Bloggin' On: Mother's Day 2020, and Things I Miss

Today is Sunday, May 10, 2020. As I start this blog post, it's almost 3:30 PM in my corner of Florida. It's a warm afternoon ﹘ 81℉ (27℃) under partly sunny skies ﹘ and it looks like it might rain. Of course, this is immaterial; ever since I left Miami and moved here I rarely ever go for walks or do anything outdoorsy, so the weather only affects me if there are thunderstorms or severe cold snaps. Right now, according to the forecast, we are experiencing the high for the day; at night the temperature is expected to drop to 65℉ (18℃). In a few weeks, if Florida weather sticks to its normal patterns, the days will be increasingly hotter, stickier, and less pleasant.

Today is also Mother's Day, the 10th occurrence of the occasion since Mom got sick in 2009/2010 and the fifth since she died. My older half-sister Victoria and I managed to "celebrate" the day with our Mom for the last time in 2015 ﹘ she died a little over two months later, on July 19, 2015 ﹘ and even that occasion was a dreary one. Vicky was unbearably irritating on that day, trying to make herself the "star" of the show with ostentatious gifts such as a helium balloon with Mother's Day motifs and gifts that Mom, who was far gone with dementia, couldn't really appreciate.

I gave Mom one last Mother's Day present: the Blu-ray of Evita, the 1996 film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Tim Rice's 1979 musical about Argentina's Eva Duarte de Peron. I wish now that I'd given it to her a few years earlier, because when we watched it that last Mother's Day night Mom was terribly confused. She insisted that she had seen it before (she had not) and grew irritated and even bored with it. If I recall correctly, I only screened it for her twice before she died; I don't think she enjoyed it much due to her poor mental and physical condition.

I feel out-of-sorts today. Mother's Day is a day that brings out the darkest emotions in me; I feel sad and angry about Mom's final illness, the way that it revealed how selfish and thoughtless my half-sister is, how much our mother suffered during her last five years on Earth, and many of the changes that occurred after she died. I feel lost, frustrated, and despondent.

Maybe I feel this way in part because the novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic has had such a nasty effect on the world as a whole. So many lives lost, so many jobs gone, and so many things that Westerners who live in the First World take for granted put "on hold" or in "lockdown mode" have made 2020 one of the weirdest and most filled with uncertainty in living memory.

So, on this somber Mother's Day not only do I miss my mom but also:

• Living on my own
• My old townhouse
• My home town
• My neighbors (except for those who befriended my half-sister)
• Choosing and preparing my own meals
• Watching TV series that are not "reality shows"or "DIY renovation shows" like those on HGTV
• My friends
• Being able to walk to the supermarket, drug store, bank, etc. 

Well, I don't have much to add to this post, so I'll close for now. I think I'll go read for a while. At least I can still do that.