Tag Archives: dysfunction

Jul18

This Story Needs Telling. Our Stolen Cat We See Daily.

Posted on by
Standard

Many years ago when I first started this blog, I did so with the intention of it being a series of epistles to my sons, a chronicle of randomness throughout our lives together which would ultimately impart a moral or character-building lesson. I see now that I have sort of destroyed that intention — from the cheap seats, this platform could be considered to have morphed into an all-about-me show, but really, if you dial in, you will see that it’s still got some good lessons and stories for the boys to go over well after I’m mushroom food — but it all just happened. Much like this story I’m about to tell. (I’ll go into the mushroom thing later.)

This is our neighbor’s cat, now.

We used to call him “Gandalf.” I’m not sure what the neighbors call him, but now we refer to him as “Stolen.”

Gandalf came to us in 2004, after our loss of Skipper to the rescue league (I think I told that story on this blog) because he was basically dropped at our doorstep when all I planned on doing was helping his senior owner learn about the breed his children dumped on him after his wife died and his kids thought he could use some company, not the hip replacement Skipper induced.

Gandalf and his sister, Beezer (aptly named from “BC” for “black cat” and the phrase “bee-cee” morphed into “Beecee Beecer…” and then of course, “Beezer” but that doesn’t matter because on her vet file, she’s referred to as “Bitsy”) were picked up from a local source (pet store — I know, I’ll never do that again) in a moment of weakness. They were born on Boxing Day 2003. My husband knew all my life that all I wanted was a male gray barn cat and when Gandalf was a kitten he showed great promise. My sister-in-law had also recently acquired two sibling cats and she said it was better to have two cats than to have one cat (hmm, they have only their black cat too now), so I told my husband to do it, get both. He did. 

Of course they were adorable. Of course they were cuddly and purred. They had blue eyes when they were babies; we knew they would not likely stay blue. They were goofy and we indulged them with all the love and attention they could withstand. It was delightful to watch them grow up.

They are cats. We learned when they were about 10 months old that we were staff. Did the love affair end? Not at all. We still appeal to their aloofness and tried to get them to interact with us, but they made it clear from their early months, that they were to be revered and observed and not really … “owned.” We tried collars. We tried bells on collars. We tried walking them on a leash (BWAHAHAHAAAAA! Such folly!) We never abandoned them and we always followed their lead. They were the cats. We invited them into our lives.

When they were about 15 months old, after they had been sterilized, they made it quite clear (have you heard a cat incessantly yowl?) that they preferred an indoor-outdoor lifestyle. Gandalf more so than Beezer. He liked to roam. We loved him so much we had a chip installed in him when he was recovered at a vet’s after he roamed more than 2 miles from home one three-day weekend when we were home; we hadn’t seen him for more than a week. I’d like to thank the Sullivans for posting “found cat” signs along the path to school on the same weekend we were posting our “lost cat” signs. Closer in, he would follow us along the curb line when we would walk Maggie, our first Golden. He would follow us to school in the morning when I would drop off Connor, my oldest, to kindergarten. It was a thing we did every day: all the neighborhood children who walked to school would marvel at and try to pet our elusive yet devoted silly gray cat who stalked us along the ferns and wild lilies to the educave where I reluctantly deposited my five-year-old for his daily infusion of state-designed education. Sometimes “G” or “Gandy” (as we called him) would stay behind, looking quizzically at me as if to suggest: “That’s it? You’re leaving?! What about the one in there? What the hell?” And he would literally walk around the school and wait outside the window looking in. One morning, he found Connor’s classroom and I got a phone call.

“Mrs. Field, we believe your cat is at the school looking in the windows. Could you please get him? He’s lovely. He’s also a major distraction.”

By the time I plopped the kids in the stroller and dashed up there, to try to coax him home (I was not about to deal with a kitty kennel and a double stroller) G was vapor. He probably knew I was coming. Cats know things.

We were a team. Over the years, we began to understand each other. Gandalf simply wanted tactical support during untenable weather, a reliable food source, and a place to shit. We wanted a cat and this is how we operated. “What about Beezer?” you ask? She’s still here. She’s a curious little girl, a bit timid but she warms up to you eventually. No food required, just a gradual and earned trust. She doesn’t fancy being held. But she will endure it to escape the dogs to and from her adventures outdoors. She’s a fantastic hunter and she shows us her devotion to us with a dead mole, small snake or baby something on the doorstep every couple of weeks.

Now that I’ve updated you on our history, I will bring you up to speed (with some backstory) on the current situation.

Our neighbors, in their late 60s and early 70s, have lived on this street since its inception. They are what are referred to as “original owners.” We’ve lived here since 2000, so we’ve known them for some time. Overall, it’s been an avuncular and materteral relationship. We’ve assisted each other with lifestyle requests (lawn care after medical procedures, tool borrowing, etc.) when needed. It’s been high level with some deeper niches here and there. Our houses face each other. It’s how things can be on a “pipestem” or “private driveway” culture.

They have had their own cat, an orange male tabby, “OJ,” who was beautiful and would stare at G and Beezer with both envy and disgust. Then they had “Cricket,” the dog belonging to the frail in-law father who moved in after his wife died and his house was sold. Somewhere along the history in the last six years, OJ died, the father-in-law died, and Cricket died. It was all very sad and hard on the couple, but this is life, is it not?

“Why don’t you get another cat?” I would ask… “You loved your OJ… he was low maintenance and when you travel, cats are pretty cool with a long weekend and very easy to look after…”

“Naaaaah. Too much work. Too much hassle. My heart would break when we would lose it. I don’t want to get attached. I don’t want the expense. I don’t want to deal with another pet. Too much work. I want freedom,” would be the standard answer(s).

These conversations would often occur after they would joke about how G would sneak into their house when the garage – house door was ajar.

“He’s so faaaayast…” the wife would say between hearty laughs in her scratchy Great Lakes accent. “I cayaan’t catch him!”

I would look askance, nod in gentle acknowledgment …  my gut telling me something was “off” as we say in the woo-woo world.  Gandalf was lots of things. FAST is not one of them. He’s like the slow, lumbering, pimp-rolling cat who OWNS this street. He has nothing to rush about. He doesn’t give a crap about your car coming up the street. He watches YOU steer out of the way. I’m convinced he was part dog. We used to call him “KittyDog” as a joke, but now we call him “Stolen.”

“Well, just don’t let him develop a habit. Call me and I’ll come get him. Or just toss him out. We don’t want to confuse him.” I would say. Keeping the conversation going.

“Oh absolutely! I can deal without the cat hair! Ha! I’ll toss him!” she would say, unconvincingly.

Over the years, we started to see less and less of Gandalf at home. Our home. His home.

It got to be a problem. My kids were concerned. I would email the street: “Has anyone see Gandalf? Please let us know, the boys are very sad…” Everyone would reply “Nope. Haven’t seen him. Will let you know if we do. Will keep an eye out…” except one. Crickets. (Ha!)

One day soon after that missive, I saw G slink outside the front door of my neighbors’ house. Like he was performing the cross-campus walk of shame. Except he was simply crossing 30 feet of macadam. He was leaving the house of you know, the people who didn’t want a pet. That having a pet was too much work. That they didn’t want to get attached. That they didn’t need the expense. The hassle. They just wanted to borrow him for comfort … ?

He sauntered to my door: “mew.” I’d let him in.

This pattern continued a few more months and then I said to my husband: this has to get real, now.

Here I go again: growing up in a world where enabling, deceit and duplicity and shame and hiding truth was a way of life, I had determined when I was a young woman that even if it meant I was going to be a caustic raving troubadour of truth, that I was NOT going to live in a world where people simply didn’t own their shit.  

My husband, knowing for certain that he’d married a real liability about stuff like this and that I’d reached my limit of neighborly kindliness and looking-the-other-way -ness about it, knew he had two options: he could handle it and things would likely go nice and diplomatic or I could handle it and it was going to be like a freaking social nuclear holocaust on their asses.

He handled it. He went over to their house and had a doorstep chat about it. He had all his facts. He presented the situation and they admitted to it and hung their cat-thieving heads in shame and said they’d stop doing it.

Enter… the summer. Gandalf comes and goes. He’s happy. He’s losing weight. He’s fine.

Enter… the fall. Same. He’s never been a fan of indoor living and he wasn’t thrilled when Charlie took up residence here, but he’s a cat. He flew under the radar. He came and went as he pleased. At midnight he would howl and we would let him out. In the morning, he’d be at the doorstep mewing all, “breakfast?” And we’d let him in.

Enter… the winter … and G was having sleepovers again. His absence was the harbinger of the resumption of their dysfunctional behavior. I remember disTINCTly the time I saw with my own bespectaled eyes, their readmittance of MY CAT into their home. It was a standard February day here in Northern Virginia: 45˚ and sunny. G padded around the house, rubbed his furry gray head into my shin and “rowled” hello. He followed me to the front door and mewed that he wanted to go out, so I let him. He sat on our brick stoop for a while (much like in the photo above) and then he got up, stretched in at least 15 different ways and began his daily constitutional, walking around outside, performing a census of the bayberry thorns with his back in the neighbor’s yard and slinking beneath their junipers stopping from time to time to daintily sniff something.

I was just watching him do his kitty thing in the bright sunshine. The morning sun’s reflection on the glass storm door across the asphalt caught my eye as my female neighbor OPENED THAT DOOR, LOOKED FROM SIDE TO SIDE LIKE SHE WAS IN A 1930’s GANSTGER FLICK AND “TSK TSK TSK’D” MY CAT INTO HER FUCKING HOUSE. Gandalf looked up from his sniffing and trotted through her doorway.

I lost my mind. I counted to 10 in kitty years. I took a few breaths. I did all the shit I tell my yoga students and all the freaked out little kids to do when they’re upset and none of it worked. It was like I was staring at a hall of mirrors of “FUCK MEOW YOU” written all over them.

I often refer to moments in my life with scenes from movies, to bring people into my state of mind. There’s a great scene in “Raising Arizona” when Holly Hunter’s character, Ed (who was a police officer), discovers Nick Cage (Hi) has reverted to armed robbery (“it ain’t armed robbery if the gun’s not loaded,” he would say earlier in his defense during his parole hearings) and has a panty on his head. Why? He was absconding with a bulk case of Huggies diapers for the baby he and Ed, now his wife, have just kidnapped because she was infertile. (This is a comedy, so stay with me.) Ed, in full police chase driving mode, drives to pick up Hi and as she sees him with the gun raised to the pimple-faced teenage store clerk, and she puts the car in park, gets out of the car, stands up, points at Hi and screams, “YOUSONOFABITCH!” at least twice. That’s how I felt. I felt kinship with her character, Ed, because she had been deceived. Instead of shouting what she did, I pointed and shouted, “YOUFUCKINGBITCH!” at least twice as I watched that harlot let my cat in her house without a damned care in the world and how small it made me feel.

If you’ve never seen Raising Arizona, you need to; here’s a great summary which still doesn’t do the film justice: https://youtu.be/wQYY7TSnPXQ

I realize this is not about the cat. This is not about Gandalf being “disloyal” and all the other human attachments we assign to animals. I read National Geographic. I’ve known for YEARS that cats are whores. Especially the indoor-outdoor type. I wasn’t concerned about G’s well-being because he was a badass. He OWNED this ‘hood. It wasn’t about his weight or his health or the fact that every time he’d been away for several days we’d know where he was because he smelled like their we’re-no-longer-smokers but our-house-smells-like-cheap-candles-to-cover-up-the-stench house. Whenever G came home from an overnight he smelled like the cheap cologne from a brothel washroom (or what I’d imagine that space would smell like). Every time, we would sniff him and say, “He’s been tricking.”

Because I know this isn’t about the cat but rather human weakness, fear and cowardice, I’ve basically tried to let it go. I’ve looked the other way. I’ve gone Jesus about it and turned the other cheek. I have zoomed out: these are sad people with nothing really going on. I’m not being coarse when I say they barely leave their house. The husband is a workaholic and has had two heart attacks. He’s on a pacemaker now. The wife is probably enduring some form of insulin resistance or compromised health or depression and their marriage is likely a silent one. If G hanging out with them brings pleasure to their lives and their sad existence, then he’s doing the work of angels and nuns. I’m good with it. What I’m NOT good with, no shock here if you’ve read anything I’ve written, is THE LYING and the GAME PLAYING, the silence.

It continued for years. I would play Jesus. I would let it go. I would notice my beautiful gray barn cat getting fatter and fatter. To keep the peace on this tiny cul de sac, I would keep my piece.

“He doesn’t come home and when he is here he doesn’t eat. He barely talks to me. He hisses at the dogs. He smells like Old Spice or Brut. His body is changing… I think he’s having an affair!” Same with cats. Save for the lipstick on the collar.

Four years later, this May, shit hit the fan. I am guessing literally, over at the House of Stolen Cat. Gandalf hasn’t been lodging with us for at least a year. He comes in to eat and nap then leaves before long. Apparently family living isn’t for him, plus our kibble likely sucks in comparison to what was in the Fancy Feast tins I’ve seen in their trash. No, I didn’t go snooping although now I wish I had.

My husband and I are watching a murder show around 10pm. This is what we do when we are exhausted and bored and want to compare our lives to the sadness on exploitative television.

His phone lights up with a text from the man who will now be known as “Mr. Cat Thief.”

MCT: We think the cat is sick. It has been coughing a lot tonight.

Dan [after much laughter from us before replying and chatting about ‘the cat‘]: What cat?

MCT:  Gandalf.

Dan: Well, you would know better than I. You have allowed him to live with you for at least a year. We take him to XYZ vet.

Pause…

MCT: We would like to take him to the vet. We would pay of course. But he has a chip. They might balk at us for bringing him in without your consent.

Pause… we are laughing. We can’t believe this is happening. I’m all “‘but he has a chip…’ — that’s because HE’S NOT YOURS, YOU EFFERS!”

Finally, Gandalf is giving them what they deserve: the hassle, the vet bills, the companionship, the attachment, the heartache — the true surreptitious ownership (despite EVERYTHING they said they didn’t want) of MY GRAY BARN CAT — because we haven’t had him overnight in our house for more than a year and he’s become obese and flatulent at their hand and their cowardice. Dan and I debate this conversation. We are bitter. Well, I am bitter. I’m half bitter, actually: I’m THRILLED that they’re having to reach out to us about OUR cat that THEY stole from us and I’m pissed that they are effing cowards and assholes.

Dan? Dan’s dancing a jig, finally free of the cat who literally was a giant nagging eating and shitting machine — an asshole to us. Finally relieved of tending to his shitbox. I can see in Dan’s head, the cartoonish “for sale” sign attached to Gandalf’s kitty house. We talk some more. A little at odds over how to handle this. I want to say, “FUCK YOU! YOU STOLE OUR CAT!” when we both know that won’t solve anything. “That’s not why they’re texting, sweetie,” Dan reminds me. This is how we work.

Dan: Go ahead and take him [forever] to the vet. We will authorize the transfer and ownership of Gandalf to you.

MCT: Ok.

Here’s the actual thread with crappy editing:


Dan is freaking on fire. He’s laughing so hard and he’s so happy. He can’t believe his luck.


I’m laughing with Dan sincerely while at the same time I’m also enraged that no one — not even my beloved — has called them out explicitly for stealing our cat from us after our requests to not let him in, to not develop habits with him, to remember he doesn’t live with them despite his insistence that he thinks he does. Curiosity does not equal dominion.

Do I miss Gandalf? Yeah, a little and a lot sometimes. He’s a beauty and he used to live here. I resent the hell out of this situation because I chose to be nice, that I chose to be all Jesus and turn-the-other-cheekish about this. I really do.

And then it comes back to me, my lessons from all those years on the couch: It’s hard to be soft.

So they took him to the vet. The next weekday morning, I answered the call on our house line and it was the receptionist at XYZ vet telling me that MrsCT was presenting Gandalf. Asking if I was ok with their bringing him in for attention and observation? I was pissed. They actually went through with it… probably thinking as well that they were better cat owners than we. That if we really loved him… I don’t know. But I allowed the transfer of the chip and ownership to them. Now they are confronted with their outcome. We all are. It could be easily said that if I really wanted my cat that I would MARCH THE HELL OVER TO THEIR HOUSE AND DEMAND!!!! THEY RELEASE HIM AND NEVER DO IT AGAIN!!!

But that’s really silly. I am not a fanatic. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to live like this.

I’m also not a hypocrite. As depicted in the photo in the beginning, taken this morning, Gandalf clearly still comes “home” to us, but we don’t let him in. We don’t want to further confuse him and frankly, we don’t own him anymore. We’ve handed over all rights to M/MCT. He rubs against my leg, but he doesn’t come in. He sits on our stoop, infuriating Charlie and is sociable to Beezer who hisses at him whenever she gets the chance. (This is not new behavior for her, she’s one of those kitties who absolutely has to let herself be known so she can operate freely in her zone.)

The thing is though, that we would’ve absolutely had a real conversation about them adopting Gandy if they wanted to. We spoke privately about it. We saw what was happening — they would feed him, he’d get fatter and we’d have to deal with their indulgence but they openly said they didn’t want a pet; they just wanted our cat but not own him-own him.

It sucked. The only way to have dealt with it was to deal with it. For several months before this went down, Dan and I would talk to each other about how something had to change; that they had to stop doing what they were doing or that we were going to have to upgrade their status. But Gandalf took care of it all on his own.

So how did the following weekend’s Memorial Day Pipestem Cookout go, you ask? It went fine. MrsCT was sociable and acted as though nothing had happened. She seems willing to speak about unpleasant things when they have to do with her husband who takes her nowhere. Ever. I cooley smiled and then ignored her and drank my Bud Light Limes under the shade of my crepe myrtle with my bestie. MrCT was as cold as my beer. He likely knew that I was seething under my red white and blue frock, and I didn’t care. To me, Maya Angelou (God rest her), was loud and clear: “When someone shows you who they are the first time, believe them.” That first time was when in their weakness and heartache they stole Gandalf six years ago. I knew it would happen again. I choose to be real. I won’t speak to them at all anymore unless they start the conversation and of course like Dutiful Recovering Catholics, we won’t talk about it, even though I know it would be best. I honestly don’t think they can handle the conversation.

So what’s the moral lesson here? What’s the platitude if I can’t think of anything substantial…? I think it’s that we all screw up, but that it’s not OK to say “I just screwed up.” That we have to go deeper, we have to do more. We can’t just roll over people and expect them to be ok. We have to do the right thing. We have to own our screw ups and own the pain we cause others. We have to admit our weaknesses for other peoples’ things (if you’re the M/MCTs) and come to terms with how our choices shape the lives of the people around us. Not to mention the shape of their cat.

Thank you.

Nov21

Quick and Dirty: What’s Yours is Yours … Boundaries.

Posted on by
Standard

One of the worst things we as parents or leaders or teachers can do is foist our success (and ultimately failure) onto a child or a subordinate.

What’s yours to do is yours to do.

I was on the phone one time with my therapist years ago and he heard me say to my oldest son, “Please put your toys away, that will make Mommy so happy, when you do that…” and I think, that if my therapist were able to reach through the phone and throttle me, he would’ve.

“No. No. No. No. No.” he said, instead.

“What? Why? I want him to put away his toys. It pleases me when he does that. I’m being honest with him. I thought that’s what this is all about…” I protested.

“It’s not his JOB, EVER, to make you happy. You phrased it wrong; you phrased it in a way the creates one of the worst and most classic and textbook examples of codependence ever: that your very existence and happiness hinges on his DEVOTION to you; to your needs, to your happiness…..” He intoned.

“But…” (“Isn’t my happiness the ultimate goal here? Isn’t what I need to have happen what we’re doing this for?” is what I wanted to say, and actually meant.)

“No. He will ultimately fail. It’s in his life’s path to fail. He’s supposed to fail. Failure is what makes us win, in the end…. but that’s his. What about when you’re in a foul mood… with your programming him the way you are right now, he will take it upon himself to be the jester, the fool, the clown in order to bring you back up. So in thirty years from now, if you’re having a bad day, he will feel responsible for it. And when he fails, then what? Who’s going to pick him up? You? But he ‘lives’ for your happiness. His compliance, performance, good moods… it all has meaning –to him– only if it PLEASES you. Do you want that?”

“No. I don’t want that. My mother says stuff like that to me all the time… ‘if it weren’t for you, I don’t know what I’d do…’ and ‘you’re the reason I’m still here… ‘ and ‘You’re the mother I always wanted to be…’ shit like that. It really hurts, because I just desperately want her to be her own person; to own her stuff and make her own life better. It feels claustrophobic after awhile, all that mine and ours stuff…” I said.

I was on to something. Usually my therapist would let me read the tea leaves, come to my own conclusions, but I think when we were dealing with an innocent three-year-old, time was of the essence.

“So instead of saying to him that it makes you so happy when he puts away his toys, you can say, ‘What a good boy you are! You’re putting away your own toys! Doesn’t that feel good when you do the right thing?'” he explained.

It was like the clouds parted. “Oh,” was likely all I could utter.

Suddenly everything seemed to make more sense. Codependence is insidious. It exists on the very basis that you somehow garner your worth based on someone else’s performance, either by implicit statements to the effect or by conditioning through manipulation. When you DON’T do the right thing by someone else, with whom you’re codependent, YIKES:  you hear about it real quick. When you do, the quiet grows to a point where all you’re doing is performing so as to NOT upset the balance; you tip-toe around, fearful of cracking the eggshells because that other person has got you exactly where he wants you: enabling him.

The cycle which inevitably develops is another equally toxic side effect. Suddenly one person is unable to meet the expectations of the other person, and then that disappoints the other person and then guilt ensues and then resentment, dysfunction and all sort of cycles take shape. One person can never be happy enough or quiet enough or sober enough. No one is ever honest.

It is impossible to live inside someone else’s head. And trying to is a shitty way to live. No one else gets blamed or credit (sometimes they’re the same thing) for your good mood or sobriety or mania or addiction. They just don’t.

Here’s one for you: “You Are My Sunshine” — read those lyrics and then tell me that’s not a steaming, heaping serving of codependence stew. Did I ruin that song for you? Did you sing it to your kid all the time? Was it sung to you constantly? Yeah. It’s subtle. Until it’s not. Then you see it everywhere.

I had a boss who did this. When I did what she wanted, she gave me tootsie rolls and called me by a nickname. When I apparently didn’t, when I chose for myself, the tootsie rolls ended and I was given the silent treatment. She was cruel. I knew something was amiss, I just couldn’t put my finger on it. Being raised the way I was meant I was a prime candidate for further ruin, but I eventually figured it out, thanks to neutral third parties.

Our intentions to get people to know how much we value them can be misinterpreted all the time. When we place ourselves in a position of self-worth and self-value, the sense of contentment and satisfaction, at putting away our own toys, will speak for itself. Don’t ever tell anyone your happiness, survival, endurance, humor has anything to do with that person. Because it doesn’t. Their presence might make life easier for you, or more enjoyable, or their perspective might help you see the sun in a different way, but it’s your eyes that you choose to open, it’s your feet you choose to move.

Because here’s the alternative: what about the people who choose to not progress, who choose self-harm, who choose to stay where they are? Is that your doing too?

No. Get yourself out of the way. The goal, my friends, is to have you be your person and the other person be its person and then you have two distinct and perhaps close-to-whole people walking in the same direction.

What’s yours is yours.

Thank you.

Sep2

Grief: Ha.

Posted on by
Standard

I plunged a 9″ chef’s knife into a watermelon just now and cut a bunch of quarter slices. I’ve had the melon on the counter for about five days and completely forgot about it and the fresh pineapple I bought over our family birthday-Labor Day-Mimi’s death-anniversary weekend. I just tossed the remains of the birthday cake. My mind has been elsewhere. Waiting.

this is mom holding me in 1968 after i clearly just swatted my older brother. poor guy...

this is mom holding me in 1968 after i clearly just swatted my older brother. poor guy…

I thought I could deal yesterday. What I did yesterday however, was read. I holed myself up on our deck and read all day after I wrote my post about “clarity.” I see the irony now. When Mom died last year, the day was mostly ebbing. It was just around 3pm when I got the call from Dad, so all our plans of having a home-base Labor Day cookout were toast. No pun intended.

So I guess, you don’t experience the anniversary until you experience the anniversary. Of anything. I remember this after 9/11. Up until the one-year, I remember noticing how my body was gearing up, feeling the angle of the sun and other astral, silent and all-knowing familiarities which unrelentingly tie you to a trauma or event. I don’t remember the date when I saw Bruce Springsteen for the first time, but I remember where I was and what I was doing when I heard about the Towers.

And this is my first go. I have no clue what to expect, other than to know (now) that expecting anything is a waste. That it happened on Labor Day is just … well … what it is. I could judge it all I want. That’s stupid too, judging.  I’m so grateful to my husband though because he called me in the middle of writing this post to check on me and to also assure me that next year, Labor Day will be on the 7th and that’s great. I’m really looking forward to next year because the anniversary day and the holiday will be far apart.

That evening, last year, I went for a root beer float at the nearby Baskin-Robbins 31 after viewing her body. I bought two. I don’t know why. I decided yesterday morning, that yesterday was going to be a reinvention, a rebranding of Labor Day for me because last year’s was so traumatic. I was almost literally holding my breath until about 3:30pm. Once we passed that timeline, I had no choice (I suspect) because it was all I could do to not compare: “It’s 3:47 and no one has died. Keep reading.”

I realize now, that our human invention, denial, is really one of the stupidest inventions we’ve ever … invented. Don’t pay the taxes and they’ll go away. Don’t sweat the addiction and it will get better. Don’t cut the watermelon because nothing’s going on.

So when the early evening began last year, I was in it. I had fielded calls from my older brother and his wife; I had fielded calls and texts from my concerned friends and cousins; I had taken a couple calls from my uncle and godfather, Mom’s brother. I had taken calls from my kids.

MY KIDS. “Tomorrow,” the day after Labor Day, was their first day of school. My brother and his pregnant wife showed up. That was hard. My oldest son had told my brother about Mom. I gave the other root beer float to my sister-in-law.

As the sun set, I’d been at the hospital four hours; I stayed with my brother and SIL one more hour and then I was going to leave. My brother was there for Dad now.

The attending ER doc for that shift needed my dad to sign Mom’s papers so he could go home. I’m sure the staff would’ve waited and Dad could’ve signed them later, but … it was all a little surreal… he sort of y’know, a’hem, nudged us to y’know … sign. Release the body to the morgue. Let Mom go. I’m sure I wanted to ask him, “Has your mother died yet? Or your wife of 51 years? This shit’s not easy. … Just checking.” Of course the doctor didn’t want to nudge my father in his understandably granitic and unreachable state. No one nudges my father.

So I had to sort of y’know, nudge my brother. To nudge our father. To y’know … leave. It was his turn. I’d done so much already (not comparing, just acknowledging) by being with Dad when the news broke, by being with Dad to view her, by being with Dad when the doctor had to talk about doctorly things in a doctorly way. I was depleted. Mom was dead. There was no do-over.

As I started out, a nurse gave me Mom’s things: a bag of her jewelry to take from the hospital, so I did. In a white paper envelope was her passport (WHAT?). In a white double-plastic bag with those hard plastic snap-together handles were other effects including pants and the navy blue cashmere vneck she was wearing when she was transported via ambulance; it had a few of her stray silver hairs on it. I’m still trying to figure out what she was doing with her passport. It’s so odd. Inside that white bag was another bag containing her jewelry.

When it came to jewelry, Mom was … thorough. As she aged, her OCD really ticked up and she began to trust no one, very little of her nursing aide. So she wore a lot of her valuables. I think whenever Mom weighed-in at her doctors they must’ve just assessed her pirate’s chest of bangles and ancestral baubles and just let it stay; the hell with it. To take it off her and put it back on her would’ve added 15 minutes to the visit and she’dve never let any of it out of her sight. So the bag I was given must’ve weighed about three pounds. But seeing that bag of her favorite things, her “stuff” reduced to a hospital-issued ziplock emblazoned with “INOVA FAIRFAX HOSPITAL SYSTEM” … It was all too much. So I left. My husband and I left for our house.

I had to switch gears, as much as possible. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to deal with the ordeal, it’s that I needed to switch gears. I needed to get out of that pumped-in, fake white light, I had to get away from the Muzak and I wanted to get away from the well-intentioned security guard who simply didn’t know how to look at me.

I had to retrieve my children from their various locations. I had to put my kids to bed. I had to hug them. Inhale deeply and smell their heads, squeeze their bodies and wipe their tears, and press my forehead into theirs as I held them by their jawlines and tell them through tears and sniffles I was sad but that it was all going to be OK and that Mimi was in a better place now and that even though it doesn’t feel like it, things were really going to be OK in a few …

 

So later that night, around 10:00, Dad, my brother and his pregnant wife showed up at my house. I’m not sure when they left the hospital. It was a way station, I guess. I see my deflective madness: that whole plan, to have Dad not sleep here, but it was all I could deal with at the time. “We are animals in moments like these,” I remember thinking to myself, rationalizing.

My brother and I rallied and took Dad back to his house to get some things for the overnight. Dad stayed in my car. It was then that I saw the plate of uneaten breakfast on her side of the bed. She wasn’t feeling well that morning. Dad knows this now, but the signs for heart attack or dire cardiac trouble for women are totally different than for men. We don’t feel tremendous pressure, as though we have an elephant on our chest (that’s a normal feeling for us), we feel sick, nauseated and generally weak and profoundly unwell. Sadly, these symptoms also remind us of fatigue and gastrointestinal distress, from which Mom suffered a great deal. But it was unrelenting, this discomfort, but she didn’t want to go to the ER, she wanted to get ice cream. Dad obeyed; they were going to get ice cream. Then she fell. 

I knew that logistically it was best that Dad be here with me, because I live the closest to him and Mom, but … I’d been on this task for almost eight hours by this point. I was also not rational: I was terrified, frankly, that her spirit would come to my house looking for him. I wanted to reduce that liability. I was also comPLETEly terrified that he would live here in his grief. I wasn’t ready for that. I wasn’t able to deal with that. I was and can still be a selfish person (I learned from a very early age that relying on others was a precarious endeavor, so as much as I’ve tried to stay aware of it, primal moments like these can make me unhinged, so I go with “selfish”).

So I dug in my heels and it was just me and my team in my house that night. Of the immediate surviving family, I knew that no one would be really getting much sleep that night, but I didn’t want it all here. I also knew my home was going to be ground zero for the next day or so. I just knew it. Dad went home with my brother and his pregnant wife.

The next morning, my other brother flew to DC and we started to rally. That afternoon, Tuesday, Dad and my younger brother came back to the house and we continued and combined our own singular efforts to have Mom celebrated in five days. Out of state. Five hundred miles from where she died. We did all this on my deck with our various laptops, iDevices and phones. We did all this amongst the buzz and presence family and great friends who couldn’t suppress their support for us and their instinct to lift us up in our loss. I see now, a year later (and I sensed then but didn’t really have time or interest in indulging in the time) how Herculean that entire effort was, but true to form, we achieved it. We were like a newsroom.

I needed to write about this today. Fighting these urges to write and share is “crazy talk” as my brother would say (jokingly). I simply couldn’t have had a normal (ha!) day without doing it. Maybe reading this is even helpful to you. I have no clue about where this train will stop. I see now that it’s an unrealistic ambition to say ‘On this day I will end my writing about Mom and my memories of her and my life.” New stuff or old stuff in new suits occurs to me daily. I didn’t sleep well last night; I was afraid she’d visit me. When I did wake, I was sweaty and unrested. So I needed to flush some things out. I feel better now. I always do.

Processing… It’s part of my recovery to allow myself to look back on that day and then see 1) it’s over and 2) how far I’ve come. Without that perspective and ability / allowance to reminisce we would be lost.

Thank you.

 

Aug30

Grief: Anniversaries, Distraction, Deflection, Freedom

Posted on by
Standard

Monday will be the one-year mark for Mom’s death.

I feel like a twerp for even going on about this, given the hurt and chaos in our actual, living world.

But I will indulge and as usual, I will be candid.

I have been on vacation the last couple weeks and I’ll own it: I’ve also been reluctant to write about anything, because I know it will lead me to writing about her. So I rationalized, during my insidious stint of writer’s block, that if I don’t write about anything, then I don’t have to see the reality: that she’s been dead a year, so that way I’m not legitimizing it. I’m denying it. But that’s not fair, because so much of my life, even before she died, was so confused in its balance; sometimes she weighed quite heavily, other times she was like the ether.

My kids each have a different appreciation of me, based on our relationship. It’s impossible to treat them all the same, but by and large, I do try to manage them all equally, unless a situation requires a different influence.

My brothers and I have readily admitted to one another and allowed of the other the basic fact that we each had a very different version of our mother: firstMom, angerMom and then sandwichMom. I had mostly angerMom.

What this past year has given me, with all the ups and downs, all the grief and all the guilt, all the confusion and clarity, all the repressions and all the disclosures is the following: freedom.

My mother, whom I loved very much, but who was a terrifically complicated and distant person, is now dead a year and I am free.

I am free of disappointing her.
I am free of reminding her.
I am free of being dismissed by her.
I am free of conflicting with her.
I am free of worrying about her.

I don’t think she ever wanted to be married. I said that to my father today. He told me he found a picture of her at her brother’s wedding. She had caught the bouquet. She was not smiling. She was grimacing, almost frowning, he said.

This is not to suggest in the least, that I was a mistake or that I was not meant to be here. I can say this with conviction because I believe these things occur, these folds in time and wrinkles of “happenstance” with absolute destiny, with intention. I am one of those people who believes that there are no mistakes in the universe, that everything is as it should be. I believe this because the alternative is folly. That believing there is somehow a better or more appropriate circumstance than what we are experiencing, ever, can be maddening.

Of course we can change our circumstances, once we come of age. And that’s the trick: once we come of age.

As a child, I had no choice. I had to do what I was told, and I had to endure the circumstances before me. When I came “of age,” however, I was not 18. I was more like 23-ish.

I remember when I bought my first car. I came home with it. Home was my parents’ house. I was commuting to college because that was the hand I was dealt. Things were tenuous in my home, regarding my mother’s grip on reality and sobriety, so naturally being the only girl in the house, I took on a maternal energy and tacitly performed the management of the house. Not when I was 23, but when I was 5. That duty stayed with me until I moved out. The day before I married my husband of now 20 years.

Back to the car. After I graduated from George Mason University, I had a well-paying editing and writing job. I was about to be engaged, (but I didn’t know it), I bought financed a used (by 2 years) 1992 Eagle Talon TSi. It was electric blue and it had huge tires; probably 10″ wide. I loved that car. It was fast, nimble, responsive. It had electric windows and a CD player. Its seats made you feel like you were in a cockpit, the dials were abundant and the dashboard lights were red-orange, like a BMW’s. I loved that car. It loved me.

IMG_0451.PNG

My then-boyfriend drove it home and I drove my parents’ car home so they couldn’t say I let someone else drive their car. It was a Saturday. My father was home, not working.

My mother saw me get of their car and Dan get out of my Talon. She thought he’d bought a new car. She commented to Dan on what a “smart-looking new car” that was and he said something along the lines of it not being his and her eyes went straight to me. I smiled and said, “It’s mine. Isn’t it beautiful?” and she turned on a dime, like a viper, and in minutes, my father came out in a lathering rage, yelling and telling me that I was going to wind up penniless and that I just ruined my credit and that my life would be a wreck because I had acted recklessly and bought such an impractical car.

That was not the reaction I was expecting. I was hoping for something along the lines of “Oh wow, honey. That’s a big responsibility, that’s a big step; are you sure you’re ready?” Not the gesticulating, wild-eyed, operatic invective I received.

I tried to love that car after that evisceration as much as when I first drove it, but I’ll admit that experience muted it for a couple years. Two years later, I was married and out of there and we eventually traded it in for a Ford Explorer in 1997 after we’d experienced an unusually snowy winter and simply couldn’t get to work in a low-profile sports car.

Until we bought the Explorer, I had to bum rides with my boss who drove a 4×4 and was never fired. My husband kept his sports car though. Hrmph. My credit was not ruined. My score is fine. I have not wound up penniless and destitute. Yet.

I mention this story because until my mother died, or until last week anyway, I would’ve been afraid to tell it. I would be afraid even of speaking out in a way that was seemingly against my parents. It’s not speaking out, it’s just telling a truth.

I was speaking with my father the other day about Mom. We were sharing memories and reactions to those memories. I was my usual defiant and candid self. He said, “This sentiment contradicts with what you say on Facebook, when you posted a few months ago, ‘I miss my mom.’ What was that?”

I thought, “you must not read much of what I write” (which relieved me), and I answered, “I have always missed my mom. I have always missed the idea of a mother, a true compassionate leader and balanced supporter. That’s always been missing.” He nodded, seemingly to let it process and said, “Oh.”

I just finished “A Watershed Year” by Susan Schoenberger. It’s about a woman whose best friend and unrequited love dies from cancer and how she goes on to live with his pre-death missives sent to her posthumously via an email program. Inspired by the first of those notes, she decides to adopt a four-year-old boy from Russia. (This is before Putin really went off the deep-end.)

In her anticipation of finalizing the adoption, she waxes about what motherhood meant to her. Schoenberger cites numerous examples: tissues in the purse, band-aids, school plays, under-the-table-with-teddy-bears tea parties and the like. The most poignant example to me was that a mother who’s on a strict diet will share a half gallon of ice cream with her daughter after a jerky college boyfriend dumps her.

I thought romantically about such examples and then was quickly jerked back to reality and cited my examples of the bare minimum I would have liked from my mother: getting out of bed consistently and feeding me consistently. Then they grew on each other: picking me up from camp, not competing with me for my friends, not flirting with my boyfriends, not embarrassing me on the school bus, not cruelly disclosing embarrassing personal events, not asking me about people who hurt me and then telling me she enjoyed their style, or their company, that she saw nothing wrong with them… so many simple examples; but the most simple of which: just getting up. We never had band-aids.

I see this list above I’ve required of a mother and I can say with 100% assurance that I’ve absolutely complied. That in itself is such a fantastic feeling, that I’m really NOT becoming my mother, that I can see now I’ve made it.

My oldest and I finally went to get his driver’s permit last week. This was the day after we toured Georgetown University and bailed on the George Washington University tour. He wants to go to GU. Granted, it’s only the second college he’s ever toured after my alma mater, but he’s in love. He has something to strive for now, a prize to keep his eye on. We will tour UVA and W&M and some other schools up north, and maybe Duke, but I have my sister-in-law to thank for starting this process early, when he still has a good amount of time to apply himself academically and altruistically. I am NOT telling him to stay nearby, I am NOT envious of his friendships, I NOT competing with him in the least. I am NOT telling him he must take care of me in my old age, as my mother did and father has proposed throughout my life. I am free of that comparison now.

Being balanced and normal to my sons is not hard for me. It’s a pleasure. I don’t worry about my being obsolete in their lives one day, I sort of count on it, in a measured sense. I want to play second eighth fiddle. I don’t want them living in my basement all their lives. Trust me. I am free of that specter.

So what this freedom has granted me also is a sense of balance that my feeling guilty for any of the blessings life has given me, is really stupid because I have worked hard for all of them. My presence of mind, my college degree, my jobs after college, the house I own, the kids, choices I’ve made, all of it. I did it all and I can write what I want and say what I want and be cool with the things I have. I have almost always felt gratitude, but not without the weight of Catholic Guilt which requires you enjoy what you have, but only a little, because Jesus sacrificed so much for us and the nuns and priests take these vows of chastity … (I’m a really shitty Catholic.)

My 47th birthday is coming up in a few weeks. It was on my mother’s 47th birthday that we moved into a house in the D.C. suburbs and the fragile, remaining wisps of her functional life broke away, like dandelion seeds, and never ever returned. If ever there was a chance of getting her back, her deep-seated, and languid reaction to our move to Virginia made certain that would never happen.

So yes, Labor Day is going to be hard for me. But not too hard. I will think of her, and of the day, and of the circumstances and of my final vision of her, and how I dealt with it all. I will say a prayer, for all of us whose lives she affected, and then I will move on some more. As I said in my first post after she died, “it’s complicated.”

I have many wonderful memories of my life, even with Mom. I read in Psychology Today last week that the human brain needs five positive experiences to cancel out or compensate for just one bad one; this must be why we tend to hang on to or remember sadnesses more than not. What I’m unsure of (because it wasn’t detailed) is whether the circumstances need to weigh the same. If the good:bad ratio must be with the same person or the same intensity, then Mom is hosed. There simply weren’t enough or enough intensely good times to cancel out the bad. That makes me a little wistful; but this is the deal my soul made with me, this is the life I was given.

I’ll do what I can to ensure that the balance of my life has more positive than negative. I hope five times more positive… wouldn’t that be nice? I think it’s possible. It’s up to all of us to do what we can, always, to see even a potential good outcome from any considered morass. Short of mental illness, it’s about free will. How we perceive everything is all on us.

Thank you.