Nothing to do with her but everything to do with her.

If you've seen the movie then you know what I'm talking about. For the last several months my sister and I have entered the twilight zone and have been living in another world. The world of the Hand That Rocked Their Cradle is what we call it. A few blogs ago I talked about my brother calling my sister and I early one Saturday morning to let us know that our mother has been given days to live. We were told that it would not be more than a month. My mother has been in rehab for the past 3 months recovering from a quadruple bypass. Shes been sick for the past year but she was recovering. We didn't understand but dropped everything and drove down to Carlsbad.

That day will change our lives forever. Not for the reasons you think. Yes we rushed to the facility my mother was in and yes we kept a vigilant stay with my mother for the following days but its what happened in those days that followed that has changed our lives forever. Nothing to do with my mother but everything to do with her.

My mother is the glue that kept out family together. The reason we spoke to each other, the reason we gathered at holidays, graduations, football games and Sunday dinners. Like most mothers when you asked her what she wanted for any given holiday her reply would be to see my 3 kids and all my grand kids together. At her request we gathered often.

My sister and I never thought much of this as we often gathered just because. Our children grew up together and very few pictures of our children were of them alone they usually included all (hers and mine). My brother often came up for a weekend or we would go down to his house and would spend the weekend. Our kids all spent holidays, vacations and weekends together. My girls loved their uncle he was the cool uncle for all the kids. He would take them to the beach and surf with them, Mexico surf trips with his nephew, shopping trips with his nieces, cruising in his convertible. He had all the cool toys and did all the cool things. Then one day it all ended.

The kids weren't allow to go to their uncles house, there were suddenly rules of when you could eat and how much you could eat. There were rules of when you could come over and when they "were not receiving guest". There were rules - ones that never made sense except to the person giving the orders.