My life wasn't very good at the time, my mother had a habit there for a while of picking trailers to live in that didn't have enough rooms for all of us. I was still getting used to the divorce and I didn't like my mother's new boyfriend...
I was 10 years old when my dad asked me to meet two people. The first person was a woman named Regina, she raced cars on the dragstrip and she had a room in her house that was really creepy because it was filled with Teddy Bears. The Teddy Bear room really creeped me out but I was nice on the date that I was invited to join them on (we ate at Cracker Barrel). Now I am not to clear on whether it was the next day or the next weekend that I spent with my dad but I got to finally meet the second person. The second person was Anita, she liked animals and had 2 kids of her own (not my age). What first caught my attention was the jeans and the tie dye shirt she wore on the date but this one was different. We went to the zoo for the date and I loved it. I remember I had to go to the bathroom while at the zoo and Anita wouldn't let me go alone because she thought I was to young. I thought that was funny because no one really cared about things like that with me before. After Anita went home my dad asked me which of the two people I like the most, I picked Anita because she seemed nicer to me and she liked animals like I did.
The first couple of years that I knew her she would come down to my dad's house in Mississippi on the weekends I would be there. I was different then and my depression was bad, there for a while I wouldn't stay at my dad's house the whole weekend because I would panic. Eventually though I was able to make it through the whole weekend and Anita helped with that by keeping me busy. We always went places when I was over, large flea markets were my favorite because I like looking at all the strange things. Mule days (outdoor festival that had a horse and mule parade) were always fun too and we actually came home with a puppy from Mule day once.
There were nights when we would go to the dirt track races and on this one night it had been raining the day before so there were large puddles in the parking area at the track. It was time to leave and the parking lot was a bit on the dark side. Anita didn't see the "puddle" which turned out to be a pothole and she stepped knee deep in the muddy water. That situation was so funny because I had never heard Anita cuss so loudly. I on the other hand couldn't stop laughing at the situation.
I will also never forget how mad my mother got when I got my hair dyed the for the first time with Anita.
Life at my mother's house got worse and worse and there were a few time when I came to Anita's house sick because my mother wouldn't take me to the doctor's. A good example of this was when I first started showing sign's of Psoriasis when I was 12. I had this dry patch of skin on my scalp that wouldn't go away. My mother took me to the doctors but the doctor she took me to was stupid and told her I had ringworm. That doctor put me on pills that made me so sick that I couldn't hold down food until hours after I took them. I wanted to stop the pills because they weren't working on the dry patch but she wouldn't let me and forced me to take the pills regardless of how sick they made me. That weekend I went to Anita's and she saw how sick I got and she took me to a different doctor and with the new medication I healed and learned to live with my new disorder. That was just one time among many that she took care of me when I was sick from my mother's house.
About a year before I left with my husband, Anita had surgery on her lower abdomen and was bed ridden for the weekend I was there. I spent the whole weekend laying in bed with her watching movies on TV and Lifetime. One movie we watched that weekend was 7 Wives For 7 Brothers, I remember her saying she always liked that movie and I enjoyed it myself so now I own a copy of it.
.................
The first week of October 2014 Anita had a massive stroke. The stroke destroyed her brain stem to the point of unrepair. She was on life support for two days while my step sister and brother tried to find a way to make her better.
On the second day the 2nd doctor told them that she couldn't be fixed and the only life she would have would be spent in a bed at a nursing home on life support. The mother they knew and the mom that became mine wasn't here anymore and so even though we are all grown and the future without our mom scares us.....we knew that it wasn't right to hold her here in a life that she would have never wanted for herself....spent in a hospital bed.
The life support was turned off on October 3rd....
Anita finally let go on October 4th....
An out pour of sadness came from everyone that knew her, that showed us all that we weren't alone in our loss. Anita was a mother.....friend.....family to everyone she met. To me, a mother I will always remember and even though her and my dad never got married I still adopted her and looked to her as my mother. I will never forget....the weekends.....Christmases......birthdays.....outings......good days.....bad days.....singing in the car....my first look in a microscope....my first hair dye.......my first pair of glasses.....you were there and I miss you and I will always.
You can now be with all of us no matter the distance.
Here are the only pictures I have of Anita sadly I don't currently own any pictures of us together.
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