The stories in this blog you may or may not ever read may or may not be true.  Some of the names and places have been changed to protect the guilty and because I truly just like to make stuff up. IMHO, there are no innocents in this world with the possible exception of children under the age of accountability and most herbivores.  There are reasons for everything and if you stumbled upon this blog by accident there's probably a reason for that and I would take the time to figure out what that is if I was you.  But I'm not. I'm me.  And I'm heartless to you.

     Happy Mother's Day 2012!  Unfortunately this day does not bring me as much joy as it should. You see I have at this very moment an extremely itchy infection in my right eye AND my mother Mrs Xylia Couch is dead.   She died just last November in this very room at 1371 Butterfly Way in San Diego, CA, where I'm typing this.   Her ashes are hidden in a decorative wooden box that rests comfortably upon a blue powered reclining chair that my Sister Palmettia bought for her.   We don't have a mantle for her just yet and probably never will.

     Inside a small window on the lid of her box is "An Irish Prayer For You: May your days be filled with laughter and the joy of many friends; May God bless you with His grace and peace that never ends."  Inside the box is a plastic bag sealed with a silver metal tag #3117 in which is all that remains of my mother.  "Ashes to ashes and dust to dust" is very real to me now.   It pains me to no end that of all the Mother's Days in the past where I might have felt too busy to share a kind word with this woman; today I don't have the actual ability to ignore her physical existence.  All that is left of her is with me.

     Of course my mother Mrs Couch did not ever go by that name.   Her maiden name was Lopez and even after marrying an age-old family friend Mr. Dillon Couch in a Las Vegas wedding chapel she kept the last name of her first husband who was a Tinker.   Stormy Tinker was ONE of the love's of her life and the only man besides Dillon that she had married.   Many men over the years of her life it seems were mesmerized by her exotic beauty, lilting laugh and disarming smile.

     The name of Xylia's "first" love is known to my eldest sister, who I'll call Sister Grace, because he is her biological father.  Sister Grace was firstborn to Xylia while our mother was a struggling lounge singer in Shreveport, Louisiana.  Sister Palmettia's father, whose name is known to her also, didn't come along till Sister Grace was good and spoiled.  Whether Sister Grace resented the birth of Sister Palmettia or not I do not know, but I do know that Xylia depended upon Sister Grace to help rear our Sister Palmettia as well as her subsequent offspring.

     From what I gather, my biological father Stormy Tinker came along in the early 1960's.  He was a skinny, corn-fed military man about 10 years Xylia's junior, although he allegedly was blissfully ignorant to that fact.   By the time I came along in 1962 Stormy & Xylia were married and he had legally adopted both of my sisters.  Their marital relationship was filled with violence and lengthy separations caused by the Vietnam war and Stormy's various unaccompanied military assignments. Our Brother Church, who is about three years my junior, was born to them while on an accompanied tour in the Aleutian Islands.

     Their marriage ended with a painful whimper in the late 1970's not long before Stormy was able to retire.  When I was a child I found some forgotten love letters written in Spanish that Stormy had sent to Xylia during one of their separations.  No matter what Stormy claims about that relationship today, IMHO the word "Amor" seemed to be repeated more times in those letters than was poetically necessary.   I will call Stormy today and wish him a Happy Mother's day.....for reasons that may be obvious to only those who know him.   Today is Mother's Day but my mother is dead.   Long live Xylia Couch!