Category: In Which We Mock the Queen Mother

I went by Mom’s bank to transfer the contents of the savings deposit box to a closer branch. I looked in the envelope where “my” savings bonds were stored and found this note, from Mom, beyond the grave. She started off impersonal and then went straight for the personal. “I had these changed to remove…

We found a cookbook in which Mom stored almost all of her old driver’s license or ID photos. So, I bring you Thirty-two years of Mom Since obviously she was keeping them so I could step back and prepare myself. Below: Thirty-two, just divorced. HAPPY smile. A ten year jump to 42. I am not…

The Whomp-there-it-is Pork Loin was parceled out in thirds: one third was the ambitious rolled Emmenthal loin. That was a disaster, followed by the less ambitious garlic and rosemary loin, which then was remixed as the reliable Cream of Mushroom simmered pork, which was Fed to the Dog. So, this last third will be slumming…

Sigh. For those in mourning, the countdown to the two-year anniversary of a parent’s death is when you step back and say, as I did at lunch, “Shit. That was hard. But it’s ov – “ Over? No, it’s not. But miserable though it was, I don’t want it to be over. There are stacks.…

A few weeks ago I went to my Work Father-in-law’s funeral. Or, alternatively, the man at work who is my “Work Husband” suffered the loss of his father, and I went to the funeral. It came up that both the father and the mother attended my Mom’s high school, McKinley High. I got Mom’s yearbooks…

This is currently my favorite photo of Mom: It was taken the Christmas after she got polio. I don’t know what she was actually looking at, but it certainly seems she’s looking at her future. Some days I look at her and she seems resigned but heroic: some days she looks pissed. “Bring it, future,”…

When I was in going through my recent ill-guided fusion cooking phase, I was at the grocery looking for shallots. “Wait,” I thought, “Can’t I just use green onions? That was in Mom’s I Hate to Cook Book. Shallots are just a fancy name for green onions.” Well, no, scallions are just a fancy name…

There was a booksale at TeddyJ today. I donated a sack of books Gary culled from our house. All of it crap: Tom Clancy, The DaVinci Code, John Grisham. Later, Friend 3 and I were poking around the books, when a mutual friend, Steve, came by with The DaVinci Code in hand. “Hey, I donated…

I was avoiding Mom’s taxes because Turbo Tax would ask if the person these taxes were for was deceased. This is the screen you get after you click “Yes.”

This is grim. I had a grim little epiphany sometime this weekend. My grandmother Lucille (Granceil) had three children, Jimmy, Delores, and Mom. Jimmy I could post a photo of Jimmy, but you wouldn’t believe it – he was a perfect, curly- haired tow-headed boy. The photo of him as a toddler in the thirties…