Auto Mobiles Updates: [NASCAR-Group] The late Judy Kay Rush

Allow me to be up front: I realize that there are those here, and
everywhere that have lost one or both parents, some of us have also lost
brothers, sisters, children, grandparents, ect. Never in the midst of
this process have I taken an ounce of self pity in the respect of
goading or making my loss any more important than anyone else's, and I
say this with the connotations of understanding, not because anyone has
said anything negative to me at all. Rather, at first, I felt like I
just couldn't bring myself to talk Nascar, or Goodyear, or Fantasy, or
anything really, as this death thing is heavy. However, I ended up
finding here something that has been more than medicinal, more than
uplifting; I found normalcy here as well. An anchor in the real world
that has actually kept me on the ground, and kept me interested in being
nothing more than just, normal. When Dale Sr was killed, the racing went
on. I always felt like Nascar and Fox traded on Sr's death to the max,
and used it to sell a product of racing that has left many with a bland
taste. My point however is, just like the racing, life too has gone on,
and here in Alan's group, I have found it rather easy to immerse myself
and find an almost paradisiac island of escape.

Let me please tell you about Judy Kay Rush, my mother. Blunt,
intelligent, articulate, yet, gullible, wounded, and child like. She
read books with great alacrity. She read Stephen King's "IT" in less
than two days. She loved Robin Cook, Dean Koonz, Charles Dickens, Lord
Tennison, Bernard Shaw, Edgar Allan Poe, but also; Dr Suess. Many of the
quotes and anecdotes I say here are from reading books out of her
library as a child. Mother could say the right thing at the wrong time,
or vice versa. I'm sure many of us here remember the kids show,
"Barney". She absolutely abhorred this show. In one of her sleeping pill
stupors, she said something I will never forget, in a room full of her
grandchildren, not fully aware of her surroundings: "Jeezus.. this
Barney. He ain't nuthin but a big fat purple dumbass.." See, she had
this knack of saying what everyone else was thinking, but was themselves
afraid to say, because after all, to me, Barney was a big fat purple
dumbass, and I always wished he'd had eaten that one Michael kid. Mother
had this other thing about her. She lived within her own singularity.
Her divorce from my father was hard on her, and she never remarried, or
even desired to. She always lived with one of us, her children. I even
asked her one time about a year ago why she never sought out a 'peer
group' of her own. She shrugged her shoulders, and it appeared I had
hurt her feelings. I did.. and I didn't realize it until now. We, her
kids and grandkids were her peer group, and the only people outside her
sisters and brother she cared to keep in her circle. Keeping up and
living with different ones of us throughout the last 30 years gave her a
sense of purpose, and a reason for feeling needed.

Another good thing about her, that I used to just LIVE for from her,
were the moments when we'd be at a christmas gathering or something,
mother would bust off again, what everyone would be thinking and not
saying, or she'd be approached by some uninformed idiot that would ask
her a question.. see rule number 1 on this issue with mother was this:
If you ask a question that you really don't want an answer to, then by
God, you'd better be prepared for an answer you didn't want to hear.
Your feelings didn't matter to her when she was telling you truisms. You
asked was always mine and my siblings response to people that would say,
"Jeez, your mom's kinda mean" Also, I just knew that anytime we had a
reunion or gathering, I would get to see her in action on these things,
and it would give me something to look forward to at what sometimes
would be the most boring get togethers. There was actually a preacher
at a funeral of a friend of hers, who everyone knew that he'd had just
had a kid out of wedlock. Well, he approached her and said, "Judy, you
should come to church more often.." to which she replied, "okay, but my
daughter is off limits bud".

He never said another word to her again.

Mother would gripe at you about how you would spend your money, but then
would call you the first of every month, and out of the blue say, "look,
a hundred bucks is all I can give you".. without you ever asking her.
Her heart, appeared to be made of brass, but it in reality was full of
giving, love, and the blackest, most Monty Pythonesque humor. She'd tell
you a dirty joke during a funeral, or she'd call you at three in the
morning and say. "ahh hell, I forgot what I wanted.."... 'click'. And
you'd be holding the phone and you'd smile, because she wasn't joking
you, she'd wake up and think of something she needed to ask, but then
would forget and hang up on you.. On the same token this: How many times
have any of you tried to remember the name of some obscure or long
forgotten celebrity or relative, and it would bother you until you
thought of it? Okay, she'd do that sometimes too.. "oh, what was that
woman's name?" or something to the affect. It could be two years later,
three oclock in the morning, and your phone would ring, and she'd say,
for example, "Rosemary Clooney!".. and with our family, you'd remember
that exact conversation and go, "Oh yeah..." and then.. 'click'... she'd
hang up that fast. She actually called her sister one time on a prank..
my aunt was giving away free kittens, and mother said she was calling
from a chinese restaraunt, and ask my aunt if the kittens were 'plump
tasty like' kittens or were they 'only good for broth'... My aunt wanted
to kick her ass but couldn't quit laughing at the same time.

My mother Judy and I had a very strained realtionship for a long time.
As I matured, and reached my thirties at that point, we finally embraced
the past, and put it away. However, I want to say this one more story
about her.. Mother loved cats. She'd coddle them, name them, feed them
from a bottle if she found a kitten or something like that. When she
last lived with me two years ago, she had two orange tabby cats. Smokey
and Bandit. With her, cats were people ya'll.. seriously. She'd talk to
her cats, and say things to them, that she feared saying to others. She
would open up her innermost self to them. Well, one day, Smokey and
Bandit were sleeping on my 200 dollar suit that I had just brought back
from the cleaners... I was pissed. I said, "that's it, I"m gettin rid of
them damned cats".. she looked at me, and you could tell that the child
like possesivness in her took over and she said to me, "I'll kill you in
your sleep too bub!" I laughed till tears rolled. No, she would never
do that, but she felt like her cats, or her 'kids' were being
threatened...

I could go on forever. I will end this posting with this one last line
of thinking: Plato once wrote, "You will forget their face, you will
forget their name, but you will never forget how they made you feel". My
mother must have been on his mind when he etched these words, but the
ones that suit me the best were penned by Lord Blakley, when writing
about a friend of his, of which I apply to mother; "She definitely
stomped on the terra" and guys, she did. I give to everyone here, my
love, my loyalty, my friendship, and above all, my gratitude. Tomorrow
is her memorial, and I am eulogizing my own mother. I will not have this
a cry fest, she would have been angry with us. I will tell them of
stories both funny and scary, and I will tell them that this lady, this
mutant of intellect and fury definitely stomped on the terra.

With tears of both joy and rememberance,

moi.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]