Saturday, Feb. 23, 2008 - 10:14 am

My Mom’s Aunt Loretta called me out of the blue Thursday night. I didn’t know the number so I didn’t answer. She left a message and when someone calls unexpectedly like that, I always figure that someone has died or something. Then I got this overwhelming feeling of dread and unease, even worse than the feeling that someone might have died. A thought came to me of the possibility of Dave or Dan (Moron Twin “Uncles” From Hell) getting in touch with Loretta for whatever selfish reasons and finding out my number or where I live. I was reluctant to call back even though out of all of my Mom’s crazy family, I actually like Loretta. Funny, the rest of her crazy family DOESN’T like her and Uncle Harry (who is their brother). But I do.

ANYWAY…

I called her back and it wasn’t bad news, she was just thinking about me because she hadn’t heard from me in a long time and she saw a musician/singer girl from around here named Amy Davis on American Idol. She plays in clubs around here all the time and I know some of the guys in her band. Amy Davis was also my Nana’s name. So Loretta was watching American Idol and was thinking about me and said her whole family was wondering if this girl on tv could be related to us (she's not) and thinking that maybe Dave or Dan had gotten married and had a daughter or something. I told her that Dave had all boys and that Dan had never married or had kids and, thankfully, that was the end of that part of our conversation.

When I first moved back here I stopped by the farm stand Loretta's family owns here in town to see her but I haven’t been back. I have no excuses really, so I’m going to try and be better about it.

My Mom’s Uncle Harry is 81 now and has emphysema and the beginnings of lung disease so he’s not doing so well, but he still sounded very spunky on the phone. He even teased me about not remembering how to tie a tie. He tried to teach me at his house after Nana’s wake. I had forgotten about that, but he hadn’t. He laughed at me until he coughed when I told him that I had to run two houses down the street to my neighbors house and ask Mr. Huzzie to tie my tie for my Halloween costume a few years ago.

I guess I didn't talk to Harry and Loretta about this after it happened or when I stopped by the stand to see her once I’d moved home, but I told Aunt Loretta about Harry’s sister Patty trying to trick me into giving her some of Nana and Mom’s more valuable stuff by telling me that they had promised it to her and how she had tried to guilt me for not calling her personally when I lost my Mom. Loretta was mad. She asked if I knew where Dave and Dan were and I told her I didn’t care and she said ‘good’. Then I told her what I DID send Patty and she laughed and laughed.

Patty insisted that my Nana had promised her a collection of this stuff called milk glass. (I collect carnival glass, Nana collected milk glass.) I guess it’s pretty valuable, I had no idea. But that’s not really the point. After Nana’s wake I was sitting in her house on her couch listening while Patty told my Mom that she was promised Nana's milk glass collection. The entire time my Mom calmly stared at Patty with an uncharacteristically cold smile on her face. When Patty was done with her pitch, my Mom just walked away. I could tell she was furious but was trying to be the bigger person on a really rough day.

Three years later Patty calls to YELL at me for sending her a card instead of calling her personally to notify her of my Mom's death. I had called a couple other members of Mom's family and had hoped and assumed they would tell the rest…I was wrong. They don’t even like to talk to each other.

Patty started right in on me telling me that at Nana’s wake my Mom had promised her the milk glass collection and asked me if I had it. (!!!)

I chose NOT to be the bigger person and told her that NO ONE had promised her anything and that Nana wouldn't have promised her the milk glass because she had sold it over 5 years ago to pay the taxes on her house. Without taking a breath, I slid into a tirade about how I personally called all the people my Mom talked about and cared about and who kept in touch with her and Patty’s name never once came up. She tried to tell me that she and my Mom were so very close. I felt the need to correct this oversight and said ‘No Patty, my Mom and I were close and if you were a part of her life, I’d have known you and I don’t’. I also felt the need to gently reminded Patty that I had just lost the single most important person in my world and she would have to excuse me if I had not gotten around to a minor task or two while taking care of every single major arrangement and detail all by myself.

Her tone changed yet she still had the audacity to say that she just wanted to have something of my Mom’s under the guise of sentiment. I told her I’d see what I could do and hung up.

I went through my Mom’s room and collected all of the crap that people had made for her or had given her that she never used or didn’t like but was too damn nice to re-gift or throw away and I packed it up in a big box and I sent it to her Aunt Patty.

I never heard from her again. No thank you, no what the hell were you thinking, nothing.

And I’m okay with that.

If you were close to my Mom or even if you had only been to the house a couple of times, you probably have something of hers. She was just that way. If she thought you would like something, she’d buy it and surprise you with it. If you had expressed that you liked one of her belongings, she had probably given it to you or she went and found one just like it to make sure that you had one too.

Kim used to wear a silver spoon ring on her thumb every day that my Mom had given her when we were very little. Heidi has a set of her dishes in a china cabinet in her lovely dining room. She also has many cards and letters because, outside of my friendship with Heidi, they had created one their own. Amy has a couple pieces of jewelry and a drawing my Mom made for her and she also has cards, letters and I believe some stuffed animals too.

My Mom's best friend Chris has a house full of things that remind us of my Mom. She has pictures, knick-knacks, plants, blanket throws. Look around, there's my Mom. I made sure that I gave Chris things that I know my Mom would have wanted her to have. Important and meaningful things, because Chris deserves them. She never cared about the monetary worth of the items, she only cared about them because they had belonged to her best friend and that's all.

If you even remotely knew my Mom, all she wanted was to make you smile and it made her feel good to give little ‘for nothing’ presents and send written thoughts to let you know she was always thinking of you.

Mom is still giving presents. Sometimes I will find something of hers that I have kept. Probably not really knowing why, until I find it again and someone pops into my head and I know that I had been keeping it for them this whole time. There are people who are very important to me now that will never have the opportunity to meet my Mom, yet they know her and even love her through me.

I took the long way around making the simple point that if Patty actually had been a part of my Mom's life at all...she would have already had something from her heart.

Where I've Been. - What's Next.