What a Touch Can Do...

It’s been a while since I’ve written something, you know, with these videos and all…

 However, I had to write today.  Sometimes it’s just like that.

 And I have to tell you something.

So, I know most of you know that my mom died from breast cancer.  I’ve all but beaten you over the head about that fact.  And you guys probably know how much I miss her, because what child doesn’t miss their deceased parent?  And you’ve probably heard me say that we’re coming up on her 5 year anniversary of her death, which always makes this time of the year pretty much a bummer. 

 I really do miss my mom. 

What you guys don't know, though, is that I never got to have that last little chat with my Mom.  The cancer took over so quickly that by the time I got there to her, and I mean within a few days, she was no longer talking.  

You know how you envision having those last words...like it happens on TV and the movies.  Well naw.   It don't quite happen like that.  

Anyways, usually when we come up on the date, I try to keep it all together, because you know, I got a family, and I got work, and I got school, and I got all kinds of crap that I gotta take care of I ain’t really got time for no breakdowns.  Besides, people don’t wanna hear you whining and crying all the time about these things over and over again.  Death is a part of life…as we get older we best go on and accept our mortality is definitely on a timer. 

It’s all downhill from here baby!  Lol, okay, not to be all Debbie Downer and all…

Ok, no, seriously.  Let me get to what I gotta tell you.

I don’t get much sleep.  I can’t tell you when was the last time I’ve slept 7 hours straight.  It’s more like I do 4 hour intervals.  So, if I go to sleep at 11, the eyes automatically pop open at 3. 

And this is where it gets tricky.

I usually get up, go use the bathroom, check on my children, and then get back in the bed.  The goal always is to immediately go back to sleep.  That is indeed the goal. 

Now, if I can keep the brain from taking off on you know, thinking about what I want and don’t want, have and don’t have, need and don’t need, lol…then it ventures off into what errands I have to run the next day, what I should’ve done today, and if I’m feeling especially insomniacal (I know, not a word) I may start running down a whole list of worrisome shit that just turns an innocent little pee-break into an all out 2 hour session of staring into the dark.

Eventually, I just go on ahead and do what some of my other friends usually do, which is roll over, grab the phone, and look at my YouTube.  Look at Twitter.  Look at Instagram. Look at my emails.  Look at my itsrox Facebook.  Look at Huffington Post.  In that exact order.

Welcome to my night-life.  Ain’t it exciting?

Anyways, last night was one of those nights.  At 5:00am, though, I decided that enough was enough, and Roxanne, take your ass to sleep.

So you know how you do, you start thinking about not thinking about anything.  And it must have worked, because before I knew it, I was at a dinner at my Aunt Linda and Uncle Junior’s house.

And they aren’t even married anymore, haven’t been for a long, long time.

But I was my age today, and all my family was there.  All of them: aunts, uncles, my nieces and nephews.  My oldest brother’s extended family, which wasn’t odd but it was.  I remember handing my nephew Brandon and my brother’s sister-in-law’s son Alex a couple two liters of soda.  My Dad.  A whole bunch of friends.  And we were standing in a long line to the kitchen.  The sun was low through one of the windows, so the hallway we were standing in was sorta dark.  That’s how I knew it was a dinner.

Anyways, I was walking back from giving my nephew the stuff, and when I came around a corner, my Mom was standing there.

Now, at first, I thought this was going to be like the countless other dreams I’ve had about my Mom, because I have dreamt of her often. 

We’d be out shopping.  Or we’d be at my parent’s house on Sunday.  I even have had a couple where some crazy scientific find allowed her to come back from the dead.  Those ones are kinda weird, because she never really talks, just kinda stares at you in a Michael Jackson Thriller-like way, and I’m telling you, you don’t want to see your mom come back as a back-up dancer in a Michael Jackson video.

Anyways, I looked at her and smiled and she smiled back at me.  Then I waited to see if someone was going to say something to her but no one did.  Then I realized that this dinner was for her, and that we were all gathered together in her honor.  This dinner was for her, and she was already dead.

I stepped closer to her and suddenly I had the strong scent of her Alliage perfume she always wore.  She had on one of her regular suits that she wore to church.  And she had just the tiniest bit of glow.  Not one of those Glenda the Good-Witch glows, but more like a spotlight was shining on her from the top.

Nobody could see her but me.  I mean, I never asked the folks in line, but all this exchange of me standing and staring and her smiling and shining never seemed to affect anyone else there.  The line was moving ahead paying no never-mind to me.  Actually, I don’t even think they could see me anymore.

When I got the closest to her so I could touch her, she felt like a person.  In real life, you guys.  Not the “dream” touch.  The dream touch is when they feel…feathery…not actually a real fleshy type feel.  No, this was the real life touch.  I felt her.  She was warm, and soft, but not to soft.  Firm.  Yeah, my mom was always firm.  And I could feel the little hairs on her arm. 

My mom was STANDING THERE.  She was standing right there next to me.

So I reached out and hugged her so tight.  And I thought that the dream would fade away but it didn’t.  I felt her in my arms, could smell her in my nose, I could feel her.  I could feel her.

She laid her head on my shoulder. 

It felt like 15 minutes.  It felt so good.  Then all I got to say was “Mom, I miss you.”

That bounced around, reverberated all through the wherever we were, like it echoed all through the boundaries of that existence….then I felt myself waking up. 

And you know, then I had to spend the next hour trying to get myself together.  Funny, I had been thinking about doing some kind of tributary video for my mother, but if you could see Rocky’s face right now, you would know that a video just wasn’t in order.  And my swollen eyes is proof of that. Y’all can see me without makeup on, but y’all ain’t quite ready for the ugly-face cry.

No, the ugly face cry is what you don’t want.

It was such an experience I don’t even know if I would call it a dream.  It sounds so clichéd and all, you know how people say I wish I could just touch so-and-so again, and magically things would feel ok?  I would roll my eyes inwardly at that because my feeling would be “I don’t want to just touch them.  I want to touch and see and talk and laugh and spend time with and look at and experience them.”  What is a touch going to do for me?

But I know like I know the alphabet that I touched my mother last night.  And what that did for me was a lot.