Monthly Archives: October 2013

Oct28

The Post In Which I Fancied Myself an NPR Reporter

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It’s embarrassing, really.

The day was unlike others; unless you’re someone who gets a mammogram daily. I’m not. I was between procedures (I’m clear, it was all routine) and I had some time to kill.

The weather was clear and sunny and warm.

I was in my monster mobile and parked outside a local “Gas N Shop,” or “Petro N Go,” or “Fill N Leave,”… you know, the kind of place that sells gas, offers a car wash, bathrooms, rolling papers and Snickers bars.

I was determined to not to go in and sit in the warm, stuffy waiting room for what could be upwards of 15 minutes. The waiting rooms at mammography centers are high intensity; no one wants to go in there to prepare to stand on their tippy toes as they look away as Miriam did in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” during the scene when she and Indy are strapped to the pole while the foolish Nazis dare open the Ark of the Covenant after performing an ad hoc Hebrew ceremony (am I digressing?)… anyway, as Miriam (who listened to Indy because if she didn’t she would’ve melted as the Nazis did), you don’t want to look at your girl when it’s in this device which compresses her from a shape resembling a balloon to a pancake.

During said compression, we are reminded to hold our breath (which is already gasped) as the sing-songy operator who looks like “Pat” from Saturday Night Live (I’m dating myself) scurries to hide behind a glass wall while a half-million-dollar machine hums and clicks and releases. If you don’t get it right that time, you get to do it again. Never mind the fact that this would be considered a misdemeanor in several states were it not a medical procedure…

So instead of waiting with the other potential smashees, I chose to hide. I’m glad I did for I witnessed joy instead of anxiety; expression rather than suppression; and elation instead of deflation. Going in for a mammogram requires a certain suspension of disbelief anyway, because no sane person would want this to happen to her. So, following this thread of make believe, I pretended I was an NPR reporter. That’s totally normal, right?

I haven’t listened to my recording since that day because I think I hate my voice and also because I’m not used to recording myself. My mother, however, would have LOVED to have done this, so in my own little subconscious way, I’m loosening up a little to let more of her in. Please click on the link immediately below:

Paradise and Fiji Water

I made this recording about two weeks after Mom died and I was in a place where I needed to see the silver linings of life and to remember that life not only goes on, but that it can and does quite beautifully, thank you, with or without us in attendance.

I was talking to my friend about this experience the other day and she told me that there is no such thing as fresh drinking water on Fiji… that they get bottled water too. I wonder if it’s $3.85 a bottle there. Probably more because they need to ship it from … uh … Michigan or somewhere.

I am a firm believer that it’s up to us to see the beauty in an every day existence. I have yet to be like Wayne Dyer and say “Thank you!” before I get out of bed, but I come pretty close. I say it on the walk to school, or as I pour my coffee or as I’m having my breast compressed or as I’m watching an adorable family vacuum its car.

The little boy was “totes adorbs” to quote a friend from Buffalo, NY. His shiny black hair was cropped close, with bangs that hugged his face and curled up about an inch above his eyebrows. The dad was wearing a Reál Madrid soccer jersey and had close-cropped hair and a ready smile for his son while he was doing what dads do: playing while Mom was working. He laughed and did his best to look busy, but that little kid was just too much fun. The mom was fierce-looking; she had a classic South American face with high cheek bones and full lips. Her skin was a gorgeous bronze that set this pasty white Irish girl’s jealousy in gear. But I didn’t envy her the age of her son (been there, done that) nor the “compliance” of her husband while she’s just trying to clean out her car. Sometimes these chores are better performed alone.

Their dark teal Toyota Corolla sedan was in good condition. It looked to be the same vintage of one that belonged to a gal I met at the yoga retreat this summer. She said hers was 17 years old with close to 380,000 miles on it. To my friend, it was her ride to a Springsteen concert or to class or to the Jersey Shore and to work as an educator. But to this Mom, who looked to be no more than 21, that car was her chariot, her way to work, her son’s way to school or day care and her husband’s privilege: it had pink and lavender stickers on the back, like little wings, on either side of the trunk’s keyhole. This was a woman’s car.

I remember hearing the music before I saw the family and thought that surely it was playing for the benefit of a silver-haired couple from Mexico or Latin America. To me, there was no way that a young person would enjoy that music; there was no subwoofer bleeding or swearing pouring out the windows. How nice it was to be so completely incorrect.

I felt lucky and, oddly, not a hint of self-consciousness recording that “report”; I suppose it’s not weird these days to see someone sitting alone in a car holding a phone up to her face with her window cracked open. People do it all the time… Beats trying to do it while driving.

I enjoyed pretending I was an NPR reporter; I am glad to be sharing it with you.

Thank you.

p.s.  i feel this post was rusty. i have to say that it’s weird for me to be writing about something happy again that doesn’t focus on my sadness about my Mom. it was nice. “The show must go on!” she’d say.

Oct23

Grief: In Conclusion, Lessons from Mom, Acceptance

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Eight days have passed since I last wrote. For a “blogger” this is akin to obscurity. For a writer, which I believe know I am, eight days is almost like torture.

I wanted the lesson I learned from the ether, the one about forgiveness, to gel. I considered it as though it were a soufflé: Shh! Don’t make noises around it, step gently, don’t disturb it.

Of my grief the other day, I wrote to a friend, “I think when my mom died I literally lost time and data. I am encountering things now that I don’t remember forgetting… If that makes any sense. It’s like some of them are totally new.”

. . . . .

CS Lewis was right when he wrote that when we love our departed and don’t feel grief about them, that they feel more near. I was in a place last week, true acceptance — and I am still there, although with occasional tears — that allowed her or my memory of her, or something real and true of hers to come to me. I let it feel safe. I let it know, without any specter or sliver of judgement or regret or resistance, that I am ready:

In yoga last week, the very next day after I appealed for forgiveness, I was in child’s pose, at the end of a vinyasa series, and I smelled her twice. The first for about six bewildering seconds and then >poof!< it was gone and then a few seconds later, it came back for about another three seconds. An incarnation of my mother’s earthly spirit as only I could relate to it was with me. I didn’t court it, I didn’t beg for it to stay, I just … accepted it. I didn’t believe it at first. I sniffed my clothes, my hands, my skin to debunk it; I must’ve looked like a lunatic: they’re all in child’s pose, face down, chest to thighs, shins to earth and I’m acting like a bloodhound. Nothing around me that smelled like her. I smelled of my laundry detergent and my hair conditioner. I nodded in gratitude. She felt safe; that was cool.

A friend just messaged me about the significance of that moment. Child’s pose is one we do to come down or cool down or relax from a series. That we are at peace, submission, when we do it. My friend said, “She was at peace and wants it too for you; the fact that you were in child’s pose, is a big deal too.” 

A few readers have lovingly appealed to me that I accept that my pre-Labor Day world is gone. I appreciate their guidance, and I agree that I have been reluctant to accept that truth. Who could blame me? No one I know. No one else is in my skin. But it is with heavy emotion imbued with truth that I accept it now. I will never be ‘over’ her death. I don’t think anyone ever expects me to be. My life has changed forever. The woman who bore me has left forever.

Mom used to speak all the time about acceptance. I suspect that some of it was a lecture for herself. She meant, despite my rigid assertions that she lived in the ether, reality. “You can’t change reality, or people,” she used to say.

The reality is that she has gone to God and is no more a living being on this earth. I know now, the deep and profound love I had for her was primal and true. How could it not be?

She used to say that about me all the time, “Maally, you are so true. True blue and loyal to the end!” she would exclaim, almost as a cheer, and I would recoil with embarrassment and pride; I guess that’s what we refer to as “sheepishly” now.

Those exchanges in my memory now are threatening my soufflé. They tread very close to evoking how I felt at the time she said such things, as though I was being teased. Right now, my gut is telling me to be careful not to lionize her for if I do, I disavow and invalidate the crushing challenges I endured as her child; to accept this entire thing means I must accept all of it: her perspective and limitations, and all of mine as well.

I feel her on my left side right now. Or something like her.

It’s gone.

. . . . .

It occurred to me, in this grief-inspired, post-guilt haze that I still have a lot of life to live. That I have other things to write about and that I need to assimilate the reality that Mom has died and is never ever >gulp< coming back, into my life because this is how all life goes. Eventually: it ends!

Most of us come into this world, meeting them for the first time and expecting them to always be there. Even as her health declined and I witnessed her truly staggeringly precipitous aging, and I rationally knew that her time was short, I was not at all accepting of it on an emotional level.

My ongoing break wall graffiti, “Pfft. We had barely known each other when I was growing up… it won’t be so hard to adjust to when she dies…” is total garbage. Her loss has been profound. Her personality was massive. She. Was. My. Mom. It doesn’t matter if the relationship was gossamer-strong or plutonium-fragile.

The fact is that she was always on my mind whether I own it or not. We shared cells, DNA … we were connected. Tragically, we both wanted acceptance from one another — constantly.

But that forgiveness and grace I experienced last week has ushered in a new space where I am allowed to matter to myself. I can write about other things and it’s not to spite her. For me to continually and actively devote this space to the void her death created and my grief from it is to feed a vacuum of self-indulgence.

While I will continue to write, the underlying truth is that I now write in the aftermath of her death. Just as I write in the aftermath of any other experience, of the first day of fall, of 9/11, of ten five two minutes ago.

Of course her loss will color my writing. I can hear her now, “Stop using parenthesis! You’re better than that! If you’re going to say it, Say It!” She was a very strong formidable editor.

Part of my quandary is that I want to move on from this publicly and I don’t know how. This is all new to me. I started this situation, by blogging about my grief, now I must clean it up. “You need to lighten up, Maally…” I can hear her.

Yes, I suppose she was mostly right. I was the Felix Unger to her Oscar Madison. Part of that entreaty was to get me to leave her alone, to let her be, and in my German shepherd mind, to let her continue with her self-indulgence. She won. She always did, and finally, I’m ok with it. I also win too — I don’t feel guilty about it not working out because it was never mine to fix.

So that is the deal here, the final lesson: you can’t change a damned thing about anyone else. All you can do is change your reaction to other people. It’s been the message of this earth and all its conflicts since the beginning of time. It is the mother of all realities. Once we accept it, truly, it colors our lives. Everything becomes less stressful.

We are not as separate as we once believed. When we let go, we let in.

This was a disjointed post because I cut a lot out. I found myself breaking my objective, to not blog so obviously about my grief. I just remembered that one of Kubler-Ross’s stages is “Acceptance.”

Thanks for sticking around. I’ll be back to new normal soon.

So I’m going to wrap it up with a quote from a movie that Mom loved,

Thank you.

Oct15

Grief: Forgiveness, Grace

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I’m Catholic on paper. Which means that I’m not a very “good” Catholic. What it also means is that I’m very educated on matters of guilt and how to beat myself up.

The guilt I’ve felt, over my relationship with my mother — all my life — and more recently since any chance of improvement on this earth with her has been vigorously snatched from my hands, has been unbearable.

I have heard from people privately: “Thank you for your blog; thank you for helping me find a little broken part of me…” I have also heard from others privately, “Be careful of what you share. Some of it is very private, and it fans the flames … it mightn’t help you… it keeps it out there… ” and I could not agree more.

I have vacillated: Keep a post up? Take it down?

It doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, I remember this one truth: this is the Internet age. Where ADHD reigns and YouTube seems to hold the reins. I am old school and I can promise you this: I don’t share everything. I share what suits me.

But the days of late have been hard. I would say that I’ve spent a good two weeks in guilt stew. The last week has been uniquely painful.

So I spoke with a wise cousin last week; and I spoke with a wise friend. I went to dinner with wise women and I have basically immersed myself in a wonderful soup of women and the one thing that keeps coming at me — from all these walks of life, from all these wonderfully strong, vibrant, sagacious and heartfelt women is this: forgiveness.

Because I am Catholic, I don’t really pray-pray. My personal brand of Catholicism has been such that I don’t like to call in the “big guns” until I simply can’t take it anymore. Until I am at my personal rock bottom. I can likely count on one hand the number of times I have actually prostrated myself in prayer and each time, I have been gloriously answered.

As much as I say that I get things, prayer, on an intellectual level, I don’t get them on an emotional level. Or I get them on an emotional level, but not on an intellectual level. It’s not always balanced.

I am by default and practice a thinker. I learned as a child to trust the concrete, that the abstract was a gamble and that whatever I didn’t see couldn’t be relied upon. The moments when I know what I saw but was convinced otherwise were also less reliable. So, it took me a long time to get to feeling or at least allowing feeling. Trust a feeling? Greek.

I’m also big on repression when I can’t or don’t have the time to deal with something. (That’s usually when you absolutely MUST deal with something, but you know: driving, going out to dinner, in a meeting… those are not the best times, so when those feelings come up, I push them back down. I do deal with them eventually, and I have no intention of forgetting about them, it’s just that sometimes I can’t help it — they simply fade away or drop into a cup of ice cream.)

But this past weekend, when I simply COULD NOT shake the guilt, no matter how much I tried, I basically heard all the fantastic voices in my head, including my mother’s (her voice was really lovely, actually, a little like Jessica Lange’s) that kept saying, “Let it go…” and “Pray on it…” and “Talk to your mother…”

On FB chat yesterday, I asked a friend while waiting for my son, “When you say ‘talk to her‘ do you mean really, ‘talk to her’ as in verbally with the voice and vocally and all that? out loud?”

My friend said, “Yeah. Or write to her, or in your head…”

And I squirmed.

I can’t remember if I wrote or thought, “That’s not crazy? It sounds a little crazy. I mean, she’s not there…”

My friend said, “It’s not. But do what works for you.”

I thought or replied, “I’ve done everything but that. I’ve written, I’ve silently prayed, I’ve had the conversation in my head and I’ve talked about it with others… but you’re talking about out-loud talking; audible words coming from my mouth.”

And I think that’s the point of it. I think that we must get to a point where we are so humbled, so tired, so ready and so woeful or motivated or whatever to allow ourselves that “eff it” mentality where we’re going rip off the band-aid and spill our guts. It was like that time when I got really mad (the rage post) and I said aloud what I needed to get off my heart.

I have a notion that it’s not God who separates us from Him, but rather we who do the separating. He’s always there. It’s up to us to open the door or look out the window.

I also have another notion that when I can feel the tapping at the door, when I can hear His breath of peace, but I don’t allow it to wash over me, that it’s really my fault… it’s not His.

My mother was like that. She was patient and always wondering, ‘When are you coming back to me, Molly?’ and I have to say that I had a screen door that was locked because I was terrified of being hurt again, or a half-door like a country house that allowed her into my heart only so much because I was terrified of being hurt again. I had to erect my boundaries. I had to do what I could to feel safe.

But I know now, that was ok. Here’s how.

So, last night… after my famous grilled chicken and sweet potato dinner that my boys simply can’t get enough of, I went upstairs to my room to prepare for our family hot tub date.

I heard my friend in my head, “Out loud. To Mom.” So I basically said out loud to the Archangels and saints and to God and to Mom, to intercede on my behalf and to help me with the guilt.

I said,

“Mom, I know we’ve got our stuff. Or we had it. And I’m sorry about it. I really am, but you’re gone now and maybe we can have a relationship … y’know, now? I’ll take your comfort. I’ll take your love. I’ll take your protection because in my head now, you’re nothing but love and energy and light. You’re not a personality, you’re not your illnesses, or your fears. You’re nothing but love and I need it. I’ll take it now. I forgive you for all your stuff; I did the best I could and I know I KNOW that in your heart if you could’ve been better, you would’ve been better. No one wants to be unwell. No one wants to hurt others — it’s a sickness — and I release you. I release you from my anger; I wish you were here now, because I was ready Mom, I really was… but now I will take you any way I can get you and so, Mom, if you have an ounce of fierce and protective maternal love in you for me, as I know you did on earth but you couldn’t share it for whatever reason there was, I am asking you now, Mom: to get this monkey off my back. I am asking you and God and the angels, Mom, the big guns, to release this guilt and shame and keep it away and to remind me you are near and watching over me and to keep that off me. I was just your kid, Mom, and as I’ve said, with all due respect: you set the tone, Mom. I just fell in line… and as I matured, I simply kept it going because it was all I knew. You did your best and I did mine, but I always loved the essence of you and the glimpses of love that you shared with me, I will cherish forever, but ya gotta help me out here… Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us…“

Or something like that.

And after about three minutes of it, my crying subdued and my breathing started to regulate and this odd feeling of “Why am I so upset?” came over me. I felt lighter, and I couldn’t get as upset as I was; I couldn’t usher guilt if I tried and even now, as I recount it, I get weepy because I miss Mom and the glimpses she gave me, but I wonder if this isn’t the beginning of a new stage of relationship with her… in that I can appeal to her pure side, that I can have her with me energetically because she is free of her body and as much as I wish I could have her here to talk to, I can have her energetically to think of and be with.

Sounds crazy? I don’t know. I believe in energy healing; I believe in God and the Angels and all that stuff. I have no doubt that I will be sad and will mourn her. My physical energy is still quite low. I absolutely must be patient with myself and this process, so I get that for sure. I must have no expectations and I can not do this alone. Ironically, as I’ve matured, I’ve come to believe in the not-so-concrete; the stuff in front of us all the time is too simplistic. There has to be a better way. It takes guts and humility to do it, but I have no doubt it’s real.

Forgiveness is two-sided. I understood it intellectually but I get it emotionally now for sure. I have no doubt. When we forgive, we lose a lot of weight. Grace is weightless and it’s waiting for us all.

Thank you.

Oct10

Grief: I lied. Spongy Surfaces.

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I lied.

I lied I lied I lied.

Remember yesterday? You know, that post I wrote, not 24 hours ago where I said I was ready to transition, start a new chapter?

Lies. It’s all lies as it turns out.

I reread that post at bedtime and then bawled my head off, silently with that awful lump in the throat, for about … oh, 45 minutes. It was wrenching.

Bargaining.

I was wondering where the hell the “bargaining” stage of Kubler-Ross’s renown death stages was.

Turns out it was here, lurking the whole time. Tsking its teeth and clearing its nails, waiting for me to feel semi-pre-Labor Day again.

It wasn’t classic bargaining, like where I’d say, “Take me instead!” or “What I wouldn’t give to ____” it was more like this:

Holy shit. I just realized I’ve never written in my own handwriting, until now [last night] any derivation of ‘my Mom [and] dead.’

And then the pain. The pain that said,

But you’ve written a check for her burial plot. And you wrote, edited and signed the death notice. And you picked out her burial clothes and put in a tube of lipstick. So you did all that. It’s not like you didn’t get it. It’s just that … you know: you didn’t get it. So here’s something, right now, to help you get it a little more.

I never got to say goodbye.

That’s the part that stings, like a … like a paper cut that goes super wide and super deep. Searing and humbling. Mom hated goodbyes. She always said, “See you soo-in,” in that funny way she pronounced certain words.

Bargaining. I’d’ve liked to have said goodbye to her. But she wouldn’t have, well, clearly didn’t allow it.

Lots of people, God bless ’em (and I mean that) say things like, “You know it was merciful; it was so much better (??) than a long, drawn-out illness.” And I totally get that, and I agree.

But the fact is: it was sort of long and drawn out. Mom didn’t have cancer. Mom didn’t have emphysema. Mom didn’t have a stroke or anything like that. But she did have issues. Her heart? That came out of freakin’ nowhere.

I mean: BOOYA. >God drops mic.<

“She must’ve just thrown a clot,” said a well-intentioned neighbor, Just. Like. That. Like how you or I might say, “That’s a lot of money for those tires.”

Mom had a bunch of -isms that literally sucked the lifeblood from her soul and her smile. I think about what she endured and for how long she endured it and I think, “Holy shit. She’s a freakin’ machine. Despite all her -isms, she kept it going….”

She could’ve checked out. Any time. Well, she sort of did, in certain ways, but not in The Big Way.

Things were unstable.

Instability. That’s where I am right now. And CS Lewis was right: when I was sad, am sad: Mom is far away. But the sad is sort of necessary now. Today.

I’m literally laughing over my shoulder at my Yesterday Me. Rolling my eyes. Thinking, “girrrrl, you have no clue about what the what is goin’ on. Just stop talkin’ ’bout a new chapter this and a let it go that… You are getting schooled every day… stop STOP with the expectations and the plans…”

And “Today Me” is totally right.

I journaled in my own handwriting last night for 45 minutes. Six pages. Big letters, exclamation points, woe, fear, regrets, jokes, anger, sarcasm, regret.

image

I have to remember this though: Mom set the tone. The guilt and regret I feel is utter bullshit. I know this. I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the guilt is bullshit. As a child of my mother, or someone like her, we are raised in an environment where the leader sets the tone. Where the child simply gets in line, behaves as told, responds as allowed. Patterns form and behavior sets itself and life continues in that manner.

That’s what I mean by Mom set the tone. I wrote a post a lonnnnnng time ago, when I was in a state regarding her and some other people whose behavior reminded me of hers. It’s called “Be Careful Of What You Wish For“; and it touches hammers on the consequences that we as parents, or people in group dynamics actually, experience when we set up relationships the way we (unconsciously) do. Most of my posts on parenting come from my experiences as a child and now a parent and how I see that we all have choices we can make in behaviors we exhibit.

I slept like a wounded bear last night after I wrote. Morning came; the sky was dark and cloudy, heavy with the approaching rain. It started about two hours ago and I think it’s going to be a daylong affair.

I like days like this. They let me indulge in a blanket on the couch and a Hitchcock film. A cup of Earl Gray. After yoga.

I have friends and family who’ve reached out to me — in comments on the blog, in emails, in phone calls, texts,  artwork, meals, cards, hugs, smiles and packages of snacks that make me turn into a ravenous addict and they remind me: God is not far away. That beauty and love are still, always, here.

He works through them; maybe because He knows how daft we are and remembers what happened the last time He came down here and tried to show us who He was as a human…

When I feel most alone, these people reach out. They tell me I am absolutely not alone. They tell me my words help them. They tell me to be patient with myself. They tell me the surface is unstable. That it’s spongy. They tell me they understand.

And that is God.

Then I remember my own post about self-compassion and comparing my grief to a newborn, and I settle and remember I am also here for me too.

So soon I will write about the faceless chicken and show you pictures of the creepy undertakers. We’re talking Shakespearean. I will warn you ahead of time: I’m pulling no punches either.

But not today. Today I am on spongy land.

Thank you.