My Thanksgiving Report

So the holidays are here. Overall, I guess I could be a lot worse off - I think I need to remind myself of that more often. I could be alone, I could be broke and alone, I could be broke, alone and homeless living under a bridge. That would certainly be worse. This sucks though. To sit in a room with someone else, as I am right now, and feel alone isn't easy. It isn't comforting and it is to helpful. But I can't change it. My grief makes me feel alone - even when I'm sitting around a familiar table with the ones I call my family.

The actual holiday wasn't that tough because I was busy. Busy watching the turkey, praying it wouldn't burn. Busy figuring out the stuffing which happen to come out pretty damn good if I do say so myself. Busy trying to stay busy so I wouldn't be sad. And in those moments that I wasn't busy, I could see her sitting next to me in that chair, with her hair back, some hideously ugly and/or stained shirt on, drinking wine and bitching about something. And I choked back the tears, looked at my plate and tried to think of other things like my daughter laughing or the neighbors bizarre lights display (nothing says the holidays like a lit up Eiffel Tower on the lawn). I kept hoping no one would see my sadness and, as far as I know, no one did. I had hoped to feel her somehow that day, but I didn't. My visions were just that - mine. I have to accept the fact that she's just gone - no matter how hard that fact is to accept. The feeling that I have had all along - the emptiness, that gap which suddenly opened up after she passed; it will never fully close. She is gone from here, I won't see her or hear her or see her. Maybe my Dad will, but I won't. And I need to start getting used to it because holding out hope is getting me nowhere fast.

One day I hope to look at that empty chair next to me, complete with full place setting, and smile. But for now, I'll just keep my head down and hope for better days.

I'd Rather Be on a Beach

Today I am fairly cranky. No, that’s an underestimate – I am really freaking cranky.  It’s two days before Thanksgiving and honestly, I want it to go away.  I don’t want to ‘celebrate’ it.  I put quotes around that word because really what the hell am I celebrating?  Yes, I am thankful for my family and my job and the roof I keep over our heads and I am thankful for the food and all that jazz but there is this HUGE thing that I am not thankful for.  I am not thankful for the unexpected death of my mother, I am not thankful for feeling like any day now my dad my drop – which is just reinforced by him saying stuff like “I want you and your sister to know where things are just in case” and one of my recent favorites “well if I don’t clean your mother’s things out it’ll be here for you and your sister to do”. Gee, thanks Dad.

Everyone is allowed to celebrate this season, or not, however they chose.  Some people enjoy a turkey with their family, some enjoy a gigantic feast of turkey and lasagna and fish and salad and fifteen other foods I can’t think of.  Some enjoy a quiet night at home, watching old movies.  I don’t want to do a thing.  I would love to run away this holiday season.  Spend Thanksgiving on an island at an all-inclusive resort, sitting by a pool being served drinks with umbrellas in the them by a very handsome man who may or may not understand English.  Spend Christmas in London, I love it there and would love to see it at Christmas.  But I can’t.  I have obligations, I have a family that I have to be here for. But in my head, I am somewhere else and happily so.

I don’t know if a mental vacation will get me through this holiday season but something has to – other than cake and wine because I don’t want to come out the other side of this 10 pounds heavier (already gained some weight after my mom passed away by instituting the “Cookies Don’t Care” diet).  All I know for sure is that I can’t run, and I can’t hide from it, and facing it head on isn’t helping either because it doesn’t stop and it doesn’t go away.  The emptiness is there, always present.  I know she won’t be there on Thursday, I remember how she was last year at this time and in the weeks that followed.  To remember it is heart breaking because it was too late and we didn’t know it until we were smacked in the face with it and wowza did that hurt.  Still does and I will forever wear the proverbial scar from it.  I feel horrible that I didn’t do more and remembering what was going on a year ago right now, just brings that back up to the surface.  I know I can’t change what happened, and chastising myself won’t change anything.  I know that I have to let it go and forgive myself.  And I’ll get there eventually, but I’m not there yet.  So I’ll cook the turkey, try to make the stuffing like she would have, and I’ll eat the mashed potatoes that don’t taste or look like hers anymore and I will TRY desperately to do it with a smile because I know that’s what she would have wanted even though I am crying on the inside.

Stupid Holidays

I am fighting off the urge to write some sad FB post today.  Today I just want to say “Hey there FB peeps, I see that you’re all very thankful at this time of year but this year, I’m not all that thankful for much so please f off”.  I would really like to say “I’m having a hard time and all I want to do is cry and seeing how happy you all are with your families is just making it worse so please, shut the f up already”.  But I won’t.  everyone is allowed to be happy and I am trying, I really am trying to at least not be miserable.  At times, I think I do a pretty good job because I’m distracted by other things.  But then, there are other times that I just can’t keep my head above it all and I end up feeling like I’m in the proverbial fetal position. I almost wish I was – as long as I could drink wine and eat cake while in that position, which I would image would be quite difficult….

Yesterday, we went to Home Depot – not an unusual event by any means.  Who doesn’t hit the Depot every so often??  On this trip, we went to look at the Christmas “stuff” – the trees, the decorations, yada yada.  It was Rob’s idea and I thought Emily would like it so I said “yeah sure, let’s go look..what the heck”.  While meandering through the rows of trees, lights and blow-up reindeer, Rob found this carousel that went around and played Christmas music, oh and it lit up too.  Emily lit up, as well.  She laid on the floor with it and watched it with what I imagine to be the typical holiday awe that finds its way to the face of every toddler right about now.  There were houses, too, and little villages that you could buy and set up at home. My mom loved that stuff.  LOVED it.  And I imagined telling my mom about our outing, and my mom making my Dad go out to buy that carousel so they could have it at their house for Emily on Christmas – that thing was 80 bucks but she wouldn’t cared, my Mom would have said it’s for my baby and I don’t care how much it costs.  I know she would have been over the moon to know that Emily loved this stuff just as much as she did.  She would have taken the time on Christmas to show her every house, every button on every house, and she would have gone through them over and over with Emily that day. They will sit in their boxes this year, which I think they probably did last year too because she was too tired to set them up.  So in Home Depot, when Emily asked me to lay on the floor next to her and watch the carousel, I did.  And I did it while trying to hide the tears in my eyes because all of these thoughts ran through my head as I stood and watched my daughter delight in the lights and the sounds that were coming off of that carousel.

And today, I’m still struggling, still fighting it off.  I went to bed with some Christmas song in my head – thank God I can’t remember which one or it would probably continue playing.  This morning I thought about last year and how hard I prayed and hoped that I was wrong, that it wasn’t our last Christmas together.  But no amount of prayer or hope could have changed the outcome of what was playing out this time last year.  I think she knew.  I think she knew and that’s why she didn’t go to the doctor.  She didn’t want to a doctor to tell her she had cancer and that she wasn’t going to live to see her granddaughter grow up, she didn’t want to put my father through hearing it, knowing it.  And I don’t know whether or not that was the right thing to do – on one hand, it would have given us a chance to process it and to possibly delay it.  But to what gain?  The medications may have prolonged her life, but not in a good way – she wouldn’t have been up and around, chasing around my daughter.  I guess I just wish I had had a chance to tell her – really tell her, not tell her body which I don’t think she was in anymore – that I loved her, regardless of how she treated me or how badly we got on, and that I would miss her and that I would make sure Emily knew who she was and how much she loved her.  I didn’t get that chance and I really wish I had.

Avoiding Getting Smacked

Thanksgiving is approaching, quickly at that.  And I am trying.  I really am.  I’m trying to focus on shopping lists and how to laugh about the possible catastrophe in the making – my sister and I have to recreate my mom’s stuffing and we have really no clue what we’re going.  We really don’t.  No flipping clue.  And I’m trying to laugh about that instead of cry, although it is really hard. And every day gets just a tiny bit harder.

I told my sister that our mom appears and smacks me in the head while I’m trying to make her stuffing, I’m out.  I will leave the kitchen and she’ll be on her own.  That woman used to smack me, threaten my life and threaten my dinner if I spent too much time in her kitchen as she cooked so it wouldn’t surprise me if she found a way to hit me if she thought I was making a mess of her stuffing.

I’m trying to not picture the empty chair next to me, the quiet that will be there without her complaining and without her inappropriate comments.   (One year she said the word “orgy” during dinner, I don’t remember the context but I do remember my sister almost spitting mashed potatoes across the table at me.)  The day is about family and about being thankful for what you have; I’m just not sure that I can focus solely on what I have and not on what I don’t have when she’s not sitting next to me pounding back the wine and making inappropriate comments.  This year has come and gone so quickly – she’ll be gone a year in just a matter of weeks really – and yet it sometimes feels like I’m living in this stagnant place that hasn’t moved forward one inch.  I can still clearly see the night that I drove home from the hospital in the snow storm; I can still clearly see the snow falling as I sat in a parking lot, talking to my Dad about having her admitted into the hospital.  I can still  feel the cold air rushing in through the cracks around the door that lead to the roof in the ICU waiting room.  And I can still see her, hooked up to machines, my Dad sitting next to her saddened and hopeful that somehow she would wake up.  It’s hard to be thankful with those pictures in my head.  I’m trying, but attempting to stick turkey heads on the bodies of all the people I see isn’t helping – I tried picturing them in underwear and that was just disturbing.  Maybe that day I’ll just focus on avoiding the smack in the head – like I did most years (some years I sought it out, I’ll admit it).  And I’ll focus on not crying, and I’ll focus on making a dinner that she would enjoy.  I  miss her a lot, and these days, I miss her more.  Looking forward to the days when this is easier.  Maybe they come soon.

Honoring Zach Led Me Somewhere Else

I looked high and low and I couldn’t find a yellow anything in my closet or in Rob’s for that matter. I did find a yellow cardigan for Emily, which she refused to wear today, but it’s hanging up in her cubby – just in case she changes her mind at school.  Since I don’t have yellow, I am carrying around a Jake and the Neverland Pirates today; it’s a Disney show and I think it’s kind of goofy that I’m carrying this around my office everywhere I go….let’s see what happens when I walk into the bathroom with it.

Why am I doing this? What’s up with the yellow??  A friend lost his 5 year old nephew to cancer, and they are burying that child today.  He asked that whether or not you were going to the services, that you wear yellow to honor his nephew.  And if you didn’t have yellow, wear something Disney related. Well I fell short on both requests but carrying this book is the least I can do.  I think about what those parents have been through, watching their child suffer in pain, hooked up to IVs, and eventually passing away in his sleep at the age of 5 in a hospital bed while they held his hands.  I can’t imagine what I would do.  My worst – very worst nightmare is that something happen to my daughter while I’m still alive.  I can’t imagine her sick like that, not knowing if she will get older and experience all that life has to offer her.  I can’t imagine holding my child’s hand as she took her last breath and may God never put that burden on my shoulders.  I am strong but I am not strong enough for that.  That would certainly break me in a way that I don’t think I could ever come back from.

Today, I am also honoring that little boy along with my mom.  Today I made the call that I have been trying to make for months now, but I just couldn’t get myself to make.  I should hear soon if I’ve been approved to rent space at a church in our hometown for that book sale I’ve been talking about.  Her birthday, April 19^th, will be a Sunday next year and I think that’s a great day for it.  I want to do it, I need to do it.  I need something to work on that will make me feel like in some way, I’m making a difference and maybe I will make someone think about taking a closer look at their loved one’s health, their loved one’s medical care and maybe in some way I can change how cancer has ultimately changed us all.    This week, three people have died from the disease and all three were taken way too soon; I feel like I’m just a spectator to it all – watching as they fall and doing nothing.  I don’t think I can sit and just be sad anymore.  My heart aches for Deric and his family as they lay that little boy to rest today.  I feel like I have to do something so it doesn’t happen to my child.  God forbid.  Just.  Augh.  God forbid.

Denial is Pretty Awesome

It’s been a few days since I wrote anything so I figured I would take some time out to write down some stuff.

Tomorrow is my dad’s surgery.  It’s odd because I’ve been so worried about it and today, I don’t know, I’m not worried. I’m sure that will change tomorrow – I will sit here and stare at my phone, waiting to hear that he’s out and okay.  But today, I’m okay. (it could also be that I’m focusing on going to get coffee and a donut before my boss comes back to the office this afternoon but hey, whatever works!)

Thanksgiving is in two weeks.  Honestly, I’m just thinking about getting a turkey.  That’s it.  I keep reminding myself to tell my dad and my sister that we got another free turkey this year and I’ll get it, bring it to my dad’s house.  I’m not thinking about all of the other things that will go into this, I’m just focusing on the turkey.  At least that’s been my deal for the last few days and I am hoping I can keep this up for a bit longer.

So am I in denial right now?  Yeah, probably.  But I think it’s okay.  I’m better off like this.  I’m not crying, I’m not obsessing, I’m not freaking out.  I’m okay.  At least for right now I am and I’ll take it.  I’ll take it because, although it might not be ‘right’ per se, I know that I won’t be like this for very much longer.  I know that Thanksgiving will have tears; I may even cry as I pick up the turkey again this year, knowing that her approval won’t matter this year – I agonized last year, I really did, because I knew if I picked out the wrong one she would be pissed (and I didn’t really know what was “right” or “wrong” but I knew if there was anything deemed “wrong” I wouldn’t hear the end of it from her).  I know that Christmas will most likely be full of tears – as I watch my daughter open her gifts with a newfound joy that she hasn’t had before, I will miss my mom more than ever most likely.  She deserves to be here for all of this and she’s not; she deserves to sit there on the couch, as she did the past two Christmases, and watch her only grandchild – her only true joy – light up in happiness and exuberance as she opens her gifts.  We all deserve it, but we won’t get it no matter how much we want it or think we deserve it.  I’m not angry, I think I may have skipped that step, but I am sad and I am…..I don’t know how to describe it.  I feel gipped.  That feeling never goes away, neither does the guilt.  I wish that I could do something to remember or honor my mom this year, but I don’t know if I can do it this year.  There’s just too much – remembering how she was on the individual holidays, how she was in between, how she was that day in the ER and the days that followed leading up to her passing. And then the days that followed for the rest of us that were left behind.  It’s hard to think of that time now, since the anniversary of it all hitting the fan is here.  So instead of thinking of all of that, I’m just going to think about the turkey and how big it needs to be and when I need to pick it up. I will focus on the small things because the big ones, well, they’re just too big right now for my shoulders to bear.

WTF Universe? Seriously. WTF.

Just when you think the only issues you have are within your own head, the universe comes up and slaps you nice and hard across the face after it has jumped out from behind a closet door and scared the crap out of you.  In the dark.  After you’ve watched one of those “the call is coming from within the house” movies.

Yeah, it’s been one of those days.

My dad now has some issues that need to be dealt with – phone calls to doctors, changes to how his medical appointments and procedures are handled – all of it falls on my plate to deal with.  And right now, it’s a lot to take on top of everything I already have going on.  My mom is gone, my kid is getting bitten at school and is possibly surpassing her peers educationally already at not even 2.5 years old, my boyfriend is starting his own business which means more responsibility is about to fall on me at home, the holidays are here and my mom isn’t…..and now this with my dad.  I’m so angry over what happened – a lot of mismanaged care happened yesterday which is unacceptable in my book, but he would never complain because that’s just not my dad.  And every time stuff like this hits the fan, I end up being feared by whatever medical professional I need to take down a notch because my parents’ health care is very important to me. Well, is for my dad and was for my mom.  I can’t say how many run in’s I have had with nurses and doctors; I’ve actually heard nurses say “uh oh, here she comes” and “oh is THAT the one” when I walk by.  But at the end of the day I don’t care what they think of me as long as they take care of him the way that he deserves to be treated.

And now, yet again this falls on me.  I’m not the oldest but I am the most responsible, for lack of a better word.  Okay so responsible isn’t it – I’m the most capable to deal with this.  My sister can’t call up a doctor’s office and tell them that what happened was unacceptable, demand answers, and actually get them.  She can’t call up a nurse’s station and demand that a doctor be paged or that the head nurse get on the phone “right now”.  That’s not her.  She’s a lot like my dad for the most part – calm.  Me?  Oh, I’m my mother’s daughter through and through.  That woman had a horrible temper; so does my dad but his fuse is much longer than mine for sure.  My primary concern at this point is his well-being and I don’t care who I have to mow down in order to get him the care that he needs.  I called the patient care office at a hospital once and raised such hell that the rest of his stay was quite perfect compared to how it was before I called; the hospital Administrator came to see him, that’s how serious they took my complaint over him being left in a hallway for 2 hours and not getting a meal.  I don’t scream or yell at anyone, but I get results and right now I really do want to yell and scream because he is what I have left.  I have one parent left and I will be damned if someone will mistreat him while I’m still able to pick up a phone and reach out to slap someone.  (Verbally, of course.)

My Thoughts on the "Assisted Suicide" Thing

I read an article on the Huffington Post about a woman whose mother had dementia and, although this was her favorite time of year, she didn’t know what time of year it was and how sad that was for this woman to watch.  All of the joy that she had experienced with her mom over the years at this time of year – skating in the park, enjoying the crisp weather, the beautiful store windows in New York as Christmas approached – all of it would never be again with her. She was slowly dying and this woman was forced to watch it happen, was forced to watch her mother turn into another person who (granted) remembered her and her siblings but wasn’t sure who her granddaughter was and who just wasn’t the person that this woman loved, admired and needed.  I can’t image that kind of pain and I am honestly happy that I don’t have to.

This week, here in the US, there has been quite the media storm about this woman on the West Coast who decided to end her own life because she had terminal brain cancer – there are handful of states that allow ending your own life with a prescribed amount of medication.  This woman was young, younger than me I believe, and was getting sicker and sicker each day. She had a choice – to die the way that many people with that disease die, which isn’t easy on anyone involved and is painful and full of medications, IVs and incoherency, or to die by her own terms peacefully.  I watched my father-in-law deteriorate from bladder cancer back in 2000 or 2001 and it was horrible. In the end he was confined to a bed in their house and was on so many pain medications he was barely conscious; when he was conscious it was confusing for him, scary for him and I think scary for anyone around him.  Many times he didn’t know where he was, didn’t know who people were, and forgot how to speak English (German was his first language).  It was a horrible death.  One that I am happy my mother did not have to endure.  When someone is faced with a diagnosis of death – which really is what it turns into – what options do you have?  There are some people that feel the ‘natural’ order of things is the right path to follow.  Take the medications and treatments, deal with the pain and indignity that can come along with all of those treatments and side-effects, and end up dying hopped up on meds either in hospice, or in a hospital having been taken off of machines like my mom, or at home with a home health nurse present.  I think that, had things been different for my mom and if she had had the option, she would have done what that young woman did.  My mom didn’t want to die the way that she did – if you really think about it, would you want to die like that? She was on machines that were keeping her alive, her body shutting down and infected due to the massive doses of antibiotics she was on to stave off pneumonia that ended up throwing off a different infection, her faculties gone, her ability to communicate gone.  I know she didn’t want to die, which is why she held on as long as she did, but there were no options left.  If she had known months or even weeks before, I think she would have at least attempted to take her own life if she had not sought out options to have it done with assistance like this woman had.  My mom’s death was nothing but sad, traumatic, and horrible for all involved.  Anyone that condemns that girl for putting herself and her family in a position of peace must not have ever sat by their loved one’s side as they took their last breath.

Another article I read compared her ‘suicide’ to that of the people that leapt to their deaths on 9/11 from the World Trade Center Towers.  Do we ever say or read that those people killed themselves, that they committed suicide?  No, we don’t.  But they were in the same situation. They knew they were going to die.  There was no way out of the buildings for them. So they had a choice – die by smoke inhalation or fire or by being crushed by the floors above them as the building fell, or jump.  I can’t say what I would have done, but I can understand and appreciate why someone would chose to die the way that they wanted to and not the way that would have just happened to them had they sat by and done nothing.  And that’s how I felt those days, sitting by my mom as the machines pumped away and we watched her blood pressure and her temperature as if any of those numbers would change her fate.  I felt like I was doing nothing, because that’s what I WAS doing.  There was nothing I could do for her but sit there and hope that somehow, she knew I was there and that she wasn’t alone.  I wish that she  had had a choice. The chance to say this is what I want.  The chance to say good-bye before her body decided it was done; the chance to see her granddaughter once more and maybe give her something to remember her grandmother by, the chance to kiss my father once more, the chance to call me “sweetheart” once more.  I would have given anything to have her pass peacefully instead of what ended up happening.  That experience was anything but peaceful and now all I can hope for is that she has found peace where ever she may be. 

Not a day goes by that I don’t miss my mom and I wish that things had been different and I wish so very much that she was still here – not for me really but for my daughter, for my dad.  I wish that we had known if just for the chance to rationalize it, make sense of it, and say good bye. I said good bye to her but I am not all that sure she heard me, and that will always be with me.

Where's My Freaking Manual??

Today, I am less than happy.  Today I’m just sad.  I’m cranky and I’m sad.  It was this time last year that my mom stopped talking to me because I was forcing her to see her cardiologist; she was also mad that I had called her primary care physician and “told” on her to him.  He only made her start taking Ensure in an effort to gain back some weight….obviously that wasn’t what she needed.  She had lost so much weight already and when she stopped eating for a week in October, it just got worse.  And although I think she knew something was wrong, she did nothing to figure out what it was or how to fix it.

It’s not that I’m sad on purpose, it really isn’t.  I started thinking about things this morning and stopped myself, said to myself “no, you can’t do this to yourself, stop making yourself cry”.  But that didn’t last very long.  It’s hard not to think about it when there are times that it feels like it was yesterday that my sister called and said “so Mom told me she isn’t talking to you right now”.  It kind of makes me laugh a little, just because that’s the perfect picture of who she was – you do something in her best interest that she didn’t agree with and she stopped talking to you for two weeks.  That was my mom.  Spiteful, stubborn to a fault, incapable of admitting that someone else was right and she was wrong.  Which sucks, especially in hindsight, because I was doing what I could to try and figure out what was wrong and she fought me tooth and nail on it.  I still wish I had pushed her harder sooner, but I think the outcome would have ended up being the same. 

I try to laugh as much as I can these days – whether it’s by tickling my 2 year old anytime she lays down and says “MOMMA tickletickletickle” while she holds up her shirt or shows you were to tickle her, or if it’s just by remembering something funny from vacation or from a recent conversation.  I’m trying to be happy, but some days it’s just too hard to fight the good fight.

I’m not sure if I’m doing this right or not, unfortunately there is no manual to this process.  But I hope that in the end, I can help someone else go through this with just a little bit of hope and a little bit of confidence in reaching the other side of it.  I haven’t gotten to the other side, and from what I’ve heard, it’s not as rough but it’s not necessarily easy; I don’t need ‘easy’.  I need to feel decent. I need things to be groovy.  I need to think of her and smile more than cry.   I just need to say I’m okay and actually mean it.