It's okay to cry

Ugh I feel like such an asshole this morning.  I really do.  When Emily was still in the infant room at school, the head teacher – and one of our favorites – fell in the parking lot and hurt her back to the point that she was out of work from around October or November until today.  she’s a lovely woman; sometimes a little ‘know it all’ about the kids but overall very sweet and kind.  She always had positive things to say about our daughter, was always very supportive and thoughtful and she was always so excited when Emily did something new whether it was walking, talking, helping with projects, anything at all. 

Today she came back.  She was in Emily’s classroom when we got there. She hugged us, she kissed us both and said how much she missed us.  and then put her hand on my arm and said “I am so sorry for your loss”.  She remembered.  My mom has been gone for four months and she remembered.  I said thank you, it was very fast and very hard – the entire time trying my best to not let my eyes fill up with tears.  And as she looked at me and said sorry again and rubbed my arm again, I could see that she saw the tears in my eyes.  I’m sure she would have seen them no matter what – Ms. Nadia is very astute. And since then, I can’t seem to stop crying.  I don’t know if it’s the fact that she remembered, or that it’s been a while since I’ve heard someone say it, but something has tripped it and I can’t seem to stop it.  so here I sit, at my desk with tears in my eyes for the umpteenth time in four months.  My parent’s anniversary, or what would have been their anniversary, is this Wednesday.  59 years it would have been, and she’s not here for it.  I thought I would be crying over that, not condolences that are four months old.  But I guess the age doesn’t matter, it’s the sincerity and caring behind those words.

It’s amazing to me that words like that touch me so much and turn my day on its ear, as they say.  Just now I glanced at the clock and saw “11:11”, at which time you’re supposed to make a wish.  I said (out loud, with my office door closed) “I want to hear from my mom, that’s all I wish for is to know that she’s okay.”  I wish for it all the time and I hope that day will come soon.

I will say this – there was a bright side to this morning.  Seeing Ms. Nadia talk to Emily’s current teachers made me proud.  She said “you have to watch out for this one, she is SMART, she always has been very smart and she watches EVERYTHING”.  Makes me proud to know that my kid was one that stood out in the crowd as being smart and observant; makes me proud to be her mom and makes me wish even harder that my mom was here to see her.  She would be the proud, beaming Grandma who would say “of course she is, look who her grandmother is” when told how smart her little girl is.

Not Today

I was the girl crying in the kid’s section of the local Barnes & Nobel today, in case you were wondering.  Yeah, the one that left with tears in her eyes and sniffling up the running snot into her nose so it wouldn’t pour onto her lip. That was me.  and what caused it?  a book that I saw called “Grandma Loves You”.  I was innocently meandering the children’s section after I bought myself a nice coffee, looking for new books that I could get for my daughter and there it was.  And I cried.  I saw it and I don’t even remember what I thought but I know that I would have thought about buying that for my mom to read to Emily, and now I can’t.  Yes, she has another Grandma who loves her very much – that woman adores my daughter – but still.  I saw it and it made me think of my mom who is no longer here and I spontaneously cried; if she’s somewhere, I know she still loves my daughter, but she’s not here anymore and that part sucks.

I don’t expect sympathy, or empathy – whatever the right term is – I don’t cry in the middle of a book store for reaction purposes, that’s for sure.  It’s just like when my friend died five years ago.  I cried in Target when I saw her favorite cookies. I cried at a convenience store as I was waiting for a sandwich because I saw something about chicken with honey mustard sauce, which she used to get extra of when we went out to a diner.  The little things that she loved, the little details that I remember, that’s what makes me cry.  When I see those cookies now, sometimes I pause and look at them, and think to myself “I miss you man” and I move on; there are days that I linger a little too long in front of the bags of Milano cookies and I probably look a little strange as I stand there and smile at them.  And I know that will happen one day with the things I see that remind me of my mom.  But for now, I remain that girl that cries in the book store, the food store, the movies, the Target, her desk, her car and everywhere else in between.  One day it will be better, it will get easier, but today is not that day.

It wasn't THAT bad

Mother’s Day didn’t suck as hard-core as I thought it was going to, which was nice.  We kept busy, which I think made a big difference.  Yesterday was also the 4^th month ‘anniversary’ of my mom’s passing.  I didn’t realize it until I was at my Dad’s house, picking up a CD of pictures from the funeral home, and I looked at the calendar.  That made me feel pretty shitty.  How could I let it pass me by and not realize it?  I guess it’s a sign of progress but at the same time, I really wanted to kick my own ass for that.  I’m sure my Dad knew and my sister knew, why didn’t i?  I thought I would never forget it but I didn’t know the date, I guess I didn’t really want to.

I thought a lot about the women that are missing their mothers on Mother’s Day. It’s not that I didn’t; I miss her every day.  But we didn’t have a ritual or a custom of doing something specific that day.  She didn’t cook – that was a no-no in her book.  So we might have gone out to dinner; although now that I think about it, my dad would have taken her out to brunch.  She loved brunch.  So he would have done that and then the rest of us would have gone over in the afternoon to hear all about the food at the brunch, the people at the brunch and what they wore, the unruly children at the brunch, the service and what they wore and what they said, and to give her some gifts.  I would have sent her flowers from Emily, but I don’t know what I would have gotten her.  Jewelry was always an easy gift for her; I bought her a shamrock necklace for Christmas that had small diamonds in it (I had initially bought her a locket but then remembered, as I walked out of the store, that I had already bought her one for Mother’s Day – she was buried with that locket).  I guess that will end up being mine once we start going through her things.

I feel bad for the women out there, in my social circle and beyond, that truly and deeply missed their moms yesterday.  For those families that surrounded that woman with love and joy on that day, for those families that had real rituals – breakfast in bed, hand-made cards, Mom’s favorite TV shows and favorite activities all day long with Mom’s favorite dinner at the end of the day – yesterday must have been horrible.  I know a number of my friends posted about missing their moms yesterday and how hard that day is annually.  Every day is hard for me, at least on some level, and I know it gets easier but right now, it’s hard to see the ‘easier’.  I don’t know where it is or where it begins and there’s a small part of me that doesn’t want it to start because that will mean that time has passed and the memories have faded and she has faded farther into the past.  That idea makes me sad.  I know that my brain is trying to protect me, which is why I can’t see her in my mind and I have a hard time remembering certain details about her, but I think I need my brain to knock it the f off and just let me remember.  I want to, or at least today I want to, and it would be nice if I could think about her and remember her smile or her laugh or her blue eyes. I think that wouldn’t be the most horrible memory to be able to see her happy instead of some of the images I can’t get out of my mind.

Mother's Day

Today at Emily’s day care they had a ‘breakfast’ for all the mom’s to celebrate Mother’s Day.  Last year I got teary eyed over the gift she made for me – a butterfly picture made out of her foot prints.  it’s framed and on my desk and every time I look at it I smile.  This year, I’m not sure if she made any component of my gift but I still got teary eyed over it.  I got teary eyed as soon as I walked in the door and I saw all of the Mother’s Day swag.  I think it’s two things – it is wonderful and makes me feel wonderful to be appreciated for everything that I do for my daughter by people that don’t even know the half of what I do; they don’t live with me, they don’t see our day to day.  And it’s also the first time that I think I’ve really felt slapped with the fact that all of this appreciation is just for me this year; the commercials, the ads, in my little world it is now all me and it feels weird to not share this day with my mom.  On top of that weirdness, I feel guilty that I didn’t do more in the past for my mom.  I never knew how important this day was until I became a mom and now that my mom is gone, I realize that I didn’t do enough.

I never felt like she sacrificed much to be a mom – she stayed at home, didn’t work, drank a lot when I was a kid, took advantage of the fact that my dad wouldn’t leave (or just didn’t care if he did or didn’t, I’m not sure), and didn’t do much of anything but sit around smoking and complaining; to this day I continue to feel as if I raised myself due to the very little parental involvement there was.  But today, I realized that at least at some point she did sacrifice a lot and I don’t know if any one ever said “thank you”.  She wanted to go to college, she wanted to be an archeologist and she wanted to study ancient cultures like that in Pompeii, ancient Egypt.  But she didn’t do those things; it was rare that a woman continued school after high school back then, most got married and had babies right away.  She got  job, she married my dad at age 21 and when he thought it was more important for her to stay home and cook and clean instead of work, she quit her job at the phone company and stayed home.  My mom was smart, way smarter than I think we gave her credit for.  She was a veracious reader; she would go to the library once a week when I was a kid, get a huge stack of big books and finish them all in a week.  She would buy bags of books at book sales and she would go through them in an amazingly short time.  Her and my dad’s best friend, also an avid reader, could talk for hours about books and what they had recently read.  I wish I had taken the time to say thank you more often because, even if I will never be thankful for the childhood I had, if she hadn’t had made the choices that she had when she was younger to stay home and to have a family, I wouldn’t be here.  And for all of our struggles and our fights and the silence that fell between us when she hated something that I did, I still loved her and I miss her and I would give anything to hear her stories of being a telephone operator (she handled calls for the deaf so it was a ticket-tape machine that she worked on) and to hear her talk about Pompeii and to her hear tell me all about the things that she wants to see in ancient Italy and Egypt but never will because my father is too cheap.  Today, as most days, I miss my mom and all the little details of life that we shared – the good, the bad and even the ugly.  I even miss that.

I hope that those of you that still have your mom can take a moment this weekend and show her some appreciation for all that she has done for you and all that she will do for you in the future.  There will come a day when you can’t thank her anymore, and you can’t laugh at her stories and you can’t listen to her tell you one more time about that thing she loves to talk about that you’ve heard a thousand times and you’ve probably rolled your eyes at or at least tuned out the last few hundred times. But when that day comes, when she is no longer sitting across from a table or isn’t on the other side of the phone you will wonder why you didn’t listen harder and longer and why you didn’t ask her to tell you that story just one more time so you could remember the details, the sound of her voice, the light in her eyes and the joy that you will never see again except in your memories.

Ouch, my brain

I woke up with a horrible migraine, which is probably an indication that I got way too upset last night.  My daughter knocked some jewelry off of my dresser last night accidentally and I was crushed because I believe I have lost one earring of the pair that my sister just gave me for my birthday.  They’re beautiful and they’re the only jewelry I got for my birthday and I am so upset that I will most likely never wear them again.  And, as I looked for them, I kept dropping other things and knocking other things over and getting pulled away by my daughter to go watch something or look at something that she did and I was just so upset.  I kept thinking that if my mom could hear me and see me, she would help me find that one earring and she didn’t help me.  I didn’t know where to look, I looked everywhere but still didn’t find it.  I didn’t know what to do.  It suddenly made me feel very alone and very sad.  If she was still here, she would have made my dad get me jewelry for my birthday, I know she would have.  But she isn’t here, so he bought me a gift card to Kohl’s. It’s fine, I didn’t expect anything big or full of meaning from him because it’s my dad.  She would have gotten me jewelry, which I think is why my sister did.  And now, I can’t wear it and that made me really, really sad.  So I cried.  I ugly cried on my bedroom floor as I looked for the tenth time under my bed and under the dressers.  And I cried and cried and cried.  I stopped, eventually, but I cried for a while and my eyes ached a little this morning so I know I cried a lot.  So, that and the hormones that are involved with the current state of my monthly cycle, I got a migraine.

Mourning has taught me how easily a small thing can change everything and make you miserable.  I was okay yesterday and last night, for the most part. And when that happened, I lost it and there was no turning back.  As soon as I started to think about my mom and how I feel like she isn’t here, she isn’t with me, and maybe she isn’t with me because she hates me or blames me for what happened, I just cried.  I didn’t have a great relationship with her, we weren’t THAT close, but no one wants to think that their mom hates them.  When an ex hates you, when a best friend says they hate you, when a sibling says they hate you, all of that hurts.  But when you think your parent hates you, that hurt runs deep and kicks you in the gut harder than any you could ever get anywhere else.  And the worst part is that if that parent is dead, you will never really know the truth and that uncertainty sucks.

In her honor

Today, my heart is both happy and heavy.  My dad called and left me a message last night as my sister and I were giving my daughter a bath (she came over to drop off milk since I was a total dumbass and forgot to get it until it was WAY too late).  My dad helped to start a Knights of Columbus chapter in the church that we  used to attend; he was a pillar of that community and everyone knew his name.  The current Grand Knight – that’s the guy that heads up the chapter, leads the events, the Grand Poobah as it were – decided to dedicate their next blood drive to my mom.  He called my dad last night to say that they wanted to do the event in someone’s honor, someone that was important to their community and they picked her.  My eyes fill with tears as I type that.  They picked her.  My parents haven’t lived in that community for something like 7 years and yet, they are dedicating an event to her.  It is such a wonderful thing for them to do for her and for my dad, I can’t imagine how much this means to him.  To put into words what it means to me is pretty much impossible. 

This information evokes memories of my mom’s wake and how it felt to be surprised at every turn by people who came that I haven’t seen in years.  So many people love my dad, loved my mom, love my family and came to honor her because of some connection they had to us.  I remember standing in the sitting area, watching the slide show of pictures for the first time and tearing up as I saw how happy she was, how she looked holding my daughter, and knowing that I would never see it again in front of me.  I remember the men coming up to my dad, with such sorrow in their eyes and not knowing what to say; men that he may not have even seen in years but they came because it was my dad.  They were there for him and again, the tears fill my eyes knowing that he means so much to so many people.

It is a wonderful thing to be remembered and memorialized by those that you leave behind – for whatever reason.  I know she wouldn’t be thrilled that at some point she was probably mentioned as “Angelo’s wife” but in the end, I think she would be happy to have her memory honored in a community that loved and still continues to support my family and especially my dad. I think it would make her happy to know that he’s not alone.

The Internet only fuels my anger

I hate that I watched my mom die of something that, had it been caught much earlier, would have just been a blip on the radar of life instead of a total pull of the plug.  My cousin died from it too, back in 1999, just five weeks after he was diagnosed.  No one even knew he was sick, aside from his immediate family; the word hadn’t spread to the rest of us yet when we got the call that he was gone.  And here I am, fifteen years later, living through this again after losing my mom to the same disease that cut his life short in his mid-forties.  It’s not right.

Through some internet searching,  I found that kidney cancer is the second-lowest funded cancer research effort (from the American Cancer Society).  Thyroid cancer is the lowest.  Approximately 60,000 people are diagnosed annually and about 20% of that 60,000 die from it.  That’s a lot of people and now, my two family members are a part of that statistic.  I don’t want them to just be numbers in a very small, and minimal fight.  I want them to matter, I want it to mean something.  Looking at the data on the ACS website, there is very little for kidney cancer but pages and pages for other cancers like breast and lung.  More people die from it, so it’s more important to inform people about it.  But what about those that die from the other cancers? Do they not matter??

I want to start a fundraiser for my mom, well in her honor.  I know it will take work and time but I want to do it for her.  She didn’t have to die if there were actual screening tools for kidney cancer.  But there aren’t any.  Unless you have a disease which is a direct factor in getting kidney cancer, there are no screening tools.  If they find it, it’s typically because they’re looking for something else and they stumble on it.  That’s why they didn’t find it in my mom.  She had no symptoms other than weight loss and to her, that was great.  She loved getting thinner, she prided herself on her shrinking waist-line so she didn’t complain and apparently, neither did the doctors – although no one knows for sure on that one since she saw the doctors alone.  It wasn’t until I raised the red flag and her back pain became horrible that they started to piece together the pieces.  We had 19 days from the results of the first scan to the end of her life. My cousin was 44 and had two young children at the time he died.  How is it that deaths like that do not deserve more research so that another family doesn’t have to go through it?

Why is it okay to underfund one deadly disease and toss tens of millions at another?  Yes, breast cancer is the most prevalent and I know that statistically, at least one of my girlfriends will have it in our lifetime.  But that doesn’t take the sting out.  It’s as if the death of someone with breast cancer is more worthy, more important, than someone with some other and less frequently diagnosed cancer.  How is that okay?  My mother-in-law had breast cancer about three years ago and it was at least stage two or three, and she is still here.  The treatments really are amazing now and they save a lot of lives.  I just wish that was the case across the board, for all cancers.  Maybe my mom and my cousin would still be here too.