Boondock Ramblings

Brace yourselves folks. My mother is out of town. This means my father’s life is about to go to hell in a hand basket.

You see, last year my mom was gone for about a month. In that time frame my dad crumbled.

My mom called me Wednesday and announced she was leaving the following day to see her sister. This wouldn’t be such an odd announcement if my aunt lived an hour or two away. She lives 600 miles away. Four states away. Eight to ten hours away. But my mom had decided Wednesday she would be leaving Thursday morning at 5 a.m. to go see her sister, who has been battling breast cancer.

OK. Who am I to tell this grown woman I forbid her to travel that far all alone? I am her daughter that’s who! But I didn’t tell her she couldn’t go. She’s fairly strong willed and probably would have told me where to stick it (in the nicest way possible, of course).

I live about 40 minutes from my parent’s house. Because of work I couldn’t check on my dad every night while my mom was gone the last time, but I did call every other night to be sure he had arrived home from work safely and wasn’t eating beans out of a can every night (which actually he likes, so it was very possible).

“I just used my last spoon,” he whimpered one night on the phone.

Apparently my mom’s absence had caused him to forget how to wash dishes.

Her absence also caused items in the house to break — like the washer and refrigerator and one of the lawn mowers and…

When mom informed me she would be leaving again, I asked her if she thought this was wise considering the crisis my dad had deteroriated into during her last trip.

She assured me that she wouldn’t be staying away as long.

I should hope not.

She wasn’t gone eight hours yesterday when the brakes on dad’s truck went out on his way home from work. Earlier in the day, most likely about the time my mother hit Virginia, he got something in his eye and had to go to the doctor to have it removed. Last I spoke to him he was putting eye drops in his eyes and preparing to crawl into bed.

If mom doesn’t cut her trip short this time around we may find, as Hubby suggested, my dad in the front lawn, huddled in a fetal position, covered in dirt and baked beans, rocking back and forth with the rubble that was once their house in the background and him mumbling,”Where’s my wife? She said she’d only be gone a week. Where is she? I haven’t changed my underwear in four days. I can’t remember how to turn on the washer. I don’t know where my shoes are. I thought I knew how to cook steak, but apparently only your mother can do that. Where am I? Who are you? Are you my daughter?”

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