Hello everyone. On Christmas Eve, at 1:13 a.m., my mother died. Brenda Love has moved on to whatever awaits us all after this life.
I want to apologize to my friends that I have not shared this news with, but honestly, I still don’t feel ready to confront my emotions. I am dealing with it by not dealing with it. I have been numb. I don’t mean to overshare, but I haven’t even cried yet. I have made plenty of jokes, but I haven’t cried.
I didn’t tell anyone until after Christmas because I didn’t want the holiday to be filled with well-meaning condolences and sad looks. I stayed busy and just kinda waited for it to hit me.
I compartmentalize my grief and emotions for when I can feel something. I am embarrassed, and I have a huge amount of guilt that the one emotion I have felt was relief. My mom had a stroke a few years ago, and her quality of life has not been the same as it once was.
I feel like a horrible person and a shitty son. I was not with her when she passed. I didn’t get to say goodbye or hold her hand. I feel anger, guilt, resentment and lots of other petty emotions that do absolutely no good if I express them. I feel some sadness but it’s not overwhelming me like it probably should.
So, instead of telling you all about our crazy, sometimes rocky relationship, I want to tell you all about a few of the times that Brenda Love was my hero.
My mom was a badass. My parents got divorced when I was 5 or 6 years old. They were so toxic together, and, even at that age, I knew that them breaking up was a good thing.
Brenda worked her ass off to provide for my sister and me. We lived in a tiny, one-bedroom apartment for a long time. She worked two, sometimes three jobs to make sure we had everything we needed.
She worked for a company called Woody’s Toys during the day, which I loved. She drove all over DFW and set up and stocked toy displays at convenience stores. She drove a big, white van filled with blue totes holding everything from paddle balls to that colorful goo you put on the end of a straw to make bubbles. Whoopee cushions, Hot Wheels, Clackers, Yo-Yo’s, Silly Putty — you name it, she probably had it.
In the evenings and sometimes overnight, she would work at one of those same convenience stores. I think it was a Kwik Pantry or a Circle K. I remember they had slushy machines with a hound dog wearing a beanie called Slush Puppy. I always got the blue because my mom would laugh when I showed her my blue tongue. I have no idea what flavor it was.
Every once in a while, I would go to work with her to “help out.” Basically, I just kept her company while she drove around, and I waited in the van as she stocked the toys.
One of these times, after she finished her last store, we stopped at the honky-tonk she frequented since she was single. She said we were gonna stop in for a bit to see her friend Charla, who I think was a waitress there.
I was maybe 9 or 10 when she took me into my first bar: The Log Tavern, it was dark, smoky and seedy — everything you want in a bar. Especially after seeing the movie Urban Cowboy, which we saw in the theater twice. (We saw lots of movies together, that was kind of our thing.)
Mom and Charla started playing pool. (By the way, Brenda Love was really fucking good at pool — like, pool shark good.) I was spinning on a bar stool with a root beer in a bottle feeling very grown up when a guy comes up and starts hitting on my mom. She let him know immediately that she was not interested, but he was persistent. He started talking about how good her ass looked in her jeans and that he just needed to touch it. She told him to keep his hands to himself and shooed him away.
Then she leans over the pool table to make a shot, and this greasy idiot grabs my mom’s ass with both hands. She turned around and punched him in the face. It was a full-fisted punch, right in the eye, so hard that it knocked him on his ass. She turned back to the pool table and made her shot.
He did not mess with her anymore.
When I was in 8th grade, while trying to hide from the school bus, I fell out of a tree and broke both of my arms. Brenda Love was there in minutes, picked me up off the ground like I weighed nothing and carried me to her van then sped off to the hospital.
When I was a kid, my mother HATED Jamie Lee Curtis. If we saw commercial for one of her movies, Brenda would say, “I hate that fuckin’ bitch!” Then she would always tell the story of the time she whooped Jamie Lee Curtis’s ass.
Apparently when she was a kid, they lived in California, and my grandpa was a ranch hand on Tony Curtis’s ranch. My mom was with Pawpaw one day, helping out with the horses. Jamie Lee was mistreating one of her horses, like hitting the horse with a switch or a stick. Brenda told her that if she did it again, she was gonna whoop her ass. My guess is Jamie Lee did it again, because Brenda kicked her ass and got Pawpaw fired.
Years later, I asked my Pawpaw if that story was true or was she full of shit. He said it was true and that he had never been prouder of her. I love that story, and, to this day, I secretly love Jamie Lee Curtis. I mean, cmon! She’s Laurie Strode. But now when I see her, I always think to myself, “My momma kicked your ass.”
It’s weird to think that I will never hear her say, “I just called to see whut you were doin’.” Brenda sounded very country, even more than me.
It has not sunk in that she is gone. I woke up today expecting a text from her. I loved my mom, and I know she loved me. I need to get used to living in a world without her.
Goodbye Brenda, and thank you for being my mom.
Love more! XOXO, Cassie Nova