Today Sucks

Today sucks.  that’s right – it’s not even 9amand it sucks.  I have already laid down the gauntlet, thrown my hands up in the air and said I have HAD IT, I give up, that’s it.

Why?

Yesterday was hard for me, harder than I realized until the day was near its end.  And then we had a HUGE fight last night, the same exact fight we had a year ago – over baseball and the summer.  If he goes to all of the games/tournaments this summer that he intends on going to, on top of the whole working every 3^rd or 4^th weekend thing, he will be out of the house for approximately 9 weekends of the 12 or 13 that make up the summer months.  Again.  Last year it was going to be 9 or 10 and I think it turned out to be 7, still about half the summer was spent apart with him at games or at work and me with our toddler – and last summer was rough, she was a BEAST for a large portion of the time that we spent alone and I was miserable already because my mom had just passed away; according to him I can’t count the work weekends though since those are out of his control.  This year I asked to be a part of the conversation, to have a choice and a voice in the conversation because last year I didn’t have one.  I was told what he was doing last year, not asked or consulted but told.  So this year I wanted to have a choice; I wanted to be able to say no this isn’t acceptable to me.  Well, I still don’t have one because although he said “these are the games I would like to go to”, when I tried to take one – just one – off the schedule I was told that he never gets to see his kids, he’s here all the time, he sees RJ every 6 weeks at best and in a nutshell I inferred from the conversation that his decision was made and I pretty much just have to live with it. Again.  We never even got to the look at the entire schedule because he was adamant about the dates around her birthday. It got to the point that I said, just as I did last year, “send me the dates that you’re going to go and I’ll just figure it out because if I say no, I’m refusing you the chance to see your kid and that’s not fair so I’ll just deal with it”.  Which really, isn’t fair either.  I’m a part of this too, this affects me too but I guess that pales in comparison to him seeing or not seeing his 17 year old play in yet another game, in yet another tournament while I stay home for yet another weekend trying to manage everything that has to get done and my insanely active toddler for almost the entire summer.

I was an afterthought for a very long time in our relationship because of the obligations he had to his children and his then wife, and now I am yet again feeling like an afterthought – just like last year.  Last year, part of my argument was that I was still a mess from losing my mom and I didn’t know how I was going to handle 9 weeks alone with her – but he did it anyway.  This year, when I said that I was hoping to get to his parents’ house in June so they could spend Emily’s birthday with her he told me that if it was that important to me (yes, they’re his parents but if seeing them for Emily’s birthday was that important to ME), then either the weekend before her birthday or the one after is when we would be gone and that would be taking a game off the table; whatever I wanted to do with my family I would be doing without him – I don’t need him there.  The majority of these weekends are back-to-back, so he will have to move around his work schedule in order to go to them which means more back-to-back weekends that I’m left to juggle all of it during the week AND during the weekend. He tried to compare the 12 days last year that he spend alone with her – those 12 days were spread out between March and October, they were not back-to-back and they were in no way consecutive but apparent in his world, it’s the same thing.  Don’t even ask me how often I was alone with her last year; I can’t count that high.  So again – no choice, no compromise, no nothing.  Why did I even bother trying when obviously this conversation, this topic, this entire area of his life is still off limits to me.  Whether it be when he chooses to call me only from the car when he’s in NC with them, or when it’s in making choices about how he will spend his weekends, I am out of the conversation and I am not allowed to have options.  My voice doesn’t matter.

So on top of the crappiness that I feel after yesterday, I now have this to deal with which just makes me want to crawl under my desk and cry into a pint of Ben n Jerry’s.  Oh if only that were an actual option today.

Her Birthday

My attempt to post old entries back-fired on me this weekend.  I tried, but they would only save to draft.  I think that was the universe’s way of saying ‘ummm – now is not a good time, try back later, have some chocolate in the meantime’.  And that’s what I did.  :)

Yesterday was…….I don’t know, it just kind of was.  It felt strange to just go about my day and act like it wasn’t an important or special day.  I was alone with Emily for the majority of the day and we went to the playground, fought once about something that is inconsequential now; we stayed home most of the day since we were out all day on Saturday.  And I tried to not remember what day it was, but it was hard to forget.  It was hard to forget that my Dad was having a mass said for her, it was hard to forget that he would have come home after a regular mass with flowers for her had she still been here.  It’s hard to forget, and I know that I will never forget it.  I wore her necklace yesterday and I told Emily it was Grandma’s birthday, even though I don’t think she understood I want her to know that the day is still important even though Grandma isn’t with us anymore.

If my Mom was still here, we would have gathered around and gone to dinner – a restaurant the rest of us picked because she NEVER picked (but always complained about it somehow – the bread was too hard, the food was too hot/too cold, the plates were too big/small, the tea wasn’t hot enough/too hot, the sauce wasn’t as good as hers, the music was too loud, our waitress too perky, etc. etc. etc.), went back to her house for coffee and cake. I would have gotten her flowers from Emily and had them sent to her – she loved getting flowers delivered to the house.  I would have heard her complain about getting older, and joking about why God has kept her here this long (to keep things interesting and/or to keep an eye on my father).  I wish those jokes were still funny.  Many things that were once funny – like calling her bat shite crazy – aren’t as funny as they used to be; I hope that changes one day.

You can’t really celebrate a birthday for someone who has passed away; a birthday is a celebration of their life, the past year of that life.  And there is no more life to celebrate; her life ended before it should have, in my opinion (I am all too familiar with the idea of things happening for a reason, which I usually agree with, but this one I don’t understand and I don’t know if I ever will).  I wish my Dad was open to doing something for her, like having a big lunch with their friends and talking about her and really celebrating her.  Maybe next year (God willing, as my Mom would have said).

My birthday is a week from today and I’m not dreading it as much as I think I did a year ago, but I also know that it won’t be an easy day. My Mom’s birthday was yesterday, and the 6^thanniversary of my friend’s passing is this weekend as well.  I am hoping that it will be easier than last year but I have come to a realization – your birthday will never be more important to anyone than to your mother.  She will always think of you on that day, no matter what relationship you have, and she may smile or cry or cringe but she will think of you.  My mother took the opportunity to remind me I was getting old, remind me that she was not getting old, and recount how she found out she was pregnant, how my Dad was at my Grandmother’s house for lunch when I was born and she was very mad at him by the time he finally showed up.  That call will never come again, although my Dad will try.  Those stories will never be told again because they were hers.  And mine – and now they are just mine, and right now I have no one to tell them to(at least no one who will really want to hear them again).  No one will ever care more about that day than her, and that diminishes the importance of that day forever.  It will never be that important to someone ever again, and that sucks.  I hope that it won’t hurt as much as it did last year when my phone didn’t ring, when the stories didn’t come and when I didn’t get to hear her say “Hi Sweetheart, it’s Mom” one more time.

WTF

I don’t know why this realization is a realization at all – seems like something that’s obvious but for some reason, it smacked me in the head just now.

It’s been two years since my Mom called me on my birthday.

Last year was the first year she was gone, so there was no call. The last call was the year before – which was two years ago.

That fact just makes it suck more.  I haven’t heard her voice in almost a year and a half; technically it’s been a year and……..3 months, 18 days – give or take.

Two years just sounds so big. When I think about the strides my daughter has made in those two years, or where I am in my life now compared to two years ago, it’s immeasurable.

Yeah, this just sucks.

Trying to not slack off....

I’ve slacked off. I admit it.  I will write entries for this blog at work, where I can’t access this site; I’ll send those entries to my email address so that I can post them later.  Well, later has become days and days later. Which isn’t good so I am going to do my best to keep up with this a little bit better than I have been – I think it’s important for me to do it, and if there’s someone out there reading this, looking for help or inspiration or some insight into what this is like for someone you know or even just for a good laugh, well then it’s important to you too.

I will be posting some of the items that I haven’t put up yet – that’ll happen this weekend.

But for today – Sunday is my Mom’s birthday.  It doesn’t feel as ominous as it did last year; last year it was her birthday and then Easter right after.  Oh and the memorial service at the cemetery was the week before so really, those two weeks were just full of tears and tissues.  Then, toss in my birthday about a week later and MAN was that fun. NOT.  (Oh and a trip to the in-law’s too.) This year, the only thing that’s moved is Easter but things feel easier (no trip this year, either).  At least so far.  I’m upset that I can’t go to mass on Sunday; Rob is working and unless I want to bring my toddler to mass – which I do not – I can’t go.  And I’m not willing to pay for the babysitter AGAIN so I can go out and do something to honor my dead mom.  I’m just not; I’m angry that I have to go out of my way to juggle things in order to do it so I’m choosing to not even bother trying.  Which might be the right approach this year.  That way, I won’t dwell – yes I’ll think about her all day and I will feel badly that I can’t go to mass with my Dad and my sister but my hope is that I will be too busy chasing around my crazy kid to think about it too much; I am hoping that at least at some points it will feel like a regular Sunday and not her birthday – I don’t want to forget it, but I don’t want to feel it.   I sat in that church on the anniversary of her death, waiting for them to say her name and with tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat I tried to pretend that I wasn’t about to crumble into a messy heap of tears and snot; and honestly, I don’t want to do that this weekend.  I miss her, and I know that this my Dad’s way of honoring her and marking her birthday, but I can’t do it and on some level I’m grateful that I have this excuse.  I know that I should go out of obligation and all that jazz, but I just don’t want to cry or watch my Dad cry.

My birthday is around the corner and so far, it doesn’t feel as – ominous, for lack of a better word right now – than last year.  But that might change in the next week or so.  I know that,  no matter what I do, my birthday will always be a little bit sad; it was a little bit sad before my Mom passed away.  My cousin was buried on my birthday, my best friend died two days before my birthday and her funeral was a few days later.  My birthday hasn’t been a fun occasion in a very long time. But I also recognize that there is a hole there now. My birthday was an opportunity for my Mom to remind me that I was getting older – I was getting older, she was NOT – and it was a chance for her to tell the story of how she found out she was pregnant and how my dad wasn’t at the hospital when I was born and all of those other fun stories that were an annual event.  My birthday was important to her, and now, that importance is gone and it will never come back.   No one can ever fill that void that is left now that I won’t get my annual call at 12:2something in the afternoon; I will always look at the clock and cry a little…or at least I’ll want to cry a little, not so sure I’ll be able to each year.  It will never be the same again, and I know that one day I’ll be able to reconcile with that idea and the feelings that come along with it. And I hope that this year remains easier.  I guess this is the having hope stage of grief.  I will say this for sure – this does not suck as much as the previous stages, and that’s gotta count for something.

The Big H

I know I’ve mentioned the sign before – the big white “H” on the big blue sign that sits at the traffic light I often stop at on the way to dropping my daughter off at school.  This morning, as I sat there ignoring it as I often do, I heard “Momma!  LOOK! Letter H!  BIIIIIIG H MOMMAAAAA!!!!”.  Like it was the most amazing thing she has ever seen on our car ride ever.  And it might have been; I think this is the first time she pointed out a letter to me. She’s usually too engrossed in a book or the ipad.  But not today.  Today, she saw the sign and called it out….well, yelled it out.  It was cute, and I’m happy she called it out.  She knows all of her letters and the fact that she can recognize them anywhere, not just in context, is a great thing.  I just hope she never asks me what that H is for – sure I will say “oh that’s to tell us where the hospital is”, and then explain what a hospital is to the best of my ability. But that’s what the words will be outside my head. Inside my head it will be more like “that’s where Grandma died”.  I don’t know if I will ever say those words out loud to her, at least not while she’s young.

It’s easier to see that sign these days.  I don’t cry on seeing it and I didn’t cry today  – good progress made there, I think.

Today, I Need a Good Cry

 I actually thought to myself “did she ever really exist – it doesn’t feel like it because I can’t remember her face”.  Yesterday really kicked my ass and it’s continuing to hold on.

I went to my Dad’s house yesterday for Easter with my sister and Emily; my brother in law joined us a little later after we had started cooking; Rob was out of town, spending it with his ‘other’ family.  Yesterday was hard.  I think every holiday, every dinner will always be hard in that house.  I sit next to an empty chair where there’s a place-setting that won’t be used; yesterday I had to tell Emily that she can’t sit in Grandma’s seat – we keep it empty because that’s where she always sat, and we want to remember her. I cook in her pots – the ones she complained about that would ‘wiggle’ or ‘dance’ on the stove that she hated. Yesterday I told Emily that no, we don’t have to close the door to “that” room; it was Grandma’s room and we keep that door open.  It was the spare room that my Mom turned into her own little cave, with all of her books and movies stacked up, along with my Dad’s old recliner.  It’s a room that should be emptied, and I guess my sister thinks it’s time since she mentioned doing it but as ready as I am in most of my brain, there is still a part of me that’s saying “no, not yet”.  Yesterday, I didn’t expect her to come around the corner and complain about my Dad trying to clean up by himself and how she would have to rewash everything when he was done.  I didn’t expect her to sit next to me and drink the wine that she probably shouldn’t have had.  I didn’t expect her.  At the time, I guess I was just too occupied with making sure my kid didn’t rip the curtains off the wall but now, in hindsight it sucks.  Not that I wanted to feel like she was going to show up at any minute, but it sucks that I don’t expect her anymore.  That’s a bitter pill to swallow and a really big bump in the road that is this craptastically never-ending journey that I’m on.

Yesterday was hard because my toddler thought it would be a good day to defy every. Single. Instruction that I gave her.  Every single one.  When I asked her nicely to stop playing behind the curtains, after I heard some sound I couldn’t recognize, she said no (over and over) – I had to raise my voice, get out of my seat and attempt to pick her up in order to get her to come out.  I asked her to not run with something in her mouth, I had to take it away to get her to stop. I asked her to stop crawling around on the floor and when she said no, I took a breath and told myself to pick my battles.  I tried to hide at least twice from the yelling of my name – which seemed to be endless – but she found me easily in the small home.  I played with her, and that was good and it was fun. I laughed when she said “Momma, I like wine”.  But I also yelled, and I also took things away, and I also cried at the end of the day because I was exhausted.  Running after an almost three-year old in your dead mother’s house is exhausting on all levels.  I missed my mom yesterday.  Being there among her things, having to discipline my daughter every five minutes by myself, was just hard.  I know that if my mom had been there she would have watched Emily with me, she would have told her no just as loud if not louder than me and she would have been the first one to step in and take something away that she could have hurt herself with. But instead, it was all me. And it was hard to be there, missing her and having to do the job that I had to do.  Yesterday was just hard.

I keep trying to tell myself that today is a new day, today will be better, but I can’t seem to stop myself from wanting and needing to cry.  I cried last night, but I need to cry more in an effort to feel better.  But I can’t.  I have a job to do, which I’m at right now, and I have a child to take care of who thought it was a good idea to stomp her feet and grunt at me when I told her she couldn’t watch an entire show before we left for school today. Yesterday was hard, and it’s spilling over into today and making today hard too.  I’m not sure how to stop that cycle, but I wish I could figure it out because one bad day shouldn’t always equal two; but it usually does.

The Memorial Service

I spent much of the service looking up at her name on the wall.  I spent some of it imagining her there, standing up in the front or in the aisle – and standing there the way that I remember her….white hair pulled back with a hair band and in a ponytail, dark blue sweat pants, those horrible white sneakers with the Velcro (or maybe the blue slippers she wore around the house), and a white shirt that didn’t really fit her anymore because she had lost weight.   It was painful to be there.  The woman that speaks at the service has had a very hard time in this life – she’s lost yet another child, this makes three, and a husband.  And even in her religious life (she’s an ordained minister), she still is able to say that she has felt robbed and she has felt forsaken and she has felt alone in her times of grief.  (The typical religious banter is that we are never truly alone, God is with us at all times and He will support you and see you through the storm.) She said that there were many nights she sat up and asked why her daughter and not her.  She herself battled cancer, and yet her daughter fought and lost.  And through it all – there she stood.  She stood there in front of a crowd of I don’t know how many people, telling her story and telling us it’s okay.  It’s okay to grieve in whatever way you need to grieve and don’t let anyone tell you different. It’s okay to question God, it’s okay to question your friendships, it’s okay to question your faith and to question yourself.  And I found her words comforting only because there have been so many times that I wondered what the hell am I doing, why isn’t there a manual, how could this be right, why didn't I do more, why did it have to happen now, what is wrong with me….and it’s okay because it’s how I’ve dealt with it. She also acknowledged that there are times in this process when you feel like you’re doing pretty good and then suddenly WHAM, the grief hits you like a huge wave and you’re right back down on your knees.   I think that’s the hardest part on this journey – just when you think you’ve gotten on top of it and you’re feeling good about how far you’ve come (when was the last time I cried, when was the last time I wanted to drown my sorrows into a pint of Ben & Jerry’s), it slaps you again and you feel like you are right back at the start.

Grief sucks.  There’s no way around it, there’s no way to sugar coat it and say “it’ll all be better soon” because that’s not true. My best friend died almost 6 years ago and there are still days when I just miss her.  I miss her laugh, I miss the way she used to dance when U2 came on the radio.  I miss the way she used to make me laugh no matter what was going on in my life and I would give almost anything to see her again and to hear her laugh again.  She was a great woman who left us way too soon.  And there are some days, even now, that I just want to sit and cry because she’s gone.  She’s gone and there is so much I wish she could be here for; I feel the exact same way about my Mom, although I think that makes me sadder because it’s newer.  It does get easier, but it is never going to be ‘better’ or ‘normal’ again.  It’s a new normal, I suppose; and that normal will just have to do.