Memories Make it Real

Today, I miss my mom.  There’s been this surge of memories lately, from when she was in the hospital, and it forces me to remember and feel that she’s gone.  I hate it.  I remember driving home that first night in the snow, and then later wishing I had stayed longer so I could have had more time with her. I still regret leaving when I did.  I remember standing in my kitchen, waiting for the nurse to get on the phone to tell me why they called me “about your mom” at 6am – all while my then 18 month old was crying in the background because she had woken up early and I wasn’t there to get her out of bed.  And I remember calling Rob, telling him I needed him to come home because my mother had been placed on a respirator and was in ICU and I needed to get to the hospital. I remember going into crisis mode, getting ready quickly and heading out so I could get to her, find out what happened and what needed to happen next. And I remember the realization that she wasn’t going to wake up, sitting in the room in silence, watching her breath on a machine for days.  I remember it like it happened yesterday; I feel it like it happened yesterday, too.  On Monday, it will be seven months and yet, today, I feel like I just lived it.  I feel like……I don’t know…..I feel like I’m watching a movie in my head, one of those real tear-jerkers that you only watch when you know you’re okay with crying over a stupid movie.  I can see myself in the kitchen, I can see myself pacing the hallway outside of her room day after day, I can see myself sitting on the couch with Rob and saying to him “I don’t want to do this” the afternoon of the wake.   I know that this is passing and I most likely won’t feel this badly tomorrow.  But today.  Today I just really truly miss her and I would give anything for the chance to go back to that night so I could sit with her a little while longer, talk to her a little bit more, and enjoy the time that we had left.  I didn’t know it would be cut short so soon and so fast, but I wish I had intuition just so I would have stayed just a little bit longer.  I really do.

Could Be Worse

This morning I had to tell my two-year old that her father was leaving and she wasn’t going to see him for a while.  (He’s going on a vacation with his son to Sweden for 10 or 11 days, I lost count after a while)  When I saw the realization and understanding come onto her face, and heard her cries of “daddy” as she climbed up into his lap in tears, it broke my heart.  Makes me happy she wasn’t really aware of what was going on when my mom died; I don’t know if she remembers her but if I ask her if that’s Grandma when I show her pictures she says yes.  She’s only two so she has no real concept of time – I do tell her what day it is most days, when I remember, but still.  She doesn’t understand that 10 days is less than two weeks, 10 days is less than the time he was in Chicago for work for an unexpected 15 days early last year.  All she knows is that she was just told that Daddy is going away and we won’t be able to see him for a while and we won’t talk to him for a few days.  She cried and whined for him almost the whole way to school, which was hard to hear without breaking into tears myself.

I’m sure there are people in worst positions than myself, I know it.  There are single moms out there that work two and three jobs to make ends meet while someone else raises their children.  There are single dads doing the same thing.  There are families on food stamps, living in cars, unemployed. There are sick parents out there, trying to figure out how to make their children understand that they’ll be okay when their mom/dad is gone and coping with the idea that they won’t be there to see their child grow up, graduate, get married, have children. There are parents dealing with their child having a horrible, deadly disease, praying that their child lives to see another day or another year. There are people out there who are alone, longing for companionship, longing for a child, who can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel; I know that story all too well because I used to be one of those people.  I was alone, thinking I would always be alone because the person I was supposed to be with couldn’t change his life so that we could be together, thinking I would never have a child and that I would have to find the money to adopt or buy sperm and go for invitro.  Yeah, that would have made my Italian father happy; and adoption wouldn’t have made my mother very happy – for some reason she wasn’t thrilled with the idea.  I digress.  Even knowing all of this, having him leave today makes me sad and makes me sad for so many reasons.  I will miss him desperately, for a lot of reasons including the ones that surround our daughter.  Although I do plan on enjoying my nights alone – I’m going to watch the movies I want, the shows I want (hello – Project Runway!), and hog up the whole bed. But even in the midst of enjoyment, there will be an emptiness there next to me on the couch and in our bed.  And I’m kind of tired of emptiness.  Some days, its all I feel.  Unfortunately, I’m going to have some extra emptiness around for the next 10 or 11 days.  Knowing me, I’m going to fill up that emptiness the only way I know how – with my good friends Ben & Jerry.

Dreams - Not Just a Fleetwood Mac Song

Dreams are strange things.  I don’t really want to call them ideas or items or thoughts….i don’t know what the right term is so things it is.  They’re strange.  I’ve never had one of my mom, not since she died.  This morning I kind of did, but it was more of a memory while I was kind of awake than a dream where she came to me and told me something profound.  I had a lot of weird flashback memory stuff happen this morning and this was a part of it.  I remembered the day I brought Emily home, and how cute and tiny she looked sleeping in the backseat beside me.  I remembered the first night in the hospital after she was born and how my sister slept on the couch in my room with us.  (most of it was Emily related, as you can probably tell)  I know there was something in there with my mom, I think it was the night that a car crashed through their living room and I drove down there to see how they were and to pack them up to take them to my sister’s if need be.  I remember her face when I walked in – “oh, hi Sweetheart, what are you doing here?” like it was shocking that one of us would show up after a car drove into their house. (Yes, a car really did crash through the living room wall and into the house.)  and I can kind of remember her voice from that night, too.  Which is a first, I think.  It’s been hard, very hard, to remember her voice.  But with that memory, I kind of do.  It’s fuzzy, not very loud or clear, but it’s there.  And it’s all I have right now, not that I’m ready for more.  I’m not ready to remember her voice full-on; it’s hard enough remembering her face or how she would say “sweetheart”.  I’m doing better than I was months ago, things do get easier with time, but I know that I’ll never be “okay”.  There will never be a time when I don’t cry, when I don’t miss her, when I don’t wonder what things would be like if she was still here.  It’s an odd feeling, knowing that I’ll never actually be “okay” again and that, as my father gets older and sicker, the reality is that I will lose him sooner than later most likely and that will add to my lack of “okay”.  I have to say, that aside from my mom and my best friend, I miss “okay” the most.

Cancer is a bitch

went onto to Facebook this afternoon, just as a quick distraction from my work – I need to do that from time to time during the day to just refocus myself – and I found a post from a man that I’m still friends with, even though his friend and I broke up many moons ago.  His nephew is 5 years old and is battling cancer again.  This is the second or third time this kid has had it, and this time, it’s bad.  His arm broke again, his bones are brittle from all of the misc. treatments and therapies over the years.  And when they did the arm x-ray, they also did a chest x-ray to figure out why he was having trouble breathing; they thought it was pneumonia (sounds familiar).  He now has a new tumor in his lungs.  They are trying a form of chemo that they’ve used before with him that has worked; if he is resistant to the treatment, if it doesn’t work, as his mother said “we are out of options”.  To be a mother and to say that about your child, your 5 year old child no less, can be nothing less than heart wrenching.  I can’t imagine, and pray that I never will actually know, the heart break and suffering that woman is enduring knowing that she can only do so much to help her child and that she may be standing by, watching her child die slowly without having the ability to save him. A child who depends on her to kiss his boo-boos, put a band-aid on the ouchies, kiss him good-night and scare away the monsters that hide under his bed. She can’t scare away cancer; it’s the other way around I believe. 

Cancer is a horrible,  horrible disease that claims the old and the young.  It doesn’t discriminate.  It doesn’t care if you’ve had a full life, or if your life hasn’t really even begun yet; this little boy was planning on starting Kindergarten and now, it looks like that won’t be happening anytime soon.  The things that this poor kid has missed out on and now, another first will come and go without him.  He is lucky though – in at least one aspect – his family has gathered around him and won’t give up.  They will fight and fight along with him as best they can, until there is no battle to fight anymore.  And even then, I think his parents will continue to fight until there’s nothing to fight against anymore.  I pray, and I pray, and I pray, that this little life is spared.  That this family is spared.  They shouldn’t have to endure the pain of watching someone they love, a five-year old at that, pass away slowly and painfully from this horrible disease; there is no easy way to pass away once it’s in your lungs as I know all too well. They tell you that they will make that person comfortable, but there is no comfort in watching it happen.  No one should have to lose their child, no one should have to watch their loved one die from this disease and GOD no parent should have to decide to take their 5 year old off of life support and sit by their bedside, holding their hand as they die and take their last breath. I know it happens every day, I know it happens everywhere.  But when it hits home, especially when it’s such a young life, you can’t be anything but angry and just oh so very sad.

Breaking the Silence

I haven’t written much lately.  I think I’ve just been lost in my own head about things and there’s been too much going on around me to stop and write things down.  Right now, I’m procrastinating.  I have another phone call I don’t want to make, but have to.  Today, my dad went to the doctor to get the results of a full body CT scan he had done; I’m assuming there’s nothing really wrong because if there was, they would have had him in the office much sooner. (I learned that the hard way with my mom.  The day of her CT, her doctor called and said he wanted to see her first thing Monday morning.  It was Friday.)  But still.  It could be ‘something’ and I don’t know how to handle ‘something’.  Yes, the days are easier now that my mom has been gone for six+ months, but they aren’t ‘easy’.  I don’t know that they ever really will be.  People I know, women, who have lost their moms have told me time and time again that they still cry 8 years, 10 years, 15 years later.  I don’t cry every day, even when I want to.  But still.  It’s never going to be easy again and I’m just not ready to deal with not easy when it comes to my Dad.

I still find myself looking for my cat’s water and food dishes every morning, and almost every time I walk into my kitchen.  It was such a habit to look, to check and make sure he had enough, that it’s hard to break myself of it.  I miss him, too.  I miss the way he used to head-butt me, rub the top of his head on my nose. Sure, I don’t miss when he had teeth and used to bite my nose.  Damn that hurt.  But still.  I do miss him; I noticed the picture of him on my desk today.  I haven’t actually looked right at it in a while.  He was much younger and healthier in that picture, which is how I remember him.  Having a good memory like that is helpful; it helps to stop me from crying anytime my daughter runs up to me and says “MOM…kitty!” and I have to explain again that he is not with us anymore.

I know that there are certain things that we should probably do now, that we haven’t done yet.  Like help my Dad go through some of my mom’s things, like go through her jewelry, her books, her clothes that he still has.  But I’m not there yet.  In my head I know that it’s what needs to get done and all that jazz but the rest of me, just doesn’t want to.  I think that there’s still a part of me that’s in denial and that’s how I get through the day-to-day.  Denial probably isn’t a good place to be and to stay at, but it’s an easy place to get comfortable.  Some days, it doesn’t feel like anything is different because it isn’t – I didn’t talk to her often, I didn’t see her all the time so I don’t necessarily ‘miss’ her every day; I don’t feel the void every day because I’m not forced to see it or hear it. I think it’s only because I don’t have to think about her every day like my Dad does.  If I did, I would miss her every day and I would probably cry a lot more than I do.  When I pass the blue sign for the hospital in the morning, many times I look away so I can pretend its not there and it doesn’t represent what it represents for me now and forever.  That’s the last place I saw my Mom alive, if that’s what you want to call it.  and I try to remember that fact, too.  She wasn’t really ‘alive’ when we turned off the machines.  That wasn’t a life; she wasn’t conscious – even without medication, and when we knew that was the case, I knew it was time to let go.  They stopped the morphine and lowered the pain medication as much as they could and yet, there was no response from her anymore. She wasn’t there, it was just her body.  But still. That body was my mom; it yelled at me, it laughed with me, it smiled at my daughter, it made idle threats to my dad and sometimes it was down-right hysterically funny.  And I miss that body.  I hope that her spirit, or whatever you want to call it, is out there somewhere enjoying its new existence.  But I miss her, and I wish that I could turn back time just a little bit so I could appreciate the spirit and the body just a little bit more, for just a little bit longer.

Where's My Self-Importance Gone??

Just shoot me.  Really, put me out of my misery and shoot me.  Someone.  (okay I’m not really serious but on a serious note, I’m really freaking tired and I hate hearing my dad being upset and saying the things that I just heard so I would – in the least – appreciate it if someone would slam my head in a door to distract me from the stuff that IS my life right now.)

I’m exhausted.  And I have too much on my mind to do my job today, but guess what?  I have to.  I have to be here, I have to train a bs class that I HATE training, I have to try to focus on this when all I want to do is sleep and try to figure out my life. My dad said to me this morning, in reference to possibly replacing his pacemaker with a more powerful defibulator, “if I was younger I worry about it but I’m 81 today, I don’t know if I care or if I want to go through it”. As if I need more stuff to add to my already rather large pile of anxiety over potentially losing both of my parents within a year of each other and/or before my daughter can develop memories with them that she will always have.  Today, I just want and need to cry.  I need to be alone so I can cry my eyes out until I can’t cry anymore.  I need to go to the cemetery and cry.  But I can’t.  I need to be here, doing a job that is far from satisfying these days, supporting my family and facing the possibility of becoming the sole supporter of both my family and myself because my boyfriend has plans of quitting his job and opening a business.  When do I get to feel like I’m being supported?  WHERE is my support???  Do I have to scream from the rooftops I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME!!!!  I don’t want to do this job anymore, I don’t want to be a single parent, I don’t want to put my life on hold so he can move forward with his, I don’t want to sit by and watch my other parent die just as I did the last one.  But I feel like my entire life – every single little piece – is out of my control right now and, as a huge control freak, I’m having a serious problem with it all.

And if I did happen to come across a roof top where I could gain access, stand up and scream – what would I actually scream, what help do I need?  I have no idea how anyone can help.  I have to have a job, this job for the time being.  I have to care for my toddler and, unfortunately, it’s predominately on my own in the next few weeks and possibly for a very long time in the future (the one and only reason I am supporting this whole idea is her; if I didn’t think this could be successful and make us a whole lot of money that would allow us to send her to private school, I would have put my foot down).  I can’t take off from work for an entire day just for shites and giggles; I don’t have many days left this year so I need to hold onto them in case I need them for real emergencies.  Although, wait.  Why isn’t my personal well-being an emergency?  Why is it that everyone else’s stuff is more important than my need to be alone and vent my insane frustrations, anger, anxiety?  When did I stop being important to the most important person in my life – me?

Bite Me

So far today can bite my bippy.  In fact, this whole week can bite me and if things don’t improve I may send myself to a deserted island or at least to the closest Amish community. 

Last night, while playing, Emily thought it was funny to bite me on the shoulder.  It hurt so much that it brought tears to my eyes and I actually had to walk away.  This morning she thought it was okay to hit me in the face as I was putting her into the car seat because she wanted to get something off of the seat and, apparently, I was moving too slowly for her.  I’m starting to get really frustrated by this feeling – I feel like I am her personal punching bag and I just don’t get why I get the brunt of it all.  She doesn’t bite her father or hit him the way that she does me.  This morning, I feel like I am doomed to have a daughter that hates me because I hated my mom for so long when I was growing up.  I hated her for being an alcoholic and for all of the insanity and chaos that came along with it.  I will always hate her, to some extent, for what she did to me and for what she made me endure.  That wasn’t my fault but somehow, I feel like this is some sort of karmic retribution even if none of that was my fault.

My job frustrates me every day and I am tired of my only challenge being things such as forcing myself into the loop on topics I need to be aware of in order to do my job.  I’m not challenged on a professional level; my skills are not improving, my resume isn’t getting more impressive as the years go on.  I’m doing the same exact work I was doing when I started here and it’s been four years.  I’m a little bored and frustrated by the same ol’ same ol.

My life frustrates me.  I do so much for that toddler, I am the one that is alone with her most often and yet, I’m the one she beats the crap out of and disrespects on a regular basis.  I worry about my Dad every day and I miss the hell out of my mom every day, some days more than others – I think today may be a ‘more’ day.  I miss my cat and I’m angry that he had to die within 6 months of my Mom; two days after my sister’s birthday and just a few days shy of the 6 month anniversary of my mom’s passing.  I hate walking into my kitchen and automatically looking down to check his food and water, and it not being there. I hate that I know I didn’t give him the quality of life he deserved over the past few months because I just couldn’t take him laying on me after my daughter had done the same for an entire day.  I hate when I open the refrigerator and Rob has decided to place his things in the front and the things that I need in the morning – like the milk for Emily – are pushed to the back so I am forced to rearrange things in order to get things done.  I hate coming out of the bedroom in the morning to find that there was food left out on the coffee table the night before, or food left out on the counter from the night before; it’s as if I should somehow magically know that it was there and it was my responsibility to clean it up even though he’s the one that put it there.  He’s being passive aggressive and I don’t like it.

My whole demeanor is one of frustration and irritation; I am pretty positive that I am  not pleasant to be around and I just can’t shake it.  I’m sad.  So sad that even as I type this, I am fighting back the tears.  I welcome the time in the future when this doesn’t happen anymore.  When bad days don’t just creep up on me, slap me in the face and ruin everything I do and prevent me from being happy for more than a few minutes or even moments at a time.  Anything ‘not good’ – like the face hitting in the car by the toddler – ruins an entire morning that was previously pretty good and happy.  I can’t get past that moment, or the biting incident last night, and it’s stupid, I know that.  I know that it’s ridiculous to let something so small ruin my morning and possibly my day, but that’s the way it’s looking. I can’t stop feeling like a crappy mom, and I can’t stop feeling crappy about myself today; I can’t stop feeling like its my fault that she’s hitting me and biting me – which logically I know makes no sense, but that’s how I feel today.  I feel like something is lacking in my parenting that is causing it and who knows, maybe there is or maybe I just suck at being a mom.  And all of it is stemming from this inability to put my emotional issues about having a dead mom to the side.  I can’t pretend that I’m okay all the time; I just don’t have that in me, especially not since she died.  I lack the patience I once had, I lack the stability that I once had inside me that helped me to maintain my composure when I was upset.  I lack a lot these days, the biggest one of all being my mom.  She wasn’t supportive, she wasn’t a cheerleader by any means, but she was my mom and I miss her every single day and her poor parenting and her poor choices make me look at myself and wonder what poor choices am I making to make my child act out the way that she is.  I didn’t act out; I sat silently in the background until I found my voice as an adult.  But my child is finding her voice more and more every day, and yet again, this feels a little too much like karma or at least some sort of cosmic intervention sponsored by my dead mother.