Back to the grind

Worked on LD for a while once I got over my not-so-happy morning blues.  Still don't feel 100% but getting closer.  Had to mediate another "discussion" between my brother and sister.  Not easy to do over 1600 miles.  But they're better now.  They're both upset over our mother's deteriorating health.  At least mom has them around to take care of her without begging for it.

It scares me, a bit...and not for the reasons you'd think.  But how will I be when I'm older and needing someone to help me?  I don't have children or a wife; only came close once and that was in high school, when I was very much in the closet.  I was dating this girl with bad teeth and we almost went all the way...almost.  But I couldn't do it.  I'm completely gay, not a little or sort of or occasionally.  So nothing happened and we broke up not long after.  Then she got pregnant by another guy and had twins.  He had to join the Air Force to take care of her, because of the benefits.  Jesus...those boys would be 40 now.

So I'm pretty much going to be alone and at the mercy of whatever's left of Medicare and Social Security, once the GOP and AARP get done with ruining it with the acquiescence of the Democrats.  I better start taking better care of myself so I can handle all that crap.

Don't mean to be maudlin, but when it looks like your mother is dying, you tend to think about your own mortality.  The deaths of my father and stepfather had minimal effect on me since neither of them mattered much in my life.  I was harder hit by my grandmother's death...and even that I was able to handle all right because she was 79 and handed me a lot of her independent spirit...a lot more than I realized at the time.

But my mother's always been something of a child, dependent on others, always needing help.  She never learned how to drive.  Never worked a job for very long.  Never lived alone but always with someone.  Never wanted much more than to have a place to stack her boxes of junk and have some plants to tend to.  She's never been completely well.  I think the only time she truly enjoyed life was when she was living with me and working as an extra in movies and music videos.

She's the nun in Eminem's "Role Model" video.  She also played twister in a feathery jacket in "Purple Hills."  She's a juror in the Coen Brothers' "The Man Who Wasn't There" and even has a shot to herself with Tony Shaloub, near the end.  She's a passenger handing over her boarding pass in  Wes Craven's "Red Eye".  She's one of the people stoning Nas in "Do You Hate Me Now?".  And she's been in Steven Spielberg's "Terminal", though I never could see where she was in that.  And she's been in a U-2 video, the remake of "Inherit the Wind", "Nurse Betty" and in the movie version of "Rent", at the beginning.  Hell, the joke was that she was more successful in film than I was.  For sure, she now has a touch of immortality.

She never got paid a lot but she did it more for the chance to be around people and just be herself.  And 9 times out of 10, it was me driving her there and picking her up...though there was one occasion where Wes Craven sent a car to get her because he wanted her in another shot out in the middle of...Ojai, was it?...which may have been the boarding pass one.  She was shocked.

That lasted for 7 1/2 years before she started losing her balance too much to be on the set.  She had a couple of spills that scared people but which she brushed off.  And which I wouldn't find out about untill a couple of days later.  So she finally decided to move back to Texas to be with the grandkids and my youngest brother.  And she still talks about it.  It's too bad she waited so long to get started.  Who knows what else she would have been in?