Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Putting the TMI in absentminded

Category: In Which We Set Ourselves Up for Mockery

  • Freedom Seven

    Dave called today with a TiVo Alert: When We Left Earth is on the Discovery Channel. We we were kids, we lived in Houston from ’60-’68, and we revered the Gemini and Mercury projects. Someone (probably Technical Father, who had a job at NASA in the mid sixties) gave Dave a record album called The…

  • The Deed Is Done

    Our backyard has two gardens by the back patio. They were originally vegetable gardens, eight feet by 2.5 feet. After we slaved over them, and bound them in with wood ties, and mounded up the dirt, we stood back to survey our work, and said, “Damn! We just built graves!” Often we refer to them…

  • Hospice by the Numbers: Part 3

    Number you dial to report a claim on Mom’s life insurance: 1-800-628-8600. Yes. 86 again. These people are sick. And you just know they all think they’re being so original. ======================================= If you have a sex dream about your Mom, she’ll die 35 days later, like in The Ring. Like The Ring if it starred…

  • I Could Snort Them Like That Stones Drummer

    I Could Snort Them Like That Stones Drummer

    While Mom’s instructions said specifically that she be cremated AND the funeral home should dispose of the ashes, the funeral home refused and we now have a plastic box of Mom that needs to be disposed of. I have a few options. 1. Botanical Tribute Dad’s ashes were buried under an azalea. (An aside: as…

  • The Stuff. My God, the Stuff.

    Before I begin, know that I sound very materialistic in this post. I can assure you that I am feeling the appropriate guilt and grief over Mom’s recent daughter-assisted suicide. I’m just sick of thinking of it. (Of course, I could stop thinking about it if I stopped listening to music. It’s just like breaking…

  • The Wake: Part the Second

    The Wake: Part the Second

    One of my favorite parts of the Wake was when people stepped up and told me things about Mom that everyone knows: she was smart, funny, never complained, and a great writer. And then Mom’s friend Martha stepped up with some information that wasn’t widely known, the Story of Mom and Dad. (I knew the…

  • Martha Stewart (Not) Living: The Wake

    Or:The Wake, Part the First Sure, other people have funeral directors to plan the gathering to honor the deceased. Since Mom had requested immediate cremation, we needed to find a way for people to gather and remember Mom. I suppose we could have rented space at a funeral home, but Mom has a nice large…

  • Hospice by the Numbers: Part 2

    10. I am ten pounds lighter than I was 2 weeks ago. Mom whispered in the hospital, “Hospice diet. Write a book.” 9 out of 10. The number of impending death signs Mom showed on her last day. The hospice people give you a book that spells out what physical changes you can expect at…

  • Temptation 2008

    Okay. What follows was actually kind of alarming. But it isn’t sad. I’m almost done with sad. (On the topic of being done with sad: today I watched the TiVoed My Name is Earl episodes in which he is in a coma … and they discussed pulling the plug … and Gary screamed like a…

  • Comfort

    Today was to be the Day of Sleep. But I just woke up from a dream in which Mom and my friend Catherine the Red were both in hospice. Catherine the Red was tooling around town in a convertible with her respirator mask and her hospice nurse, while I couldn’t get my mom’s respirator mask…