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When I arrived at my sister's trailer home (triple wide with full basement and still property taxed as a trailer I must rub in there were no cars in sight and no signs of life. A knock at the door goes unacknowledged. I try to remember which brick has the spare key under it. I'm looking over the area of cinder blocks and bricks when I decide to update Brandy with my arrival as Ruth is at work by now. While on the phone dramatizing the loss of Bell's grocery my idiot nephew Stephen comes out. I make some jokes at his expense to Brandy and hang up and the family visit is officially started.

He is holding a barometer that belonged to my parents that hung on a wall in Spencerport NY at the apartment complex I lived in when I graduated back in 1969. It was the only item my Mom had left over when they moved her to a nursing home that had any emotional attachment for me and my sister had been holding it for me. Almost as good Steve was giving me the six issue Marvel comics series starring Solomon Kane from the 80s I believe. A movie is supposed to be coming out soon but I have serious qualms about it living up Robert E. Howard's standards. Both items go in the trunk and we enter the trailer to get updated on happenings. Plus I'm thinking about supper. Tragic thought there that's still over three hours in my future.

Turns out Mom's nursing home is 24-7 visitation privileges so an evening visit is doable. With Steve's court appearance tomorrow and a good 40 minute drive at that and a 20 minute drive to the home we depart and fill up the tank so tomorrow's tour of suburb area of Rochester will not neccesitate a refill. The area of New York I am in is farming country and loaded with small villages and townships.

We arrive at the nursing home and Mom is on the second floor with a view. Steve knocks lightly, pauses then slowly opens the door. Mom is asleep in her wheelchair head down. Her room is similar to Mary Ann's hospice room from last year and I'm flashbacking and feeling mellow. To see her so frail looking and at peace after years of soap drama and recriminations. Where did the years get so wasted and lost in neglect and despair? I tell Steve we will sit and wait for her to wake up as I did for Mary Ann and I wonder again if I shall see her in Heaven. I wonder more at myself of late.

Mom stirs and abruptly comes to life. She is startled but unspeaking for a moment. I'm not aging well in the looks department but a mother knows her son.

Not quite. Steve she recognizes. To me she says "Have you got a job yet?"

In typical all about me mode I reply still do AAA hasn't been bought us yet that we know of. Wasn't for a few minutes I remembered that was a secret to keep her from worrying.

She starts talking about this and that and after three uses of the phrase "Your grandfather" I realized she thinks I'm probably Scott, one of Elaine's other kids. I give a quiet thanks to God and decide to just go with the flow. I was a son that brought her little honor and that mostly of the pious hypocrite kind doing his duty but not with a full heart. We both deserved better. But God is still good.

While we are talking Ruth checks in and I leave the room to converse. While gone Steve tells Mom who I really am. When I return there is a shift of emphasis in the conversation but during the entire visit I am never addressed by name and I stubbornly hold to my stance of pretending I am whoever she thinks I am. I was not in a cruel mood just trying to be in an accepting one. I had no longer an agenda of why this why that--she would just not remember the stuff that drove me crazy and no one should have to linger 40 years holding on to pain--that would be madness. My brother-in-law Gary arrives (he visits weekly) and Steve and I leave after about an hour. I'm kicking myself for not bringing pictures to show. I just never thought of them. Mom was never big on displaying family photos but did have one of the latest grand-child. I promise to visit one more time and am deliberately vague about my stay time. I'm already planning escaping Friday once I do the court thing and comic shop stores. No plans to see my brother and Sandy left me no voice mail saying Susan wanted to see me so that bet was won by me. Her loss. And mine. But that lost love should probably stay that way.

I finally get a meal around 9 pm and we go back home. Elaine and Gary had bought a huge HD TV (plasma) and my nephew was showing it off to me. Saw the tail end of Ghost Rider and he was watching some new show with the word Fear in it and about zombies. I go to the bedroom Elaine has ready for me. A bookcase has books Dad owned and I am welcome to take what I like. I see John D. MacDonald Travis Mcgee hardcovers I would buy, read then wait for the paperback and give to Dad. I leave those alone. Dad sputtered about the cost of the last one I gave him and I never gave him another present the rest of his days. I take a Grace Livingston Hill book that Ruth already has but I want this one for myself. Dad had given it to Mom Christmas 1945. If Mom ever read it she had the gospel shared with her at least sudsy as Hill gets however. If you use lipstick you are surely a fallen woman. Times were different then. The book that most gets my attention is a collection of James M. Cain containing Double Indemity and others. Double Indemity is a favorite film noir movie with Fred MacMurray with superb dialogue that alas is not in the book which has a very dark ending compared to the movie. Read one, savor the other. Also took two books by Lawrence Welk to remember Mom by. A special Litnetter calls me at this time and we talk for almost two hours. I hadn't realized until she called how emotionally drained I was feeling and she now knows the entire truth of the great mid-life crisis and still thinks I'm nice. I do not deserve the friends God gives me but I am selfish enough to want to keep them. I sleep well that night.

This is getting long so to be continued and this time concluded: Next--a day in court and those pesky rattesnakes.