Phil's History – Omaha The Sad Years Part 2

This is another difficult post I have been putting off for a very long time. My previous posts were on my family and the early years in Omaha that looking back were Ideal. This post will be about what happened after my mother passed away. I have thought about it over and over I realize it is still painful to this day. I am 59 now in this happened when I was 10. I have missed my mother terribly all these years and wish she could've met my wife and my children. She was a very loving person. So here I go:

my mom passed away in the fall not long after I started fifth grade. I remember a little bit about the funeral. My dad chose a beautiful blue coffin because my mother's favorite color was blue. I have to admit the coffin was a beautiful piece. I don't remember much about the funeral but remember having difficulty going up and seeing the body. It still did not feel real. During the funeral my sister and I had a small bouquet of tiny red roses that we put on her coffin before they laid in the ground. My mother loved red roses and I'm glad our dad chose that. It made us feel close to her even though by then we knew she was gone.

My dad was off work for a while and we didn't go to school during that time. I don't think it was more than a week but I don't remember. When we went back my fellow students really never knew what to say except one girl, Kris K expressed sadness at my mother's passing. The teachers and staff all expressed how sad they were at my loss and I have to admit it wasn't until I was much older that I understood what they meant. When I was a child it was hard for me to understand the words "I'm sorry for your loss".

The hardest moment for me came a few weeks after we went back to school. We always carry our lunch in a sack or lunchbox. I used to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches almost every day. My mother wanted to give me some variety but I begged for peanut butter and jelly which was my favorite. So for years I ate a sack lunch and sat with my friends. Once in a while they would have hamburgers for lunch at the cafeteria and they smelled so good. I still remember to this day how they smelled.

One day I talked my dad into giving me a dollar so I could buy my lunch because I knew they were having hamburgers. He relented and I was looking forward to it. What I didn't know was that if you got a hot lunch you sat in a different room, the actual cafeteria than you did if you had a sack lunch. So here I was with my hot lunch in a room where I really didn't have any friends since for five years I've been eating in a different room. My anxiety level was off the chart and I had zero appetite. I took one bite of the hamburger and I couldn't eat anymore. There was no one at my table that I was friends with and no one talked to me. To this day it was the loneliest moment of my entire life and is etched on my personality. To this day when I think of who I am I am that little boy who lost his mother and was so-so alone. This is why it is hard for me to dictate this. I am that little boy to this day. I am glad I am doing this post and hopefully I can grow past these feelings. Right now it is difficult for me to keep the tears away. I will follow up more on the sad days and months in a later post. Thank you for reading