Sick Little Girl

Okay, I'm not a little girl but I am sick today.  I had to leave work early due to a bout of some nasty stomach stuff I had going on.  Not a fun morning, to say the least.

I'm not one to say that I want my mommy when I'm sick; I'd really rather be left alone. Which was what she did.  I would lay on the couch in the Family Room downstairs, and she would sit in her spot on the couch in the Living Room upstairs; she could see me from there if she stood up.  She would come down to check on me from time to time, and to offer tea or toast.  When my dad called during the day, she would tell him that I was sick and he would come home with something - a small toy, a book, something he knew would cheer me up.  One time he brought home a red lamp because he knew it was my favorite color and I wanted a red room - since my entire room couldn't be red, this was his compromise.

When I was in college, I can remember wishing I was home at least once when I was sick. Well, I say "sick" but it was probably more like "insanely hung over from too many free drinks at the bar without a valid ID the night before".  I can remember laying in my dorm room, wishing she was there because I was just so miserably sick.  I wanted her to make me toast, and chicken noodle soup from the red box with an egg in it.  I wanted the comfort that she gave me, albeit not that great in the grand scheme of things.

My mom would sit outside the bathroom door when I got sick, she would offer a cold rag for my forehead when I emerged.  To this day, I hate it when someone comes into the bathroom with me when I throw up; if someone joins me, I won't shoo them away but it is uncomfortable for me. It's something I've had to adjust to,  now that I live with my boyfriend.  My mom wasn't very 'hands-on'.  It's funny because now that I'm a mom, and my daughter has been sick a few times, I can't imagine her ever being the woman that sat on the couch with a sick toddler sleeping on her chest. That just wasn't my mom.  She didn't hold me when I cried as a tween or teenager (God, the term "tween" didn't exist when I was one), she only started telling me that she loved me once she got older...I think it started after one of her heart attacks or surgeries.  She just wasn't the Suzi Homemaker mom. She did make a great chocolate chip cookie, though.  :)

I Don't Think it Makes Me a Bad Person

Lately, I’ve felt selfish.  But not necessarily in a bad way.  I just feel like I can only take care of myself, which doesn’t work all that well when you have a toddler (especially this toddler who has no fear whatsoever…every day, at least once a day I say to her “a little fear would be nice!”).  It’s not that I was a caregiver for my mom; my dad took care of the everyday stuff once she couldn’t or wouldn’t do it anymore.  And she went into respiratory failure the day after she went into the hospital so there wasn’t a lot of “care” going on there, either.  Although I did have a lot of phone calls and conversations with doctors and nurses and social workers.  But still. For some reason, and I guess I’ll just chalk it up to grief, I just feel on some days that I can barely handle myself, let alone anyone else.  I don’t always feel guilty for it when I’m in the middle of saying or thinking “I can’t handle another thing or another person right now”, but the guilt does come on eventually which just adds to the fun of this whole experience.

 

I try very hard some days to not be a total and utter bitch to those around me.  On some days, I succeed and I’m proud of that success, and on others…well, I fail miserably.  But those are the days that are my worst.  Those are the days that I can’t get the images and stories and all of the “could have been”s that are now gone out of my head.  Those are the days when I force myself to leave the house, that I remind myself constantly that Emily is not driving me crazy on purpose – its her job as a toddler to do so.  It’s on those days that I can barely stand being in my own skin, let alone be around others in theirs.  Those days are tough, and they sneak up on me like a mugger in broad daylight on a crowded city street; I never see it coming.

 

Today, thankfully, is another good day.  Two in a row, I think, may be a milestone for me.  I try to take the days as they come, good/bad/ugly/uber fugly (which are the ones when I really should be sent to a deserted island until my attitude improves).  I don’t know what creates a good day, they just seem to happen. And in the midst of a good day, something may come up that turns everything over and it magically becomes a bad day; but you can’t plan for those.  When that happens, although I try my best to push that trigger to the side, many times it just consumes me and takes over.  I turn back into the sad girl who’s mom just died and no one knows what to say as they see me walk by with my head down, possibly looking like I’ve just spent my lunch time in the car crying.  When someone asks how I am, especially on those days, it is very hard to not come back with “well, my mom is dead so I’m doing pretty shitty.  How are you??”.  It’s amazing my tongue doesn’t have a groove in it from the all the biting I have done in the last 6 weeks.

 

I hope that because I’m not actively mourning all the time it doesn’t make me a bad daughter; I also hope that on the days that I am in the throes of it that it doesn’t make me a bad daughter or a bad person.  As I’ve mentioned before, I wasn’t exactly my mom’s BFF, but I want to honor her memory; for all the craziness, ugliness, nastiness and for all of the good because there was some good in there, I want to honor her.  I guess since she wasn’t exactly pleasant, my attitude issues aren’t exactly doing her memory a disservice.  But still.  I hate the idea that, somehow or someway, she is someplace watching as I yell at my daughter for something stupid like taking off her shoes before we leave for school or dumping a bunch of crayons on the floor when I told her not to, or as I yell at the cat and scoot him out of the way with my foot when he’s being a jackass (yes, I do sometimes think my cat is a jackass), or as I toss out my nasty attitude at those that care about me the most.  I want her to be around us, especially around Emily, but I don’t want her to sit there and see me being a horrible person; but if she can see it, I hope she knows that it’s only happening because I miss her and I feel robbed.  Yes I had her for 39 years, but it wasn’t enough.  She could have been here for 59 years and it wouldn’t have been enough, I guess, but to have her die the way that she did and as quick as she did…it’s mostly a curse and not so much a blessing these days.

I Appreciate a Good Day

I wrote this yesterday while I was at work....when I have a hard time focusing, I try to write something other than what I'm working on and it usually helps.  Go figure.

Today is actually a decent day (knock on wooden-like desk).

 

I did cry today, but for a short time and I kind of brought it upon myself.  I started to wonder if one of Emily’s teachers was back yet from medical leave, which made me think of what it will be like when I do see her. She had met my parents once at Grandparents’ Day lunch last year and she remarked on how much Emily looked like my mom; I know that she knows she passed away.  So in my head, I envisioned her saying how sorry she was and asking how we were all doing. So that made me cry.  Other people’s sympathy and condolences make me cry; my dad and I are a lot alike in that area.  Other people being nice, being sympathetic, saying how sorry they are and sharing in our grief makes us both cry.  Sometimes other people’s generosity of spirit really just amazes me.

 

I try very hard to not think of things that I know will upset me, but I am a future planner.  I have a vacation planned in three weeks, the first time I’ve had away to myself since the baby was born, and I keep coming up with things that I need to do before I leave and things to do once I’m there and then there’s April.  My mom’s birthday, Easter, and my birthday all fall within a week of each other this year so that’s been on my mind as well.  I thought I would handle Easter first, and then my mom’s birthday but it turns out they are the very same weekend.  But I’m trying to not think too much about it because all three of those things will ruin what has started off to be a relatively decent day.

 

There is this song that the band Train sings called “You Can Finally Meet My Mom”; it’s about the lead singer’s wife meeting his mom when they die.  His mother died back before they hit it big; “Drops of Jupiter” is also about his mother.  The first time I heard the song, it made me think of my best friend from college who was killed almost 5 years ago in a car accident with her mom and her aunt; there are people in my life now – my daughter, for example – that Donna never met.  And I couldn’t listen to the song because it made me sad to know that Emily won’t meet Donna until her time has come (which seriously better not be until she is 95 and I am long, long gone). Donna was a great woman and, although I believe that things happen for a reason, I still don’t think she should have lost her life at such a young age.  But anyway, the song now has new meaning for me, and I especially struggle to listen to it now although it is a great song.  The lyrics go “…Everybody upstairs, everybody downstairs, I’m not gonna have time to hang out with them, cause I’ll be hanging out with you, not  Jimmie Hendrix Jesus or the dude that played the Sheriff in Blazing Saddles…..and oh I’ve waited so long, you can finally meet my mom”.  There are people in my life, now or in some time in the future, who will not know her in this life.  It’s very strange to know that.  And it includes my daughter; when you think about it, she’ll only know my mom through our stories and pictures.  She won’t really know her or meet her until they meet again in another place or life.  Very strange, indeed.

How?

I don’t understand why it doesn’t really feel like she’s gone.  She’s dead, I sat with her as she died.  I saw her face change color, I saw her last breath.  And still, it doesn’t feel like that was my mom.  She looked like an old invalid, (they had taken out her dentures when they put the tube in so her lips were all caved in as she breathed, and her mouth was wide open so it just didn’t look like my mom) who had reached her final days and I felt like a hospital worker that was there to be with someone in their final hours because there was no one else to sit with them.  I didn’t feel like I was watching my mom die.  And I still don’t sometimes.  I stood in front of her spot in the mausoleum and cried because it just didn’t feel real.  How could I have been standing there, looking at my mom’s name up on a wall, where I saw them put her casket that held her body?  How could I have stood next to her casket and said goodbye to her?  How could I have gone to her wake and cried, watched my dad and my sister cry, as we all said goodbye to her?  How is it that I walked into a church and saw the faces of my best friends, as they sat in the back and cried with me as I tried to grasp how this all was real?  How could Rob have stood by me the way that he did, physically and emotionally, and continues to do so because my mom is dead?  I so vividly remember leaning over, with my mouth covered by a tissue, crying uncontrollably when they played the Irish hymn in church and him rubbing my back (my sister and I picked it out on purpose, knowing that she would have loved it but I knew it would break me into pieces which exactly what it did).  And standing at the casket, in the middle of the church, trying so very hard to not cry my eyes out in front of everyone, with his hands on my shoulders.  How did all of this happen?  One of my mom’s best friends reaching out and holding my hand at the end of the aisle, in some effort to give me comfort as I said goodbye to my mother.  As I remember it, it seems so horribly real and painful. 

 

 

There’s a part of me that wants to go through my mother’s things and just get it over with, but there is another part of me that knows once that process starts it will break my heart into even smaller pieces – if that’s possible – because it will be real.  Her things in my house make it real.  Even now, it’s what makes it real.  The day to day doesn’t do it, but it’s her plastic containers that I won’t bring back to her and it’s her coffee creamer that she never got to use and it’s the lemons that were in the drawer of the fridge that she never got to use.  That’s what makes it real for me.  It’s the things that used to be hers but are now mine and that is just too much for my brain to take some days.  How will I do it when it’s not just lemons and containers but jewelry and teddy bears and actual things that I remember her having and using and wearing.  I don’t remember, typically, that her bag from the hospital is in my closet at home.  I try not to think about it.  And I don’t think about the pictures that I gave to the funeral home to use that day because I know I should look at them, but I can’t.

 

Before this happened, I can remember thinking to myself – how do people do it?  How do they do all of the things that they need to do when someone so close to them dies.  My best friend’s father died just two months before my mom and I remember thinking that these things come in threes…please don’t let me be number two.  And I was.  I didn’t know how he did it; his father died very suddenly so they had no time at all to process what had happened.  Maybe that was for the best.  I think even then, before I knew for sure that she was sick, I knew that it would be her.  I don’t know how I got through those days at the hospital, knowing that she would be gone at any time, feeling on some level that she already was, and then once she was going through and doing all of the things that I did. Calling the funeral home, picking out flowers, telling my friends, my family, picking out something to wear.  And amid all of that, making sure Emily went to school and had food and had her clothes match each day at school.  Making sure that my dad was okay, my sister was okay, we all knew where to be and when.  Getting pictures together.  Holding myself together. There are still days that I wonder how I do it; I don’t know.  I’ve been told that I’m strong and I’m one of the strongest people that some others know; but I don’t feel that way very often.

 

I threw her lemons out the other night.  They were very old – probably were bought at the end of December – and they needed to be thrown out.  Rob said he was going to do it, but didn’t think he should and he just waited for me to do it.  I get it.  They weren’t just some lemons that we bought to add to the chicken we were having that night.  They were my mom’s.  My dad bought them for her before she went into the hospital and she never got to use them.  So they became mine.  Ours.  And we used a few, but there were at least four left in the drawer.  I opened the drawer a few times, meaning to throw them out, but I closed the drawer because I couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t throw away my mother’s lemons.  How did I get to the point where I was this person, holding onto old and wilted lemons because they were my dead mom’s and lemons make me think of her.  She always had them in the house so she could put them into her iced tea.  She used to sit in the corner of our old living room, on the love seat, with a big glass of iced tea with a lemon in it, and she would smoke and read and watch TV. That was it.  That was her life for many years. So many nights I would sit on the couch, right by her, doing my homework as she watched Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy.  I hadn't thought of those times until recently.  Just now, actually.

 

Sometimes I hate the memories and I wish they would stop coming in, especially at unexpected moments when I’m not doing anything even remotely related to her or to my grief for her.  Sad songs have become sadder, even if they have nothing to do with dead moms.  Rainy days have become more depressing; snow days make me sad because they remind me of just how much it snowed that first night she was in the hospital and how I left before her dinner came and my sister stayed because I didn’t want to drive home in more snow than I already was going to have to drive in.  Sunny days seem to make me sad sometimes because she isn’t here for them.  Anything can make me sad because she’s not here and I hope that changes.  I’m so very tired of being sad.  I’ve been sad since that day at the doctor’s office, right before Christmas.  She walked in the door and I knew.  I knew it was cancer and I knew it was bad.  Maybe I’m a pessimist, maybe I’m just a realist.  But I know cancer when I see it and I knew it was cancer that day, and I knew her time was getting cut short.  I had hoped for at least a few months, we had 19 days from that date until she died.  Not even three full weeks.  And in that time, I did research on hospitals and oncologists and treatments and it did nothing for her.  It didn’t save her and it didn’t even give her more time.  That makes me sad, too.  I couldn’t save her.  Nothing I did saved her.  Nothing I did made it any better for her.  That sucks.

 

It’s a very strange feeling to only have a dad.  Not that I was very close to my mom; my sister had a better relationship with her than I did. But when she died, she was still my mother and there is still this gap or hole that will never be filled again.  It’s very strange to say things like “my dad’s house” or “my dad lives….”.  It’s my dad’s house now, not my parents’ house.  I call my dad, not my parents.  It’s my dad that is here, and my mom who is not.  My father is not in the best of health and everyone, I think including him, assumed he would be the one to go first.  Which I think is part of what makes him sad; he thought he would go first and he wouldn’t have to mourn her.

 

 

Bonding Interuptus

When I put my daughter to bed, I sit with her in the rocking chair in her room until she's sleepy enough to get into her crib.  There's a dim light, a flower light that we bought at Ikea when she was an infant, and there's always her blankie and her Curious George stuffed animal.  I tell her I love her and I hope she has a good night.  Lately, I end up crying almost every night.  I end up thinking about my mom....in the beginning, I would tell her that Grandma loves her even though she can't see her anymore.  But I realized that maybe that was just not appropriate for a one and a half year old to hear at bedtime.  So I started to just think.  Think about all that was and all that never will be.  Deep, huh?

A few weeks after my mom died, I started to have these random memories just pop into my head at random times.  I was sitting with Emily one night, going through our bedtime ritual, when I suddenly remembered what it was like to drive up to my parents' house once a week with the baby in the backseat.  They would watch her for us on Thursdays; my dad has dialysis three times a week, so that was one of the days he was home.  As soon as I pulled into the driveway, the garage door would open.  My mom would stand by the dining room, waiting to see me pull up, so she could run to the kitchen and hit the garage door opener that sat just outside the kitchen door.  She would come out, and stand in the garage with her hands on her hips, just waiting for that baby to emerge.  Even now, I can see her in my mind and just how impatiently she waited. My mom waited her whole life to be a grandmother; I was in my twenties, I don't even know if I was married yet, and she started to talk about it.  My sister is not the motherly type, so we all knew she would never have kids.  I was her chance and it took me a while to get there.  There are times now that I wish I had either had a child with my ex-husband, as disasterous as that would have been, or that I had gotten knocked up somewhere along the way, just so she would have had more time with the Grandma title.

At her funeral, I heard over and over how Emily was the joy in my mother's life.  I knew she loved her and she talked about her, but to hear it from all of these people was both wonderful and heartbreaking.  Her best friend told me that I gave her a beautiful granddaughter....I know she said something else but I can't remember what.  As soon as anyone mentioned Emily, especially when Barbara mentioned her, I just burst into tears.  I was so very sad, and remain to be so very sad, over the fact that my mom got gipped; she was only a Grandma for 18 months.  She died before Emily's 19th month.  When the oncologist in the ER asked what my mom was afraid of, she told him that she can't be sick.  She was afraid that it was cancer and she couldn't be sick because I had a baby, her granddaughter, that was 18 months old and she had to be here to take care of her and see her grow up.

Before my mom went into the hospital, we sat around my parents' kitchen table talking about her admission and what would happen - the admission process, the tests she would need, the IV fluids, she asked if she would go on a respirator and we said no, she asked if they would put a catheter in and we said no.  During that conversation we talked about Christmas, which had just passed a week before.  She told us that Emily had walked up to her and said "Grandma sick?", to which my mom said, "Yes, Grandma sick but I'll get better" and Emily responded with "Okay" and went on her merry way.  My daughter couldn't say any of those things at the time, nor can she say them now almost two months later.  I knew things were bad before this conversation; I convinced my sister and my dad that admitting her into the hospital was the right thing to do so I knew it was bad.  But this sealed the deal. Although they never found cancer in her brain, and maybe that wasn't the issue, but whatever was going on - be it cancer or malnutrition - she just wasn't right anymore.

  I have pictures of my mom with my daughter - from the hospital the morning after she was born, from the first time a week later that I brought her to their house, from her first Christmas.  I don't have any from this past Christmas, my mom's last, because I didn't want to remember her that way.  It's sad that this is what I will have for my daughter to remember my mom by - pictures, and probably the things that we decide should be saved for her.  I know there's some jewelry my mom would want her to have, and the teddy bear collection will eventually go to her.  But it's not the same as having actual memories.  My one and only grandmother died just before I turned 5, so I have some memories of her.  I remember her looking at me, speaking Italian and not understanding why I didn't understand her - :)  she was old school.  I can remember her house, and her cooking and how much I loved both.  And I can remember her face.  At least I have those things to hold onto.  My daughter won't have any of that.  It just seems so wrong that, for so long it's all my mom wanted and she had it for such little time.

The funeral home put together a slide show of pictures for her wake, which was great.  We found pictures from what my mom was a teenager, from my parents' wedding, from when we were kids all the way to when we were each married and when Emily was born.  It was wonderful to have.  When I walked into the funeral home that first day, my family was already there and watching it. As soon as I saw the picture of her holding Emily, I started crying.  As a parent, and a daughter, that was the moment that broke me.  Not only did I watch my mom die, but I watched my daughter's grandmother die.  Someone that adored her more than she will ever know; someone that would have done anything in this world for her and her happiness.  And now she's gone. Tears roll down my face as I type this, which makes typing pretty difficult, but it is just.....horrible to endure this.  No one can truly understand, unless they've gone through it themselves, but it is a pretty crappy thing to lose a parent.  Whether you were close or not, near or far, whether they were old or young, there is a void for you and your family - especially if you yourself have children - that will never be filled again.  Her laughter, her voice, her smile...they are all gone now and all that remains are the memories of those which I will do my best to convey to my daughter and I will do my best to remember.  Forgetting might be the least painful of the options, but I don't want to forget her.  If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't be here let alone be the person that I am - flaws and all, I wouldn't change me and I wouldn't have changed her.

Welcome to the Club

I don't believe in therapy so this is my personal therapy session in writing....this may not make any sense at all. But here I am.  After my mom died, one of my best friends welcomed me to the Dead Mom's Club and said I had a year of membership ahead of me.  (I think it should be life-long membership, personally.)  So this is my first entry into our newsletter.  It's not a club that I wanted to join, although I guess there is a part of me that is grateful I'm here now and not when I was in my 20s.  I should consider myself fortunate to have gotten almost to 40 and still have both of my parents; I was a late in life baby so my mom was almost 80 when she passed away.

I didn't have the picture-perfect relationship with my mom.  In my Facebook announcement of her passing, I said that she didn't win any Mother of the Year awards, which I think may have been an understatement.  We had a a bit of a strained relationship due to all of the things she put me through in my formative years. She was an alcoholic and heavy smoker; it's amazing I lived to be an adult for all of the crap I inhaled and endured.  Once she stopped drinking and smoking - after a heart attack that could have killed her - she was just 'normal'.  'Normal' for her was telling you exactly what she thought, no matter what the consequences.  When I left my husband, she told me I was ruining my life.  Never mind that he treated me like I was his employee, never consulted me on any decisions and spent more time with his family and friends than he did with me.  I was getting divorced and that was shameful.  I stopped speaking to her for about two weeks until my sister convinced her to call and apologize.  I forgave her for all of the abuse and craziness that happened for all of those drunken years when I was in college; but I didn't forget.  I still, to this day, harbor a grudge - it doesn't matter that she's dead.  It still sucked growing up with an alcoholic mom.  And that made it difficult for me to be nice, generally.  Whenever she was being a bitch, I called her on it, which she didn't like very much.  I didn't take her crap, like my sister did.  So she was closer with my sister than with me, which was okay by me because of our past history.

I'm the youngest of three; well, I WAS the youngest of three until my brother passed away in 2011.  He was an epileptic, didn't take care of himself, and he took two seizures back-to-back that killed him.  I have a sister who is the quintessential middle child; she wants everyone to be happy and won't rock the boat to save herself.  I'm labeled as the bitch, she's the good one.  When something happens, whether it was my brother's death or my mother's, I walk in and I figure out what has to get done and I do it because no one else does or can.  I tell everyone what we need to do, where we need to go and when.  It was no different when my mom died.  Which made grieving all that more difficult because I was so busy being the cruise director of her funeral that the first time I really cried was when I got to the funeral home.

I’m not mad at her for dying.  I’m mad at her doctors for letting her die.  Had her doctors been more observant and more proactive, she may not have died from this.  If this had been caught a year ago, she would have needed surgery and maybe radiation or chemo but she may have survived.  If she could have survived, I would have wanted that.  I didn't want her to suffer or feel sicker than she already did, but I wanted more time. But she didn’t have a chance.  No one sent her for tests; her blood tests were normal so I guess no one thought anything of it.  Just continue on the course and keep telling her she needs to eat more.  I have to wonder if her decreased appetite had anything to do with the cancer.   Yet another thing on the list entitled "you'll never know".

 

She really had no signs of it, until the end.  Everyone chalked up her weight loss to her not eating enough.  My mother was happy about the weight loss; she always called out the fact that my sister was overweight and needed to be thinner.  My mother wasn't always thin, mind you, but she liked that she was and relished in the fact that she was getting thinner. She didn't see it as a problem.  The shortness of breath came about two or three weeks before she went into the hospital; the abdominal pain was only about a week or so prior to then.  As far as we know, she didn’t have blood in her urine or pain before that aside from the back pain. Her cardiologist thought she had fractured a vertebrae, but after an x-ray we knew that wasn't the case.

 

I hate myself for not pushing her to go to doctors and have tests done earlier.  I'm the one that forced her to see her cardiologist in November; she stopped speaking to me after that, too. If I had made that call sooner, who knows what may have happened. It’s possible that a doctor would have said there was nothing they could do, given her a life expectancy and that would have been that.  But maybe she could have been treated, maybe she could have lived longer.  She might have made it to my daughter’s 2^nd birthday; she could have heard Emily call her Grandma and tell her that she loved her.  Maybe those things could have happened.  I have to add it to that list and that makes me sad.