \u00a0I’m writing this to paint a picture of what my Mom was like.<\/p>\n She loved her children, but she was careless with them. \u00a0She said things and did things\u00a0that were outright brutal, not realizing what sort of effect her words would have. \u00a0The\u00a0flaws in her humanity expressed most with regards to her children, of which she had many. \u00a0All of them left her before they finished High School, except me. \u00a0The youngest. \u00a0Maybe she had mellowed by the time I was born.<\/p>\n I’m not writing this to bash her. \u00a0I would be a really terrible person to besmirch her character all these years after her death. \u00a0My words are meant to paint a realistic picture, revealing some of the flaws, so that the beauty she did possess can be appreciated.<\/p>\n My Dad died October 31, 1988. \u00a0It is easy for me to remember the date, because it was Halloween. \u00a0I can remember the year, because he’d been present when I bowled my first 200 game on October 10, 1987, the day after 10-9-87. \u00a0He’d been a part of a special moment for me, and he died a year later. \u00a0It gives me an easy way to remember.<\/p>\n Shortly after my Dad’s death, my Mom left her stable job at the Medford Medical Center\u00a0and became a consultant. \u00a0She traveled all over the country, working in different hospitals. \u00a0It was like I’d lost both parents, that year.<\/p>\n Again, this isn’t about me, and it’s not about my Dad. \u00a0This is about my Mom. \u00a0On the face of it, I thought my Mom had chosen to leave the job in Medford, and had chosen to go off without me. \u00a0I’d been fighting with my Mom, so it didn’t hurt my feelings at the time. \u00a0I wasn’t quite 16, and I wasn’t ready to take care of myself. \u00a0I didn’t have the skills to deal with the responsibility. \u00a0I didn’t think well of my Mom for leaving me, but I also\u00a0didn’t hold it against her.<\/p>\n Many years later,\u00a0I found out that she hadn’t left Medford by choice. \u00a0She’d been fired. \u00a0Going to work every day, walking within sight of the place where her husband had died, she hadn’t been able to work effectively. \u00a0They let her go, and she shouldered on. \u00a0She didn’t burden me with that ugly truth. \u00a0A decade after her death, I discovered the truth in one of her old briefcases.<\/p>\n I know pride played a part in her keeping that secret. \u00a0But I also know that she tried\u00a0to protect me. \u00a0This is an\u00a0example of the kind of strength she possessed. \u00a0She took the pain of the death of her husband, and the pain of losing a job, and she kept it away from me. \u00a0She shielded me from her pain. \u00a0If she had someone else to talk to, someone to help her deal with what she’d gone through, I don’t know who it would be. \u00a0To my knowledge, she took it all on herself and pushed on.<\/p>\n I grew up, and I grew more distant with my Mom. \u00a0At one point, I had to move back in with her in Sacramento. \u00a0She tried to “mother” me when I moved in with her, and I rejected it. \u00a0I walked away from her a lot. \u00a0I was 19, and had spent enough time on my own that I couldn’t appreciate her trying to take care of me like that. \u00a0It was at this point that I started to learn how to block her. \u00a0I learned that if I rejected her help and her gifts, she couldn’t use those things\u00a0to guilt me into doing what she wanted. \u00a0I began to make it a habit to reject things from her, no matter how much I may have needed her help.<\/p>\n In 1993, I left Sacramento for the second time, joining the Air Force. \u00a0In 1995, I married Melissa. \u00a0In 1996, Bryanna was born. \u00a0In 1998, Chris was born. \u00a01999, I returned to Sacramento, got a job in IT, and bought a home.<\/p>\n By that time, my Mom lived in San Bernardino. \u00a0She’d had health problems all the time I’d been in the Air Force. \u00a0She had an addiction to prescription medication. \u00a0She had suffered through angina, tuberculosis, and towards the end, a minor heart attack. \u00a0The last place she lived was an assisted living home in Riverside. \u00a0At one point, she’d been in the hospital so long that I’d needed to go down to Southern California and pay her bills, and get her household in order.<\/p>\n At the end of 2001, the hospital she’d been in for months transferred her to what was effectively a retirement hospital. \u00a0They gave her a different doctor. \u00a0She had bed sores, from being in bed so long. \u00a0She was weak, and often drugged, and she didn’t have anyone stopping by to visit her.<\/p>\n Melissa and I went to her. \u00a0I started to see something in myself when I looked at her, but it wasn’t clear. \u00a0Not yet. \u00a0She saw me, and she smiled. \u00a0She was so happy to see me.<\/p>\n Melissa and I made plans. \u00a0She would never go back to her assisted living home, so we needed to close that out. \u00a0We rented a truck, packed her things, and started moving her to Sacramento. \u00a0We’d find a place for her there. \u00a0We’d make sure she was close to family. \u00a0We’d take care of her.<\/p>\n The hardest part of moving her stuff to Sacramento was gathering her cats. \u00a0One came along easily enough, but Max was a terror. \u00a0When my Mom had her heart attack, Max protected her, intimidating the firemen that came to help her. \u00a0Max, the big white cat without claws, was a problem. \u00a0I wound up putting on oven mitts and a jacket as armor to grab him up. \u00a0We put him in the cat carrier, put the cat carrier in my Mom’s old car, and started driving to Sacramento.<\/p>\n I didn’t see my Mom again. \u00a0While driving north on I-5, my Mom’s condition worsened. \u00a0She died before we had a chance to go back.<\/p>\n My Mom was a hard woman. \u00a0She was about\u00a05’6″, but her presence made her seem at least 6’1″. \u00a0People always swore that she was a tall woman.<\/p>\n My Mom was fiercely competitive. \u00a0It’s a quality that I share with her, often to my detriment. \u00a0She used to play Scrabble with me, with her 40 years of experience and vocabulary. \u00a0She’d crush me, then\u00a0cackle. \u00a0To this day, I still don’t like to play Scrabble.<\/p>\n The Summer after my Dad died, I traveled with my Mom to Washington D.C. where she had a contract. \u00a0I stayed in the hotel most of that summer, played on my computer, wrote stories, and she worked.<\/p>\n We drove across the country to get there. \u00a0My Mom talked while she drove. \u00a0At one point, about a day away from Indiana where we’d meet up with her oldest daughter, Helen, she started talking about family history. \u00a0She wasn’t really thinking as she spoke. \u00a0It had started with her talking about Helen and her children, then went on to Sue and Ginger. \u00a0But she kept going. \u00a0She talked about Leslie, and how Leslie had been pregnant in 1972. \u00a0Leslie, that I had met a couple of times, but didn’t really know. \u00a0Leslie, that had two daughters that were younger than me, but no children that were my age.<\/p>\n I put the pieces together. \u00a0Leslie had to be my biological mother. \u00a0After meeting Helen, I took her aside and put the question to her. \u00a0I didn’t mean to put her on the spot, but I didn’t really have a choice. \u00a0She handled it well. \u00a0She told me, yes, she thought Leslie was my biological mother.<\/p>\n I have complicated familial ties. \u00a0Cheryl is my sister, though she’d biologically be my aunt. \u00a0Then there is Jennifer, that is my biological sister. \u00a0She needs a brother way more than she needs an uncle, so I think of her as my sister, too.<\/p>\n Then there is Helen, Sue, and Ginger. \u00a0Helen is awesome. \u00a0I don’t know Sue very well, but she seems nice. \u00a0Ginger seems to hate me. \u00a0Are they my sisters, or are they my aunts? \u00a0I think of Helen as my sister, but I’ll leave the actual relationship to them. \u00a0It doesn’t have to be complicated, to me. \u00a0They’re family, and that’s enough for me.<\/p>\n Again, this is about my Mom. \u00a0Ginger and Sue recently asked about how\u00a0my Mom died, and I didn’t\u00a0have good details. \u00a0When my Mom died,\u00a0I’d been in the process of making sure that she wouldn’t die alone. \u00a0Yet\u00a0that’s exactly what happened. \u00a0She’d been a hard person to get along with, and in the end, when she needed someone to be there and help keep an incompetent doctor from screwing up, no one saved her.<\/p>\n My Mom loved bowling, greasy food, and cigarettes. \u00a0She didn’t exercise. \u00a0She had high blood pressure, and was on blood pressure medication most of my life. \u00a0Her doctor should never have taken her off her blood pressure medication, but he did. \u00a0Consequently, her blood pressure got out of control, her condition destabilized after spending most of a year in a hospital, and she died without any of her many children around.<\/p>\n My Mom died in January, 2002. \u00a0I can never remember if it was January 11th or January 12th. \u00a0There is no cool memory trick for me to use. \u00a0I don’t have a great memory to draw upon to provide a reminder, the way I have with my father.<\/p>\n My Mom died before I learned to\u00a0be a good son to her. \u00a0That’s something I will have to live with and learn from the rest of my life.<\/p>\n It’s a bit of a downer, but that’s the true, abridged story of my life with my Mom, Evajean Buhl. \u00a0She loved her children, but she didn’t know how to show it in a way that didn’t push them away. \u00a0I can trace all of my hard edges to her. \u00a0My stubbornness. \u00a0My competitive drive. \u00a0My strength of will. \u00a0For better or worse, I learned those things from her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" May 24th is coming, which is my Mom’s birthday. \u00a0I would wait to write this until then, but I know that May is going to be a very busy month for me. \u00a0If I’m going to write about my Mom, I should do it now while I have the time and the strength of mind 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