THIS IS JUNE 6TH

Today is June 6, 2006. Some folks are associating the date with 666. Come on people! Enough with the Da Vinci Code, numerology, Revelations crap. IT DOESN'T WORK! IT IS A POINTLESS EXERCISE IN VANITY! Ahem.

Anyway. Today is the 62nd anniversary of D-Day. What an incredible horror that must have been for those poor soldiers. I can not even imagine it.

Today is also my mother's birthday. If she were alive, she would be 74 years old. I can only imagine what she would look like. White hair, maybe dyed blonde but certainly styled, and slim as always. A little frail but still active and dancing and socializing. But in my mind's eye, she will forever be my mom from when I was a teenager. Tall, slim and blonde. Smoking, slightly profane, and funny. Wearing those cat eye glasses with painted on eyebrows and drinking a cold beer of an evening. I miss her so much. Still. Even after 32 years.

She must have been so unhappy, so depressed, so extremely without hope to have taken that overdose of pills chased down with liquor. To have planned it the way she did in order to have the time alone to accomplish the deed. To leave not only me but my seven year old brother and two older brothers without her. For many years I blamed myself. I should have seen some sign - I should have been a better daughter - I should have done something differently. I was in my thirties before I could admit how angry I was with her for leaving us. Me. I needed her. It was also at that time that I was able to view my parents as just plain, regular people, and not some bigger than life, sacred icons - MOMMY and DADDY writ large. The towering presence that SEES ALL and is PERFECT. They were, after all, just people like me, dealing with their own demons and doing the best they could. Still, I wish she hadn't done it. I wish she were here now so that I could call her or visit and hear her voice and laughter. (Wish in one hand and crap in the other - see which one gets fuller, faster.)

I still grieve for her and all of the 'what might have been.' I love you, mommy, but I know you are okay.

I , too, am okay. I turned out pretty well, all things considered. (All of your kids did. You'd be proud.) I sought help when my depression was urging me to follow in your footsteps to end the pain. Your lesson to me was that I didn't want to leave my loved ones to deal with the grief and aftermath of a suicide. Here I am all these years later still crying because I miss you. I couldn't do that to my Sweetie and brothers and friends.

So, not to end on such a downer, let me share a memory of days gone by. My period, the "curse," started when I was 12. It was 1969. Mom took me to - I think it was Bob's IGA in Huntington, to get me a "sanitary belt" and "sanitary napkins." How quaint. Here is a very informative history of tampons and napkins. http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mtampons.html