Dorothy Schultz, "mom" to me since 1952, wnen my own mother died, has passed away. She went to a care home because her Parkinson's suddenly advanced and her husband David could no longer care for her. They brought her back home after 5 days with help from hospice nurses. She passed away Thursday morning, at home, in the same house I left in 1962, with David and her 50 year old child like adopted son David with her. She actually died Thursday and her husband didn't call me because he thought I said "I didn't want to be bothered". For pete's sake. All I said to him was that I wouldn't be able to cancel my trip so I hoped she didn't die while I was gone. I only found out because I was calling and checking in. If I had returned from Thailand and discovered she had been dead a month I would have been furious.
I won't be at the funeral. Maybe that's why he didn't call. He knew I wouldn't come. He is doing some of the guilting thing for sure, but to be expected since he is hurting. I will be sending flowers for "mom" and a written something that David will have read for me.
At the moment I feel completely out of touch with any feelings I may have about this, but they do come in here and there. I learned over the years that many women have relationships with their mothers similar to the relationship that I had with Dorothy, it often has nothing to do with the genetic thing as I used to think. I know what it is to love my children, I know how that feels for me. I know Dorothy thought she loved me and mine as much as she would have loved us had we all been her blood. I believe that, it was just her own way of loving that I never understood. So many people of that era were so damaged. I did forgive her a long time ago, and she said she forgave me. I know I hurt her horribly, and disappointed her over and over again. She never really had a clue why. I had the benefit of therapy, she only had the benefit of her church and her religeon. I was the lucky one there.
Well, enough of all that. At least I am beginning to see that I might actually have some feelings here and that is a good thing. I will be leaving for San Francisco in the morning, and then for Thailand Monday morning. Mo is here and I am glad. Life just does what it is going to do and people come and people go. I guess what I feel most is the deep awareness that stories happen and those stories have a beginning and an end. But maybe not really. I know Melody and her story with Donna certainly hasn't ended. Our family story with Goggie will live as long as any of us who knew her will live. The Dorothy story is such a huge part of the bigger saga, the whole Connie, Evelyn, Bob, and "the Bentz's". In any life there are so many layers of overlapping stories that I wonder at the relevance of any of them. We are not our story, and yet....who in the hell would we be, really, without out story.
Dorothy is a huge part of my story.
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