It's Been 61 weeks....

The holiday memorial service is being held at the cemetery at the end of the month, I told my dad I would go with him.  It’s for Easter, which thankfully does not coincide with my Mom’s birthday this year. Last year sucked – her birthday was Saturday and then Easter was the next day. The first holiday we did without her – it was horrible.  And this year, well, I guess it’s a bit better.

Every day is a bit better, in the grand scheme of things.  It does vary a lot though.  There are days when I start off fine, great even, and then it all just crumbles down around me with a thought, a memory, a song.  I don’t know why but for some reason, St. Patrick’s Day is bugging me more than I thought it would.  I don’t remember if I had a hard time with it last year, although I probably did.  I had a hard time with everything this time last year; she had only been gone for what seemed like a hand-full of weeks – 9 weeks, I think.  And now, at a year and 9 weeks, I dread St. Patrick’s Day. A day when she would make corned beef and cabbage, just because that’s what she always did and always had on that day.  My great-grandmother, her grandmother, was from Ireland so that was just the norm; my mom spoke Gaelic before she spoke English – her heritage was still important to her up until the end, and if she’s still around somewhere I’m sure it still is.  I miss sending her a cheesy card for the holiday, calling her and wishing her a happy St. Patrick’s Day.  I can remember at least once her telling me that she didn’t know why we celebrated him because really what did he do to deserve a holiday?

Whether it’s a holiday, or just a regular run-of-the-mill day, she is never that far from my thoughts.  I try to not think about her too much because, well, I don’t want to be sad and miserable.  I still feel robbed, cheated, guilty.  Those feelings may fade over time but they will always be there, I think.  I will always wonder how it could have been different if I had done more, if I had done something sooner.   She has missed so much in the past 61 weeks – and she continues to miss out as time marches forward. She will miss out on the vacation stories and pictures, the toddler milestones, the school applications, the business woes, the birthdays and holidays that are to come.   I just hope that she has a ring-side seat to all of the craziness and joyfulness and even sadness and hardship that we experience as if she was still here.   Because if she was still here, I would call her and tell her all about the craziness, the joy, the sadness and the hardships; I would invite her over to watch Frozen with Emily for an afternoon – after which I am sure she would make my father go out and buy up all the Frozen stuff at the local Target.  I would call her.  I would send her cards.  I would be there and so would she. Which I would give just about anything for right now.

The Necklace

I’ve been wearing this necklace that was my mom’s – I had given it to her the Christmas before she passed so she never got to wear it, but I still consider it hers.  I had bought a very long chain for it (she hated anything near her neck), so it’s an unusual piece for me to wear, since I usually don’t wear anything this long.  It also makes it more noticeable to my 2 year old, who now knows it’s Grandma’s necklace.  Last night she said “momma, Grandma buy for you?”, to which I had to explain that no, this was Grandma’s but she’s no longer with us and now it’s mine and one day it will be hers. She asked “me….my necklace?” and I said that yes, one day when she’s bigger and old enough to wear it, it would be hers.  She had a big happy grin on her face that I hope my mom could see.  Nothing would make her happier than to see that little girl smile. It was an odd conversation to navigate with someone so young who doesn’t understand or really even know about death yet.

The necklace is a gold shamrock, with some small diamonds in it. My mom was Irish, and I thought that at the time, she needed all the luck she could get.  I had visions of her wearing it to treatments, but that never happened.

Today happens to be my daughter’s first day of pre-school.  So last night, as we sat together in the chair in her room before bed-time and we had the necklace conversation, I told her just how much Grandma loved her and would be sooooooooo proud of her right now for doing so well in her new classroom.  My little one just continued to stare and play with the necklace and said “yup, Grandma no here…Grandma love me”.  It was a sweet moment that I hope, somehow, my mom saw or heard or knows about.  If she was still here, I would have called her as soon as Emily was in bed.  But I can’t do that now.  As much as a part of my brain still thinks that I can, most of my brain knows that I can’t so that’s what stops me from actually picking up the phone.  It’s those moments that make it ‘real’ all over again, makes me realize that it’s not just some movie that I saw. I lived through it, survived it, will never be the same because of it.

I try to not think about it as much as I used to, now that it’s been over a year.  I try to not dwell; not that I think I ever did it on purpose, I had no control over the days that I spent in a battle with my emotions while I sat here at my desk attempting to focus on something other than my loss and shock and sorrow.  It’s better now, but I still get hit out of the blue by it and when I do, it truly takes the wind out of my sails.  And I don’t always realize it until it’s on me – there are times that I just lose my temper, or I’m just more impatient than normal, or I just have an unbearable need to be alone. Those are the days that I think “oh yeah, it’s one of those dead mom days again”.  And I just have to ride the wave, try to be ‘normal’ and get through it with a strong belief that the next day will be better.  Most of the time it is better, but those consecutive bad days still exist and I suppose they always will.  Unlike my mom, grief never dies; you never get to say “grief no here”.  It’s always here, maybe hiding behind a door or lurking behind the couch waiting to jump you and scare the living crap out of you.  But it’s there.  It might be in a song, or in seeing a favorite item or flower of hers, or in the picture that hangs next to my desk that today, caught my eye and made me stand and stare for a moment, while feeling that emptiness that has become all too familiar this past year.

Visiting Old Haunts

 I sat in the parking lot of the hospital where my mom died close to one of the parking spots that I sat in one day and made phone calls. The phone calls everybody in that position has probably made. I called my boyfriend and told him what was going on; my best friend and told him what was going on. I don't even remember the extent of the phone calls or when in the process that happened. I just remember sitting in the car and making those calls because my phone was dying and it was during the day so maybe it was the day she went into respiratory failure or maybe it was the next day when she was responsive or the next when she wasn't. I don't really remember. The days all meld into one big day without definition.

I'm not sure why I came to that spot to sit in the parking lot and stare at the building where my mom died. I don't know if I thought it would be cathartic. I don't know if I came here to cry.  I know that I just wanted to sit alone, as close as I could to where I parked last and remember what it was like to sit here and to be one of the people who park their car every day and make the trek up to a waiting room. A waiting room where there are babies being born nearby or a waiting room where there are people losing their lives nearby. Theres a lot of waiting in a hospital & I did a lot of it. I feel like I still am, in some regard. Sometimes I'm waiting for it to get better, and when it does, I wait for it to get worse because it always does.

This place will always, to me, be not just a hospital - it's where I lost my mom....it's the last place I had a conversation with her. It's the last place I heard her voice, I saw her smile. It's the last place I heard her complain. It's the last place I got to show her pictures of my daughter. It's the last place she told me she loved me.

It's more than just a building to me and it's more than just a place where other people go. It's a place that I used to go, for a week that felt like an eternity at the time, until she was gone. It's the place where I left her after she was gone, the place that I left that first night thinking that I would see her the next day, talk to her and talk to doctors and figure out what we're going to solve the problem or to at least curb it's advancement.

But there was no solution by the time we got here. It was beyond too late by the time we walked through those doors. She was there for less than 24 hours when she was put on a ventilator and then 48 hours after that she stopped responding. I know it sounds trite but if I knew then what I know now I would have done things differently.

It will always be the last place that I got to talk to her it will always be the place where I sat in a window and watch the snow fall as my mom said attached to a respirator it'll always be the place for my sister and I try to make light of a situation that was unbearably heavy for either one of us to bear

Cars & Calls

I was driving over to get my lunch this afternoon, when I drove by a black hearse with its lights on.  Normally, it would at least make me a little uncomfortable, but today was different.  Today, it was going in the direction of the hospital where my mom died.  I saw it, thought to myself “yeah, that was like my mom” and started to cry.  And now, over an hour later, all I want to do is sit and cry it out.  Some of this is PMS related, I am sure of it, but most of it is just dead-mom related.  Seeing that car heading to the hospital made me remember that night, making that call, and then hearing the next day that they had picked her up pretty quickly after I had called (within an hour, if I remember correctly) and that she was already embalmed.  Less than 24 hours after she passed away and she was already in the funeral home, ready to go for the services.  She just needed an outfit and to be set up for people to see in whatever casket we chose.  It was a very odd feeling, hearing that she was in the building that day at the funeral home. I don’t know what I expected; why wouldn’t she had already been picked up?  I don’t know.  I guess I didn’t expect them to be so efficient.

That call was very surreal for me.  I knew that I would be the one to make it; I made the call when it was my brother so I was prepared for it this time around.  But still.  Having to tell them who it was, her relationship to me, who I was, where she was, when she passed. It was all very surreal.  And today, seeing that car just made it stick out into the front of my mind again. I guess I’ve done a decent job of pretending on a daily basis that I’m relatively okay with it all, but when things like this happen it all unravels and voila, I’m in tears.  Not a day goes by that I don’t think about her, not a day goes by that Emily doesn’t ask about her – she doesn’t remember her, which is such a shame because she was the greatest joy of my mother’s entire life I think – but Emily asks about her necklace and in that way, she knows who she was and that she was loved by her.  I miss her.  I miss her for what she was, and for what she wasn’t.  I miss her for all of the craziness, and all of the madness, and for all of the times that I had wished for better – which I will admit, was a lot when I was younger.  I miss her for all of it – the bad and the good.  I miss the grandmother she could have been, and the one that she was just learning to be when her time ran out.  I miss all of it, and not a day goes by that I don’t feel that emptiness that will always be there.  I’ll never have another Mom, I’ll never have another person in my life that I can refer to as the ‘crazy old lady’.  There was only one Eileen, and as crazy as she made me most days, I miss her.

Still Not Easy

Today, I miss my mom.  I’m not in the best of moods for a bunch of reasons – Rob and I had a tift yesterday during which he thought it was okay to apologize to me over email.  No, just no – that is never EVER okay to do to someone, especially someone that you actually give two craps about.  Emily was pushing every one of my buttons last night, from the moment I picked her up at school to the moment she went to bed.  My job – ugh I can’t even list all of that stuff out in any reasonable way.  And this morning, my mom.  I guess because part of our argument was about my birthday, I am now thinking about it which again – just like last year – makes me sad. Really freaking sad, again.  And I thought it would be easier; easier to think about, easier to manage, easier to go without her this year but I don’t know if that’ll be the case since I’m already crying about it and it’s only February (my birthday is at the end of April).  How the hell is this happening AGAIN?  I was a mess last year and it looks like I will be again and really – I am so tired of being a mess.

I just want to be okay again.  I don’t expect to ever be the ‘normal’ I was before her passing, I know that won’t happen.  But I just want to be okay and I’m slowly realizing that what everyone has told me really is true….you are never actually okay ever again.   You just figure out how to live with it.  But here I am, experiencing a bad dead mom day that came from out of nowhere and it sucks.  and I’m not doing such a great job of handling it.  I’m in a horrible mood (I really do feel bad for just about anyone that has to interact with me today), I’m on the verge of tears – thankfully I did not cry to entire way to daycare and work or I would look as bad as I feel, and I’m just miserable.  I miss the days of normal and okay.  I miss the days when I didn’t have someone to miss as much as I do now.  I miss not having my  mom to make fun of.  It’s true!  I do.  She didn’t take it very well and I was often threatened and occasionally hit for some of the things I said but still.  I miss calling or texting my sister after talking to my mom and saying “can you believe she actually said that” and “so I just got off the phone with the crazy old lady we call our mother”.  I miss it.  I miss all of it.

And today, I just feel alone.  Between feeling like he isn’t on my side right now because of other priorities, and missing my mom, I feel very much alone.  I know that I’m not in the ‘real world’, but in my head, it is a mighty lonely place right now.  He doesn’t really hear me right now – he doesn’t really see me, claims he didn’t know I was in a bad mood last night when I am pretty sure it was very apparent.  And, although I get it, he doesn’t understand what this is like for me or why it’s the way that it is.  He doesn’t understand because I wasn’t that close to my mom, we didn’t have the best relationship.  But it obviously doesn’t matter.  It still hurts and I still miss her more than I think I could ever really put into words.  And I don’t expect him, or anyone else, to fully understand.  But I guess that’s the catch-22 of it all.  You don’t expect someone to really fully understand it, but when they don’t, that’s what makes you feel so alone. So no matter what, the end result is still the same.

The Last Time I Saw Her

As hard as I may try, it’s hard to forget what I was doing a year ago today.  I said good-bye to my mom, along-side my Dad, my sister, my boyfriend, my brother-in-law, my friends, cousins.  We said good-bye to her, we went to mass where the Pastor said a wonderful homily/eulogy and said some wonderful and funny things that made us all smile at a time that was so full of tears.  We stood around her casket as the Pastor blessed her and wished her a blessed entrance into heaven; standing there, in the middle of the church, with my hand on her casket is a memory (both visual and emotional) that I really do hope fades with time because it was heart-wrenching then, and remains to be pretty painful today.  We placed flowers on her casket, and we watched them place it into the ‘drawer’ as she used to call it, at the mausoleum. Even now I struggle to not imagine her in that box, it’s just not a picture I want to have of my mother.   I surely don’t wish to relive that day, but there is one thing that made me thankful for that day that stays with me now.

There will never be enough words in my vocabulary to adequately describe what was done for me by the people I am lucky enough to call friends.  My friend Brian, who used to sit in my living room with my mother smoking cigarettes and talking smack about football (and my brother), offered to carry her casket – I never asked, when I told him when the wake and funeral were being held he said “I’ll carry your mom” and that was it.  Another friend got on a plane and flew from Seattle that day to be here.  Others drove hours – 3 and 5 or 6, in the early morning, to be by my side.  One of them said “we circle the wagons” when its one of our own, and they certainly did.  When I walked out of the church, and saw them all standing there, I was in total disbelief.  I have no idea what I did right in my life to deserve these people, but it must have been something pretty spectacular.  We may not see each other often, we may not speak often, but these people are my people, they are my ‘tribe’ – if you use that word at all – and I don’t know what I would have done that day without them. After it was all said and done, and we sat around a big table in a restaurant laughing and drinking, someone said that they felt bad having so much fun.  And I remember saying no, don’t feel bad.  She would have been here laughing and drinking with us if it was someone else in that box, so drink your wine and laugh.  It’s how she would have wanted it.

The days between that day and this one have blurred in many ways.  Some stand out – my friend’s wedding in England, for example.  But many are just the same, hazy, tear-smudged days.  It’s hard to believe that I put my mother to rest a year ago today.  If she hadn’t died, this day would have no significance at all because a year ago I would have been doing what I’m doing now…working, writing, eating at my desk, enduring the cold air that wafts in anytime someone opens a backdoor.  But that’s not how it is.  This day will always stand out as different.  Not many will remember it, I know that.  As time goes on, this day will become a distant memory for a lot of people, and that’s okay.  I don’t think it’s supposed to be important to everyone.  But it will always be important to me.  And although it wasn’t really ‘her’ that I saw that day, it was the last time that I looked at her, it was the last time that I saw that crazy wild old lady hair, it was the last time I saw her nails painted that horrible pale pink color she always wore.  I will always remember today as the last day that I saw my mom, and for that, I will always be just a tiny bit sad on this day.

Sorry, I Can't Eat the Meatloaf

One of the meals that my mom made when I was growing up that I absolutely hated was meatloaf.  I would walk in the door after school and smell it – augh, it was horrible.  I think she could feel me rolling my eyes and almost gagging even if she wasn’t at the front door. Once I got my driver’s license, I would drive myself to the McDonald’s and get a two cheeseburger meal instead.  I hated, just totally hated her meatloaf.  Sometimes it was like a giant, kind of greasy, meatball (and I loved her meatballs, they were fantastic and I regret not learning how to make them).  Other times, when she tried to dress it up in an attempt to win me over, it would me like a burger – she’d put cheese and pickles in the middle. Nothing worked.  As far as I was concerned it was disgusting. And here’s the best part – she didn’t eat it.  She always hated meatloaf since she was a kid and even though we had to eat it (until that whole driving thing kicked in and they couldn’t force me to eat anything anymore), she didn’t.  Man did that piss me off.  Man that still pisses me off.

And now, as an adult who lives with another adult who likes to cook, I am occasionally in a position where I pretty much have to eat meatloaf or I will piss him off quite a bit.  And normally I eat it with no complaints; it’s not too bad.  It’s not great – don’t get me wrong this is still meatloaf we’re talking about. But it’s still much more palatable than my mom’s.  So he decided to make it this week; he had planned on making it on Sunday, the anniversary of her passing, but that was just way too ironic for me so he waited. And still, I can’t bring myself to eat it.  Every time I think about it, I get close to tears.  Even as I sit here, writing about it, I can feel myself wanting to cry.  I have no idea why – it’s stupid, if you ask me.  It’s just a meatloaf, but for some reason, I’m having what I like to call ‘dead mom issues’ about eating it.  I don’t know if it’s guilt over not eating hers for so long and now willingly eating his, I don’t know if it’s remembering not eating hers for so long and missing that fight we had each time, I don’t know what the hell it is but right now, I can’t eat meatloaf because my mom is dead.  Seems like a pretty good excuse, huh?  I’d eat it if I could, but sorry, I can’t because my mom is dead.