madwomanwithabox | Entries tagged with in memoriam

Sixteen years ago today, Waynette Maria McKnight Carlie died at Encino Medical Center from complications related to a glioblastoma brain tumor. She was my mother.

I wish I had more pictures of her, I'd post one, but I still try to post every year to keep her memory alive. She's the reason I read, the reason I write, the reason I hate the holidays. Yeah, the last one's bad, but it's part of who I am now. I try to focus on the first two, because it's the MAIN reason I have all of you as friends.

My mom was an amazing lady, who many say I look like, and I don't think I'll ever know a better person. But I did something really unforgivable when she was around: I took her for granted. This is my Christmas message, my GIFT to all of you, this year and every year because we really tend to not know what we have until it's gone.

You get one mom. She brought you into this world, and you don't get another. Love her or hate her, she's special in her own way, and you WILL miss her when she's gone. Call her, hug her, tell her that you love her, but God forbid she leaves you tomorrow, don't regret not having at least held her tight just one more time.

And to those of you with kids: hug them today, hard. Spend time with them, don't get so caught up in prepping for the holiday you forget to make sure they know they are absolutely loved by you and absolutely never, ever alone as long as you're around. Christmas comes and Christmas goes, but you're never going to understand that for them: you are special. You are irreplaceable. And one day, they're gonna remember those moments with you and it's going to get them through the tough times.

Be with the people you love like it's the last time you're ever going to see them, today and every day. And when you go looking for the Christmas star tonight, wave hello at my mom. She'll get a big kick out of it. ;p

Happy Holidays, everybody...and Merry Christmas, Mom.

Current Mood: crushed

In my world, Christmas is a bad thing...Christmas Eve in particular. There's nothing festive or merry about the holidays for me...and most of that is probably due to the fact that Christmas was one of my mother's favorite times of year. It all just hurts...knowing she's not here to be a part of it, and for some reason it hurts more this year than it usually does.

Twelve years today, Waynette Carlie died...and I wish with all my heart that all of you could have known her...known the life she lived.

This is not a good time of year for me, but I really hope it is for all of you. For my mom, and for myself...I wish you all the very happiest of holidays. Enjoy the great food and the buttload of gifts, and may you be able to spend this special time of year with the people you love. I hope it's magical, I hope it's festive, and I hope with all my heart that it's happy...because that's just the way Mom would want it to be.

And today...especially today...find the person you love most and hug them. Hard. And if you can't, then call or write or something...tell them what they mean to you...do both if you can. Life is far too short not to love as hard and as much as you can, because the people we love...we don't get to keep them long enough.

Merry Christmas, everybody.

I love you, Mom.

R.I.P.
Waynette Maria McKnight Carlie
July 15, 1950 - December 24, 1995

-NaNo has begun. All/most posts pertaining to the madness will go in my writing journal,

onthe_8thday. Friend if you dare. :P

And as for my only other random...

R.I.P.
Ramona Quimby Carlie
1989-2006

One year ago, I lost a pet, a mother, and a sister when my cat died. Those of you who know me well...or at all...knew Ramona by proxy. She was the caretaker of my family, my best friend, and a major part of my life. Hell, she was even a character in some of my writing.

A stroke ultimately ended her life...her heart threw a clot, and she ended up paralyzed from the waist down. She just got old, and her time came. We had no choice but to put her down and end her suffering.

If you never had a pet, or a pet you got close to, you don't understand the pain that comes with this kind of loss, or the joy that they can bring you. You don't understand the humanity that an animal can have, or how the bond you form with them runs as deep, if not deeper, than the bonds of blood that bind a family.

Ramona saw me through my mother's death. She was one of the first people I talked to when I finally began to confront the fact that my dad and my brother were abusing me emotionally. She let me hold her as I cried through every vicious fight, climbed in my lap every time I felt the most alone.

I couldn't do anything to save her. I didn't get a real chance to say goodbye, and thanks to my father and my brother, I still haven't had my own chance to grieve for her. So today, I'm doing the only thing I can for the second most important person in my life next to my mom.

I'm making sure that nobody forgets her.

So I guess it's kind of fitting that today, All Soul's Day, is the anniversary of the day she died. They say that no one ever dies if you remember them...I'd like to think that there's a lot of people who read this thing, and if everyone who does read it could just think about her today...just once, just for a second...it'd be like having her back again for just a minute.

Rest in peace, girlie...and don't drive Mom too crazy.

I love you, Mona Belle.

Current Mood: blank
Current Location: work
Current Music: COME TOGETHER - The Beatles

IN MEMORIAM
Waynette Maria McKnight Carlie
July 15, 1950 - December 24, 1995

So this year, it's Black Sunday. It changes every year, but the day is always the same. It's the one part of the year that I dread, and it's the only reason that the holidays have been a living nightmare since I was a kid.

Eleven years ago today, I lost my best friend. And I know it's not the case for some of you...it's not the case for a lot of people in what MIGHT be considered normal families, but my best friend was my mom.

Her name was Waynette, and she was 45 years old when brain cancer killed her on Christmas Eve in 1995. I was thirteen years old at the time.

I could go on and on and sing her praises, and talk about her for ages, but that'd get me all emotional...and even though I still shed my fair share for her, tears are the last thing she'd want.

Funny thing in my family...even Mom was luckier than I was, because she never lost her mother. My grandmother didn't pass on until a few months after Mom did. And she had issues with her mother...a lot of it was fairly petty. I don't think she ever really appreciated what she had.

My mom was everything to me...best friend, mentor, sister I never had. And I know that not everyone has that...but if you still have your mother, or someone who's just as close to you...stop for a second today and take a second to think about this:

You're never going to get a better gift for Christmas than the ability to be with your mother, or whoever holds that special place in your heart. To tell her you love her, what she means to you...to hear her voice, to be near her...to hold her. To be with her.

Normally I'd still have a small piece of that...after Mom died, my cat Ramona became that person to me...the surrogate mother I needed when Mom was gone. For the last ten years, she was the shoulder I cried on, she was the one who listened to me, who looked after me when no one else was there to do it.

She's not here this year...and so this Christmas, I'm alone as I mourn the death of two mothers instead of one.

I'm not trying to bum anyone out...but I want everyone who has what I don't to appreciate just what a good thing they got going.

Help me remember my mother today...don't ever take *yours* for granted. Find your mom and tell her how much you care...hug her if you can.

Because I'd give back every gift I'm gonna receive tomorrow...I'd sell my soul just to be able to just *talk* to my mom one more time.

I don't usually say it and mean it...but this time I do.

Merry Christmas, everybody.

And Merry Christmas, Mom. I love you.

Current Mood: crushed
Current Location: my room
Current Music: UHF on the DVD player

R.I.P.
Ramona Quimby Carlie
1989-2006

Ramona walked out of our garage one day when I was seven years old, a scrawny little stray. We were all allergic to cats, but she was so pretty and spirited that even Mom, a notorious hater of felines, ended up declaring that she'd need her shots.

This was half an hour after telling us we would NOT be keeping the cat.

Ramona was a neutered male, but I was seven and insisted on the name. After she lost the jewels, it didn't matter anyway, so it stuck.

Ramona was more than a pet, she was a member of this family. To my father, she *was* another daughter, and it fit because to me she's always been like a sister. She took care of this family when my mother died, and has been my father's only real, constant companion since he lost his leg.

She had a lot of attitude...always thought she was the alpha and omega, and we let her because to us, she was. She was smart as hell, and stubborn, too. She was one of the strongest, kindest, most noble people I've ever known, and over the last seventeen years has become the cornerstone that holds my family together. I can honestly say that I like and love Ramona more than most humans I've met in my life.

Ramona collapsed at home tonight after losing control of her back legs. Her heart threw a blood clot, and her chest was filling with fluid. She was a stubborn little bitch...but she just couldn't stand up to old age.

We had no choice but to end her suffering, and at about 6 PM tonight, she died.

A lot of you have heard me talk about Ramona over the years, but I honestly regret that you never got to meet this cat. Her death isn't just a huge blow to my family, it's a really tragic loss, because there will never be another like her, from now 'til Judgement Day.

It may sound silly, but she was my sister in every way that mattered. There's problems to be dealt with, but I won't deal with them here and now.

I just want to ask you all a favor tonight...take a good long look at that picture. Read everything I've written. And in the future, don't be afraid to ask me about her, to talk about her...don't be afraid of upsetting me.

If any of you out there have ever had a pet that means as much to you as any human in your life ever has, then you'll understand what kind of cat Ramona was.

I just want her to be remembered.

I love you, Mona Belle.

Current Mood: crushed

I want to talk to you all about a woman.

She wasn't a great beauty, but she was pretty. Long dark hair that was black unless you looked at it in the sun to find it was really dark brown. For the purposes of dyeing out the grey that sometimes cropped up, however...her hair was black. She had amber eyes, and when she was young she had a lovely figure. Even as the years wore on, and the birth of two children caused her figure to expand and droop with gravity and that bit of fast food or chocolate we all ought not to eat, she wore it well. Even at her worst, she was pretty.

This woman was smart, too...she had to drop out of high school to take care of her sick mother, but she got her GED later on, and became a pharmacy technician. In her spare time, she was a writer...her imagination was a fertile place, and her pen was a formidable weapon to contend with. She wrote letters...lots of them, and considered it a lost art. Many of the most important things she ever had to say were in notes, letters, and brief words jotted down in random places that would later be treasured objects to those she loved.

She was formidable...a force to be reckoned with. Face to face with people, she wasn't very comfortable...in a store, she'd make her husband go and do her talking if she needed something. Put her on the phone, however...and God help you if she was calling to make you the target of her anger. She was kind and had a positive outlook...a way of making bad things better. Money was always tight, but she usually had a small stash of mad money at her disposal, thanks to a little wise saving. That money went for a few personal pleasures, but also to her children...secret gifts to her daughter of books the family couldn't afford to buy. It was their shared passion, reading...more than a passion, an addiction that this woman passed on to her little girl.

She was a woman of God...a staunch Catholic that brought her children up in the faith...even brought her Jewish husband to the fold, marrying him twice, once by law and once again later on in the church, on the same day he was baptized, confirmed, and recieved his first communion. To date, it's still a record in their parish for most sacraments recieved in a single day. Even when God tried to take everything from her, she kept her faith...in the face of imminent death, it only seemed to grow.

Virtuous though she was, this woman was not perfect. She was quick tempered and spiteful when angry...she liked the taste of wine, had a glass on many nights. Alcoholism ran in her family, and a weaker woman would have been driven to excess. Still, she courted disaster with her favorite white zinfandel in the refrigerator every night. She was stubborn, sometimes harsh, and was ferocious about holding grudges. Her marriage was volatile and a job in and of itself to maintain...but she was lucky that while difficult, it was a marriage filled with love.

She touched a lot of lives by the time she turned forty four...she was loved, hated, appreciated and respected, but above all she was remembered by all that crossed her path.

But a trip to the mountains during the Thanksgiving holidays would change her life forever...because it was the last thing she'd remember for a very long time.

A year after tripping on a snowy driveway and landing on her butt, she was home with her family again...fifteen pounds lighter and on ten different medications. Her long dark hair that she was so proud of was gone, a victim of brain surgery and radiation therapy to eradicate the remains of a tumor that nearly killed her. In its place was a mowhawk, one that left her surgical scar exposed. She didn't bother with scarves or wigs...she enjoyed shocking people. It was just in her nature.

By the time another year was out, she'd lost still more weight...could've clocked in at just a little over one hundred pounds as she lay in a hospital bed, the left side of her body paralyzed by the tumor that had returned with a vengeance. The mowhawk had grown a bit, but was peppered with grey that was left unchecked.

She couldn't even talk, but still her eyes were bright and aware, darting around as she struggled to move...as she fought to live.

This woman's name was Waynette Maria McKnight Carlie...but she always wanted to change it to Anette. No one could ever get her name right...that's what happens when people associate your name with Tammy Wynette and Carlee Simon...more than once, she had records of hers filed under W instead of C where they belonged.

This woman was a normal person, just like you and me...flawed, but virtuous, with strength and character. Her writing was never published, but many people knew her name. She wasn't famous, but over half a church was filled at her memorial mass. Waynette believed in life, not death...wouldn't even let her children attend a wake or an open casket funeral. When she herself died, her last wish was to avoid her own funeral. There was no casket at the church, no graveside service. There was only a mass...a celebration of her faith, and a reception...a gathering of those who knew her in a celebration of her life.

This woman was a mother, a wife, a daughter, a friend, a co-worker, a sister. She was *my* mother...my best friend.

Forgive me for this long entry, just this once, but I won't put it behind a cut...it's midnight, December 24...the anniversary of the day she died, a victim of cancer. I want everyone to see this, everyone to read...I want everyone to know her.

No one's ever dead as long as they're remembered...and today, ten years after her passing, I want my mother to live again.

R.I.P.
Waynette Maria McKnight Carlie
1950-1995

Love you, miss you...never gonna forget you.