Edit: I want to apologize for my use of a phrase in my memorial post to my mother that is unkind in our vernacular. It’s not consistent with what I’m trying to do. If I offended you I would like to make it right.
Written and voiced by Sean Dowd, CPA
What’s this all about?
We’re all left with generational and ancestral baggage.
Privilege if you will.
Being of Irish heritage, I once felt a sense of satisfaction in the obstacles faced by my ancestors in America. I could be down with my ‘brothers’ of African heritage because the Irish were discriminated against right?
Not really.
Sure, being beholden to a system of absentee land ownership run by a bunch of [edited due to stupidity] who didn’t give a crap whether you starved to death or not wasn’t optimal. But they gave my people the option to pay up or GTFO.
So we did.
My first love was my mother. She was an Irishphile. The greatest joy in her retirement was her grand children and the trip she took to Ireland, compliments of my generous and loving brother.
I was invited too. But getting away even for a once in a lifetime opportunity is hard when your life revolves around internal, statutory, and jurisdictional deadlines.
October 15 sucks. Not April 15.
Sadly I received word from a compassionate officer yesterday that my mother was found deceased, in her apartment.
The police had gone to her apartment on a welfare check after she failed to show up for dialysis.
She hated dialysis. It was like a job she said. Many people who go through it feel that way. But kidneys unfortunately have yet to grow on a tree.
The police told me she wasn’t answering the door. A few months ago I did the welfare check and she was on the floor, alive fortunately. Bruised, but alive.
Take care of yourself. Easier said than done.
This time the police were there near Lansing and I was in Detroit.
“What should we do?” They asked (Thanks for asking).
“Break down the door.” Was my calm response.
My mother encouraged discovery. We were one of the first people on our block to get a desktop. Our first computer was an IBM. I learned to spell and write playing “King’s Quest.”
You don’t know non-life threatening adrenaline until you try to fight off a giant by TYPING out as an eight year old “Throw hammer at giant,” just to see a prompt message indicating a lack of understanding.
Dead.
Perhaps I’ll write more about my mother. She was a complicated woman. But she had fun, traveled, discovered, fought, loved, and lost.
She was my first love.
The Greatest of these is Love