Mom-The vast majority, as I understand it…

Of people who experience the death of a parent do so in a institutional environment.

I'm basing this on conversations that have (usually) been thrust upon me, by well meaning people far more interested in 'telling you THEIR story', than listening to anything you have to say.

Can't be helped, it is human nature, we all live inside these shells alone (well most of us anyway, a few seem to have company in there), and have only our own experience to relate, often relentlessly.

Most people tell you their tale of woe about spending Sundays at 'the home' with Dad or waiting for two or three days in a hospital or hospice facility and then the old boogers sneaking off when no one was there.

But then…. There are those who have BEEN there, so far it has all been women, and almost all with their Mothers.

They get very quiet, lean forward and listen, and when you wind down say simple sounding things that are often profoundly deep.

God I love them.

Today, since the heat is up and since I moved the online sales wrapping area out of the living room now that I am ramped up again downstairs to one of my work areas, I dug out a big old blower fan out from under a pile of things of Mom's that will soon be torn into rags for use in the shop.

…And, when I did I found a tray full of wadded kleenex that I had taken out of her pockets over a period of months while doing her laundry.

I didn't 'lose it', quite… I am "hard hearted" you know…

But I stood there, looking down at what I had found, and not even thinking really… when I heard the phone ringing upstairs.

It was an old friend that helped do damage control last year after I ended up here all alone. She listened, didn't say much, but then she started talking about Jude and I helping her clean out HER Mothers place after she was gone, and how hard it was for her….

And somehow it helped, this old, used up hard heart.