Soul Mates

What is Paradise?

Palm trees, beaches, mimosas, salt water in the air with sand beneath your feet.

About 90% of people would tell you, this is paradise.

And to me.

It absolutely is.

I was born in Sarasota Florida

I remember when my grandparent took me there in the 2nd grade.. We drove across the country and I counted all the American flags from Michigan where i grew up all the way to the town I was born in.

I'll never forget the nostalgia I felt while being there, the feeling of being in your birth place. So connected to where my energy started.

I went back with my mom in highschool, for my sisters wedding.

That week was probably, one of the best weeks ever with my mother while I was a teenager.

We had so much, went shopping, got drunk with my sister, spent so much time at the beach. Took a bubble bath together, we laughed harder that week than we ever had. She told me that week, on Siesta Key beach, all of her favorite memories were there.

She would skip school to read there, and her and her girlfriends would spend all of there time there. She was a life guard there in the summers.

We went to the beach after she took me to see the church garden where my dads ashes were at the time.

She had said, if anything ever happened to her, she wanted me to do the same thing NAncy had to with my dad, but she wanted her ashes spread right here. In the gulf, so she can be with the dolphins.

She showed me my dads school ( her high school) and his classroom and told me about all of there memories.

Took me to the house I was a baby in, and the house he lived in and the house the his widowed wife lived in. Oddly they made friends and we went there to swim with my little brother John. Even tho she's honestly a horrid person and at this point I truly believe she pushed both my father and my baby brother to their death. I mean after all she did bury my father in a Catholic church garden... He was Agnostic. My dad died 19 years ago, he had a drinking problem, and he was history teach at Sarasota High School. He was also a baseball coach and published the book The fundamentals of Baseball. He had just had surgery on his knee in December of 2003 and asked my mom to fly us down from MI to see him for Christmas and our birthdays.

She said no.

Didn't want me to get attached to him and then resent her for coming back home,

He died two weeks later after he got some coke to stay up and grade papers

It was cut with fentanyl and end up reacting with his recovery medicine and attack his heart.

My sister had to pull the plug on him as his power of attorney when she was 18, he was 48.

I remember my mom sitting in the kitchen after my birthday party

Staring out the window.

It was like she was there, but she really wasn't there at all.

She was supposed to be happy right? I just had my 9th birthday party, all my friends and cousin and family were there. Why did she look so lost? So sad?

I asked her if she was okay.

She pulled me on her lap and said did you have a good birthday baby?

I said yes momma...

Her voice cracked and she said Princess girl, I'm about to tell you something that I wish I never had to. Your dad, he got sick, he had surgery, and a medicine made him very sick and he's gone Kaelin,. He's with God now. I said well can't God just give him back because he's missed too many birthdays and I just want to see him before he goes because i havent seen him in a long time so your gonna have to just tell God to give him back.

She said He can't give him back baby, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I should've take you donw there I'm so sorry baby.

I said well maybe God needed him more than we did.

She stop crying and looked me dead in the eyes and said what?

Maybe, God needed him more than I did.

She said you are more wise than any I year old ever should be.

I said don't be sad momma, now he can with us too, since he couldn't before.

She loved on me and went to play with my new birthday stuff.. later on I found my mom tom petty cd and I am pretty sure I actually broke the CD play radio I used from playing it on repeat for weeks. I went to the box my mom puts my birthday cards in and i found one from him. I slept with it under my pillow for years.

It was few years later when my sister got in touch with my mom and asked to fly down to florida.

10 years after my dad died, my mother killed herself on 9/11/2013.

I was 18, when I had to pull the plug on her. She was 48 years old.

Numbers are weird.

Fate is weird.

My mom always said my dad and her were soul mates, but their lives didn't add up. That sometimes it just happens that way.

At the end of both of their lives, they had written down in writing to each other that they both wish they would've tried harder because maybe things would be different. And they would feel less lost.

I know the day my mom got that phone call, a piece of her died with him.

It strange how that goes, but I know the feeling.

Because the day she died, another piece of me died.