66, growing metal, I love you

Last night after work I resumed my 1000 pull up challenge video series.  Yesterday marked two weeks since my mom passed away so I decided to do a total of 66 reps, one for each year she was alive.  It certainly isn’t as touching as a well crafted poem or eloquent speech but meaningful all the same, at least to me.

As I was doing my reps I noticed something strange, my high bar had something growing out the side of it.  Closer inspection just added to the curiosity. It looked like there was a small clump of sprouts coming out of the side of the galvanized pipe.  They were appropriately silver/whitish in color.  I assume this is some sort of natural phenomenon, just one that I never witnessed first hand before.

I was in a pretty down mood most of the day when I realized we were at the two week anniversary for my mom.  I did a lot of thinking about the 4 days my mom was in the hospital and my relationship with mom in general.  One of the things that I was ashamed of was that I did not tell her I loved her nearly enough.  After her heart attack I said the words “I love you mom” more in those 4 days than I had said in the last 30 years.

Now of course I expressed my love in cards and other written media but as far as verbalizing it, it just didn’t happen.  I was not alone, I think mom was equally uncomfortable verbalizing those words, perhaps for whatever reasons I am.  Hell in general, my entire family is this way, I don’t really know why.  We all love each other yet we don’t really say it.  Maybe we just have a silent understanding of these feelings that we never felt the need to reenforce otherwise.

Whatever the reason, I realize it isn’t the way things should be.  Unfortunately I can no longer make up for lost time with my mom so hopefully I can try to be less restrictive expressing those feelings going forward.