You Just Do It

Today I wish she was still here, just to be here for the day-to-day stuff.  Rob and I keep talking about buying a house, and I know that no matter where we lived or what type of house it was she would still find something to complain about – the color of the kitchen cabinets, the size of the rooms, the layout of our furniture.  And I think he’s starting to consider getting married one day; I know that no matter what type of ring he bought me, she would find something to complain about – the size of the stone, if it wasn’t a diamond I know that would be a huge issue, how he asked me, the setting.  My sister and I are, largely, going to make Easter dinner. Granted, if she was still here and well enough she would do it so there’d be general complaining about the stove, the oven, the pot that she uses to make potatoes in, and how my father sets the table incorrectly.  But if she wasn’t well enough to cook everything, I  would hope that it would be much like Thanksgiving – she appeared to be grateful for the help, so there wasn’t too much complaining at least not to our faces.  Which was nice.  And I wish she was here for Emily; she learns so much so fast, and is always doing or saying something new, I wish she was here for it.  Emily learned about dinosaurs at school last week and has started to randomly yell one of our names and roar at us, sometimes chasing us around. And it’s awesome and I wish she could see it.  My dad did, which is good.  Just wish I knew that she did.

I think about how I went through the days that followed her passing away – telling people, going to the funeral home, picking out her clothes and jewelry, picking out pictures, my own clothes. And sitting through the funeral and wake, looking at her in the casket and not really being able to comprehend that person that was in there was my  mom. It didn’t feel like it was my  mom until it came time for them to close the lid and never look at her again; to me, that was just a body now, she was gone.  I don’t know how I did it.  How I did it and how I’m still here to tell the tales of it with some semblance of sanity; there were times when I just didn’t know how I was going to get through the next 10 minutes, let alone three months. There were times during the wake that I thought to myself “please, don’t let another person come in that wants to tell me that my daughter was the joy in my mother’s life” because I busted into horrible, ugly tears every time someone said that to me. I often wonder how people did it; my best friend did it when his father died two months earlier, I have other friends who have done it over the years.  And I guess the answer is – you just do.  You pick yourself up, and those around you, and you do what has to get done because what the hell else are you going to do?  You can’t just sit there, staring at a wall, as your parent’s funeral is going on.  You have to be there. You have to see people, call people, dress appropriately, pick out the right flowers and the right music.  You have to do something to make yourself feel like you are doing one last thing for that person because you will never really be able to do another thing for them and that realization, when it hits you, sucks hard and hurts even harder.

Do they serve Ben & Jerrys in the psych ward?

I’m still pretty angry and upset today.  Unfortunately, it seems that’s how it is these days.  I have a few good days, and then when one bad day hits it hangs on for a bit to make things interesting.  Yesterday, I felt alone.  Very alone.  I had no support at home because Rob wasn’t here, and I have no support at work because I am a department of one.  I had to come to work yesterday, even though I was up at 3:50 and my toddler really should have stayed home and gone back to bed.  I have no back-up at work and yesterday I had none at home.  And he didn’t ask me how I was, if I needed anything, or even say he wished he was here to help.  Not once.  I ripped into him for it and he emailed me an apology.  When did we start believing emailed apologies were acceptable??

I will say that I have some of the most amazing friends though so regardless of how much of an asshat my boyfriend was/is, my girlfriends are the best, were there when I needed them, and I am truly blessed to have them in my life.  They came to my rescue and continue to do so whenever I fall, they stood beside me and held my hand at my lowest points so I knew I wasn’t alone and so I had a hand to hold when I was ready to get back up off of the proverbial floor on which I had turned into a (not so proverbial) puddle.  I am never without a hand to hold a shoulder to lean on because I have these women in my life; in that regard, everyone should be so lucky.

Today, I may not feel as alone as I did yesterday but I am still pretty angry.  And not just at him, although I will admit that a pretty large portion of my anger is pointed in his direction.  I’m angry that it’s the 3^rd of April and it will be her birthday in 16 days, less days than we had between the time we knew there was something wrong and the day she died.  Next Friday it will be three months.  This Saturday, 12 weeks. If she hadn’t died, we would be in the throes of planning her 80^th birthday party; I would be taking RSVPs and ordering balloons and food.  I’m not doing any of that, which sucks and makes some days harder than others.  I handle the day to day generally well because I don’t have anything staring me in the face, reminding me that I am mom-less.  I ignore the shirts that I have that were once hers, even as they sit on the side of my bed still.  I ignore the times when I go to call the house and I have to select “Dad” instead of “Mom and Dad” in my phone.  I ignore it as best I can because it’s the only way I can get through some days; as her birthday, Easter and my birthday approach I seem to have a harder time handling the memories and the thoughts of her and really, any mention of her can bring tears to my eyes lately.  It’s hard to go through this time of year without her here.  They say the first one is the hardest, but that doesn’t make going through it any easier.  Rob thinks I should see a therapist.  I don’t need a therapist, I need my mom back.  And I need to be allowed to grieve however I need to grieve; I’m just not sure how that is exactly and I think I need to figure it out on my own; it’s my journey, not some therapist in an office’s journey (I don’t need a tour guide, thanks).   How do you know what to do and if you’re doing the right things now so that you’re okay later?  Barnes & Noble doesn’t have a “What to do when your mom dies” section with all of the answers clearly explained in one small, short series of books.

I just wish she was still here, you know?  It’s not that we had a great relationship; I didn’t call her just to chat it up or update her on a great pair of shoes that I saw.  We weren’t all that close in the grand scheme of things and I hope and pray constantly that my relationship with my daughter is a thousand times better (and healthier) than what I had with my mom.  But bad or good, I would give just about anything to have that relationship back.  I know that it’s better that she was the one to go first; had it been my dad with her left behind, I don’t know how we would have managed. She couldn’t drive, she had no idea how to pay bills, she wouldn’t have taken care of the house at all, and she probably would have only eaten ice cream all the time.  I hate to say that it’s better it was her and not him, sounds cold and callous.  But it’s the truth.  I didn’t want to lose either of them, but I thought losing him would be harder for me than losing her.  So I guess that would mean that when it’s his time, I’ll need to reserve the closest padded room and accompanying white jacket that ties in the back for a good couple of months.  I wonder if they serve Ben & Jerry’s in places like that.  If they don’t they should and I will make that request with my reservation.

Today was such a craptastic day...

Today sucks.  Sorry for the negativity right off the bat, but it does.  I have been awake since 3:50 this morning since Emily woke up and decided she didn’t want to go back to sleep. And I’m angry and frustrated and just emotional because I feel like I’m alone.  Alone right now because I’ve been up since 3:50 by myself, alone because I had to peel my daughter off of me in order to leave her at school – while she turned red and started bawling her eyes out because she was exhausted and just wanted to be with me (if that doesn’t make you feel like a shitty mom, you have no heart or soul), alone because I have to decide whether or not to go with my dad to an Easter service at the cemetery the week before my mom’s birthday and it’s only my decision and no one else’s, alone because when I told Rob about Emily this morning he offered not one word of support to me but said “aww, something must be wrong” as if the only one that needed sympathy or empathy was the little person who can’t explain why she was awake in the first place.  And I’m angry that it seems like everything has gone wrong today from that moment at 3:50 to right now. I had to clean up the yogurt that she spread everywhere – twice – this morning, I had to deal with her melt-down because she was so tired and didn’t want to get dressed for school, I had to clean up the refrigerator from some melon that partially exploded all of my carton of eggs, I ran out of my regular hair stuff and discovered that I bought the wrong stuff yesterday, I have to train a class today on very little sleep and very little to no patience, I woke up with a killer headache and no will to get up to deal with her let alone the rest of my day, she tossed a bunch of bath toys all over the bathroom that I had to clean up.  And tonight, oh look, I get to go pick her up at school and take her home – alone – and deal with her (she who will surely be super cranky) until bedtime and then when I go to bed I will spend the night hoping and praying that she sleeps until I get her up. Today just sucks and there is nothing that will make me happy.  It would be nice to hear some encouraging, supportive words from him today but I am not holding my breath for that miracle to arrive.

I don’t know who’s Cheerios I pissed in but clearly, I have angered someone for this type of thing to keep happening.  Every single time I have something important to do at work, especially lately, she wakes up in the middle of the night or nice and early in the morning and messes me up.  (Not to mention that she slept through every night that I was away, which wasn’t what we expected at all.) I can’t be a stay at home mom, for a number of reasons, so if someone/somewhere wants me to be and this is their idea of persuading me to do it, you are barking up the wrong tree!

And on days like this, when I’m exhausted and frustrated, I am more emotional than I care to be.  Just the thought of my mom brings me to the brink of tears.  Anything that goes badly or goes wrong, like cleaning up the yogurt two times this morning, brings me to tears.  I know that there were a few other things that happened this morning that made me cry, I can’t remember what they are since I was barely functional at 4am, but right now I’m sitting here with tears in my eyes because of my mom.  Nothing specific, just thoughts of her.  Just thinking that if this is HER messing with me, which wouldn’t surprise me, it would be proof in my eyes that she’s mad at me for all that I tried to do FOR her before she died. But she didn’t think of it that way. She saw me as meddling where it wasn’t my place; she told my sister that I should have just called the neighbors to tell them she was sick because I had called everyone else. I called two doctors when I found out her weight was down to 96 or 93 pounds (the number was so important then but seems irrelevant now).  But that was wrong of me to do as far as she was concerned and she didn’t talk to me for about a week or two because of it. And I’m sure she thought I was behind the hospital admission. And now, who knows.  Maybe she thinks it’s my fault that she’s not here; maybe she knows that I was the one sitting on the couch that day with my Dad, saying “she has to go, she has no real choice, I will get her there one way or another if I have to physically pick her up myself” the day that she was refusing to agree to go the hospital.  I was the one that told the nurse that we were ready to do it, order the morphine; I was the one that told my dad and my sister time and time again that this was the right thing to do.  I was the one that sat there, on the side of the bed that she was facing, as she took her last breaths.  So maybe she does hate me. Which is just a fantastic thought to have about your dead mom.  It was bad enough that, while she was alive, I always knew my sister was her favorite but to know that it could have carried over to the after-life even after all that I did and all that I endured for her, just hurts like hell.  More than her being gone does.

Sorry for the pity-party, today sucks and I’m feeling bad about a lot of things right now.  Hopefully with some sleep tonight (please God, let her sleep tonight), my outlook and attitude will be a little better tomorrow.

Looking for some sleep & peace

I’ve been awake since somewhere around 4am. I can’t be sure of exactly when I woke up because I refused to look at the clock; I thought by not looking I would go back to sleep but that did not work in my favor at all today.  And then Emily woke up as Rob was leaving, that was around 5:15.  At least she was in a good mood this morning, even as I discovered she had ripped apart the lining in her diaper and all of the little wet white pieces of who knows what fell out all over the carpet that I tried to vacuum up but I am pretty certain it’s still in there and will be for a long, long time. (At least it wasn’t poop, right?) Yeah, it’s been a fun day so far….

Being this tired, especially since I think on some small part I am still adjusting back to this time zone, just makes me a zombie and it makes me prone to emotional outbursts.  I hit my foot with the door to the refrigerator this morning and it brought me to tears.  There was something else this morning that almost made me cry – oh, I forgot my coffee at home.  Both of those were worthy of tears and once I start these days, its hard to stop because there is always something I can cry about.  Work is okay, home is okay, but there is all of this other stuff that isn’t – besides my foot and lack of caffeine.  And those thoughts and images crop up on their own without exhaustion being a factor so on days like this, they seem to come fast and furious.  Earlier this morning, I checked my pay-stub on line for something, and they keep a running account of what your time was charged to for the year on there.  Right there, second line, was my bereavement time. 40 hours of bereavement.  It’s hard to believe that it was almost three months ago that she died; it doesn’t feel like it.  Three months sounds like it should feel much longer than it actually does. Three months is a quarter of the year, but it doesn’t feel like it.  A quarter of my year has been spent mourning my mother’s passing, but it doesn’t feel like a quarter of my year has passed let alone that much time between now and the time she left us.  It’s still really hard for me to say that she’s gone or that she died.  There’s this part of my brain that still doesn’t believe that it’s real; this happened to me when my friend Donna died, too. She was killed in a car accident, so in a moment I went from knowing she was in this world and boom, she was gone from it.  I would never hear her voice again, or her laugh, I would never see that weird thing that she did with her hand when she walked.  And even though I was there when they lowered her casket into the ground, it still didn’t feel real; I still remember saying on the phone “Donna? Donna who?”, because there was no way it could have been her and there are some days that still feel that way.  Maybe this is the way my brain is protecting me or maybe I’m just in denial.  Let me tell you, denial (at times) ain’t so bad.

I know that things happen for a reason and people come into and out of your life for a reason.  I really do believe that and I also believe that you may never know why something happened, or you may not know for a long time.  And I think the only reason I can come up with is that it’s brought us closer to my dad, but that’s a pretty crappy way to have that happen.  There are way better avenues than this one, I would imagine. Other than that, I have yet to figure out why it happened, when and how it did.  I guess the how isn’t all that difficult – no one should really suffer through that fight if the end result will be the same, and maybe, in order to save my dad some grief and pain, we didn’t know until almost the end.  He didn’t have to sit by and watch her go through surgery, treatments, more pain than she had already endured by the time it was over.  He didn’t have to become more of a care-giver than he had already in the past month or so of her life.  She didn’t have a very enjoyable or happy life overall, so maybe that’s why she was spared the ‘fight’.  I just want it to make sense in some way, somehow. I need it to have a reason.  I need to know that she is in a better place and that’s why she isn’t here. I need to know that she’s okay, that she’s happy, healthy, that she’s okay and it was the right time for her to go.  I feel robbed.  I feel robbed for myself and for my daughter.  I need to feel like it had some meaning, some reason.

From My Trip Home

I had written some things during my trip that I haven't posted yet so, here's the one from my flight home.....


I'm sitting in my seat,heading towards home after a great week. I like to take pictures of my travels; like my actual travels so the views from the trains this morning, the plane that sat next to mine at the gate, clouds, the country side from above, that sort of thing.  I was just flipping through the ones I've taken so far and it's so hard to look at a few of them. They're the Irish country side - green, cloud covered, beautiful sea-side and coast lines. And I could almost hear her in my head, as if she was sitting next to me on the couch in her living room in New Jersey. I don't know if I should, or can, show these to my dad.  I can hear what he would say, too.  "Your mother always wanted to go there, she would have really liked these pictures." All the while, fighting back tears. I know it because my voice, in my head, is doing the same thing.

I've had signs this week, signs that Donna was around. Which is pretty freaking cool because I know she would have been there if she was still alive.  Random song, pictures, people, just odd things that were almost too random to explain away as simple coincidence. The first few times, maybe, but multiple times a day just doesn't seem coincidental to me. My now married friend had her name mentioned during the service & included her picture in a montage of those that couldn't be there. It was nice to see her smiling face, even if it was just in a picture. I continue to look for my mom, haven't seen or felt signs from her yet. Still waiting on that.  There's a sort of that wonders if she's hanging out, watching and not doing anything to show herself because she's either a)trying to save us from more grief or b)just being a bitch and not doing what we, or at least I, want her to do. I wouldn't be surprised if it was option b.

Planning ahead for fun things – vacations, mostly – keeps my mind busy and focused on the good stuff that lies ahead.

I’m going to turn 40 this year, so are a number of my closest friends.  One of them and I are heading to Disney World together this Fall for the Food and Wine Festival.  It is a guaranteed good time!  Right now we’re trying to sort out the restaurants we want to eat at; since we’re on the dining plan we want to make the most of it, so we need to get the restaurants figured out so we can book them in April.  I will have some time to myself next week, so I’ll have that on my ‘to do’ list.

Rob and I are taking the baby on a short vacation this summer and I’ve started to plan for that. We’re going to Maine. It’ll just be a few days but we can hike, go out on the water, let her play outside and just enjoy the good (hopefully good) weather.

I have to start planning for Emily’s 2^nd birthday this June.  I can’t believe she’s going to be 2; although there are times that I look at her and I think to myself “she looks like she’s 6 or 7 already” let alone how old she acts sometimes.  She’s tall for her age, smart, started speaking in sentences the other night – short ones but still – and sometimes it feels like 6 years since I brought her home.  The difficult thing about a June birthday is that the weather can go one of two ways here in NJ – beautiful and sunny or ridiculously hot and sunny.  Makes planning a birthday party for some 2 year olds difficult.

I also have to keep the Dominican on my radar, too. We might be going on a big family trip with his parents and siblings towards the end of the year, which would be nice especially if we were able to go around his birthday.  

Next year, I think I may go to Ireland, as long as I have the funds to do it.  My mom always wanted to go there.  Ireland and Italy were her big ones and unfortunately, she never got to either of them. So I am thinking about trying to go for her birthday next year.  Not sure if I can swing it, or if that’s a place I want to go by myself; Rob and I have talked about going and hiking/backpacking there but it doesn’t mean I can’t make a trip on my own.  I might see if my sister would be up to going with me.  We used to go to New England once a year together and we haven’t done it in many years; the last time we went up to Vermont it was a trip we took our mom on.  I think my mom would be happy if we both went to Ireland for her birthday, but I’m not so sure if my sister would go without her husband.

If I don’t go to Ireland, I need to find somewhere to go next year.  I think we should each take one trip a year solo; this year I’m doing two since he’s taking such a big trip this summer with his son.  I should make a list of the places I would like to go, or revisit – Ireland, Italy (my mom always said she wanted to see Pompeii before it got buried again and Venice before it sunk), there’s a part of my brain that’s saying “Bali, that would be nice”, Tahiti – I MUST go back there, Hawaii (I really want to see an active volcano up close), Alaska, Seattle again, Mt. Rainier and Mt. St. Helens again, not sure where else.  Oh, Arizona or New Mexico. And Montana. Ever since I saw “Legends of the Fall” I’ve wanted to go there. (sure I’d like to find a young Brad Pitt lookalike but really, it does look beautiful)

It’s funny that I can think of my mom’s birthday next year and not feel sad, but when I think of the one that is coming in a few weeks it totally changes my mood.  I guess my brain is assuming that next year’s birthday will be much easier than this one.  Boy do I hope my brain is right and it’s not just lying to me. I hate when that happens.

This Morning's Installment

 I am waiting for my friends to arrive. We'll head off to the wedding in the country tomorrow but today is our day of fun in the city. I can't wait to see them and enjoy the day filled of tourist attractions, shopping, afternoon tea and whatever else we happen to stumble upon. Not to mention the brownies I bought last night for them as a Welcome to London gift. :)

I've spent some time in my room, watching Netflix and also looking at pictures and just thinking through things. I have to be okay with the fact that no one else will understand fully what I go through every day. Even if they've gone through it, it's different for everyone. I am lucky enough to have women in my life that understand as best they can; they are not lucky for having gone through this themselves. I am so supremely grateful for them. But still, everyone's experience and perspective is different. I have to go along this road fairly solo, although there will be stops along the way with friends and family. I'll appreciate, as best I can, what they share with me and the advice they give.

Rob doesn't seem to understand why my birthday is a big deal to me this year; why that entire time period is a big deal to me this year. There's a part of me that doesn't want to spend my birthday with my family. I don't want to sit around yet another table, the third in a week, that reminds me that there's an empty seat that should be occupied by my mom. That isn't what I want. I don't know what I want, but I know I don't want that. But I know that's what they'll want.  At Christmas I told my mom that she could make lasagna for my birthday, since she couldn't make it for Christmas as she did every year. I hate that I said it because I knew she wouldn't be here. I guess I was being optimistic for everyone, including myself. There'll be no lasagna, probably not a lot of happiness this year; I suppose I'm not the first woman turning 40 to be unhappy on her birthday.  It's hard to be happy when you look around and see she's gone and there will be no birthday call, no birthday dinner, and definitely no lasagna.