Dear journal,

Monday, August 23, 2010… my mother died. What can you say at a time like this when the person that meant everything to you is no longer there? My mom was my best friend. She stuck with me through every phase of my life. When no one else supported me, she was always there. There were times when we had our disagreements and she would say, “You’ll miss me when I’m gone!” She was so right.

I suppose I should have seen it coming; she had been sick for the last year and a half, and this past summer had been extremely hard. She had been in  the hospital four times in three months, and seemed to go downhill everyday. In my last entry I wrote that the doctors wanted to insert a feeding tube in her stomach to give her nourishment, which I allowed. Afterwards she was sent to a nursing home to recuperate. The nursing home I chose specialized in rehab and was said to have a high success rate of getting patients like my mom off the feeding tube and able to eat on their own. With a healthy diet and lots of therapy, it was said, patients like my mom were able to return home in a few months.  I was so optimistic that my mom would get better. I visited her every day and did everything I could to encourage her and make sure she was well cared for. My family was very supportive too. My two closest aunts — my mom’s sister “Marcie” and her aunt “Ella” — came up from Arkansas to see how she was doing and were my house guests during that time. Everything seemed to be in order which is why I was totally unprepared for what was to come the day I got that phone call at work.

School in my town had started two weeks earlier, so I was back on the job as a teacher’s aide. I was assisting students in the computer lab when my cell phone rang. At first I ignored it because I was in the middle of work and I couldn’t just walk off the job to answer my cell. I figured I would return the call later. But when the phone rang a second and third time, I politely excused myself and went out into the hallway. The reception where I work is terrible, but through the static I could make out my aunt Ella saying that the nursing home had just called and said that mom was unresponsive and had been rushed to the hospital, and that I should come home right away.

I was worried, of course, but these emergency trips to the hospital had become routine because there had been so many of them. I figured I would go home, pick up my aunts, and we would all go to the ER only to be told that mom was going to be in the hospital again for a few days and all would be fine. I was wrong.

At 5:00 am this morning I went in to check on my mother as I regularly do every couple of hours or so. My mom is 78 and was diagnosed with Dementia last year, and her health had been in steady decline the past few months. She was lying in bed very still except for her labored breathing that pumped her bony chest up and down and sounded like a car engine being strangled. I asked if she was having trouble breathing. She didn’t respond. I asked if I should call 911. Again, she didn’t respond, but the look in her eyes said, “Yes!”

This was the third time in 3 months that I have had to call 911 for a medical emergency. After the paramedics had taken her out to the ambulance, I calmly turned off all the lights before I followed outside with a cup of coffee in hand. It was becoming routine. A much too familiar, horrible, routine. I followed the ambulance in my car to the hospital, as usual, and sat in the waiting room until they called my name. I went back to the ER and explained what happened to the doctor whom I had met before, signed the usual forms, and again sat and watched for an hour for as they probed and pricked my mom over and over trying to pop one of the tiny veins in her fragile arms to insert an IV line.

The nurses explained that perhaps it was time that I put her in a nursing home because she needed 24 hour care that I was not able to give. After they ran a series of tests another doctor, whom I had met before, told me that she needed sergery to have a G-Tube inserted into her stomach. Mom had come to the point where she wouldn’t/couldn’t eat or drink enough to get the nutrients and fluids that her body needed to stay healthy, so they wanted to insert a feeding tube into her stomach so that she would get the nourishment that she would not get otherwise. When the doctors and nurses had approached me before about the feeding tube and the nursing home my answer was a flat, “No!” But as I stood in the ER this morning holding my mom’s hand and looking down at her frail and weak shell of a body, I was forced to face reality and admit that maybe they were right about everything.

At any point during this entire time did I ever stop to think about the fact that I was “still” a Virgin at 41 and that I needed to get laid? Absolutely not!

Welcome to the first day of my blog: an online journal about the life and times of a real life 40 (one)year old Virgin.

This blog is my answer to the film the “40 year-old-virgin” and other films like it that popularize negative stereotypes about adult Virgins. I wanted to do this blog because I am sick and tired of society saying that if you have not had sex by a certain age you are a freak and your life has no purpose. As a real 40 (one) year-old-virgin I am here to show that this is not true. I may be different but I am just as normal as anyone else and there’s more to me than what I am sexually not doing.

I cannot guarante at this point that I will post an entry every day, because as you can see I am dealing with a lot right now. But if you click the “subscribe” button at the bottom of the “about me” page you will be notified by email of any updates I make. I really appreciate those of you that are here for this very first entry and I hope that you will return. I think my 41^st year on earth is going to be a real roller coaster ride.