Mentioed

The months preceding dad’s surgery, he must have called me a million times. I was in charge of making his appointments wilt all of the different specialists. I also made sure he got to them, which is no small task when the man you are dealing with thinks doctors are useless. He arrived on time to all of them.

Mom was harder to take care of. She and I have never been mother – daughter close like I see with some of my friends, and even my niece. I would spend time at their house to try and lighten her load, but honestly I think she just wanted to keep busy. She was nervous.

A few years ago my brother, Roddy, and only sibling, moved away from home with his wife and two kids. They had traveled all over, and were currently located in Germany. This upset the whole family to no end, mostly because they were taking only grandchildren our side of the family had away. They made trips home every now and then to see us, for short spurts of time, but it was never easy to see them leave again.

Dad surgery fell on the weekend of mother’s day. I remember every move made so clearly. Mom was out in the garden. Dad and I were in the basement watching T.V. We all heard the car pull into the driveway, and mom come rushing in to wipe off her hands before whoever was here saw her. She walked out to the front door and saw Roddy get out of the car. He reached around back to grab a small backpack from the trunk of his mother-in-law’s car and headed toward mom.

I mentioned earlier how mom and I aren’t really close, but Roddy… he is and always will be her little boy. He is in her eyes: perfect. So she starts freaking out about how amazing he is, about how great it is that he came and all of the rest of it. She is near tears, which trust me when I saw, is something I have rarely seen from my mother.

The surgery happened two days later. All was well. Dad was taken home to rest, and it took all three of us just to keep him in bed. He disagreed with the idea of bed rest; he desperately wanted to get back to work. Because dad had no desire to eat, all of the food in the house was catered to Roddy, as usual. Mom had all of his favorites displayed on the counter to thank him for being here.

He left three days later. It truly was a short visit, five days in total. Everything started slipping back to normal. Mom went back to work, followed by dad going back to work. The good news was he always had one of the guys at work following him around making sure he didn’t do anything stupid like lift things. I also when back to work, at the same office, always able to keep an eye on him as he got better.

It wasn’t until months later that the chain of events from that weekend unset me. We were sitting around the house, Roddy’s kids were home for a few weeks, and Mom and Dad were both telling the story to a grandchild. Mom explained to my niece home amazing it was that Roddy showed up when he did, and how she was so happy he had been there. Dad told my nephew about how if he was ever in the hospital again he definitely wanted Roddy there, because he was great.

I wasn’t even mentioned.