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.

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