Mamaw...

Mamaw died Monday, March 12, sometime before dawn.

As for how I'm feeling right now...I'm just going to cut and paste from a post on my board earlier...

Every time I've started to "lose it"...I've been interrupted. Tonight Justin started snoring while I was talking about Mamaw so I rolled over to sleep, and started to sob...shoulders shaking, pulling my hair, but not making any sound...and it woke him up and he held me and told me to let it out and I took a deep breath and STARTED to...and his mom called (10:24 mind you). I immediately dried up. So now I'm talking to Mom on the phone and I just...I...heck. I guess I'm in shock or something. I was expecting it...I'm relieved...she told me she never dated (after Papaw died) because she'd loved greatly and why settle for anything less...so I know she's with Papaw and happy and picking at Dick and Jay (my two stepdads) and holding her babies again (Billy Wayne and Freddy)...and I know I'm grieving for me...but God this sucks!

Jared is talking to Mom on the phone now...he sprained his wrist playing outside with some of the cousins this evening...and I'm trying to hold it together because he's been crying off and on since yesterday...but I just want to crawl into a hole somewhere.

I don't think I'm going to say anything at the funeral...I'm not sure what to say anyway...and I have a feeling I'd choke up too much. I'd like to sing for her, but I'm not sure that I can. The tulips Karan and I bought for her are gorgeous...and we're going to plant the bulbs on her grave, and that would please her. Maybe I'll ask Carol to send me some more bulbs from Holland (she can get some cheap that are outrageous here).

I'm rambling. I've been awake for close to 48 hours...lets see...42 hours now. Mamaw was THE most important person in my life growing up...and I want to slap all my cousins and uncles and aunts so much. Well not my cousin Chan or my uncle David...they were with Mom and me a lot as far as visiting/taking care of Mamaw...but the rest of them can take a flying leap for all I care. Tonight they were saying she didn't look like herself...well no, she's been embalmed, was wearing makeup for the first time in her life, but she was so beautiful to me...and I finally had enough and snapped "Well if you'd bothered to visit her at all in the last 2 years you'd see how beautiful she looks, and that it DOES look like her because this is how she was looking lately!!" and I had to just walk out of the funeral home and sit down on the grass and stare at the sky so I wouldn't cry or scream.

I knew it was going to hurt...I knew it was going to suck. I told Justin that Mamaw never did anything bad...she was a genuinely good person through and through, and if this happening to her was a punishment for something she did wrong earlier in life, then I'm SCREWED. Then I said that she didn't have to know Daddy or Uncle Charles (her oldest child) were in prison, or that Dick had died, so maybe it was a blessing...but oh man. Mrs. McGilberry, her roommate, heard her struggling for breath and got up and called the nurses but they didn't come in, and she held Mamaw's hand until she stopped breathing...she said she never woke up so we know it was peaceful at least.

I miss you so much Mamaw...now more than ever...but I'm praying that you and Papaw and Billy Wayne and Freddy and Jay and Dick and your brother and sisters and your parents...I pray you're all having a grand reunion up in Heaven right now...