Tag Archives: mourning

Sep2

Love The Sinner, Hate the Sin

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Today is the second anniversary of my mother’s death. I’ve written extensively here and privately about my experiences in grief. I’ve written about her death two years ago being the final somatic death which followed so many other of her deaths I felt I had grieved over my recent lifetime.

Last night, when going over photos of her, the one below in particular, I wept silently while my husband slept beside me, oblivious and recuperating from a sinus infection.

This photo was taken about six years ago in my parents’ house in Canada. A place we used to joke about having in case there was another military draft. Now it feels like a good idea to hang on to in case Donald Trump becomes president.

Mimi and the boys, summer 2009.

Mimi and the boys, summer 2009.

I wept for many reasons. I feel now / today / this moment and felt during that moment that I weep because I will never have that sweet older lady in my childrens’ lives any more.

She wanted so very much to be present in their lives. She was, in her way. I got in the way. I see that now. I sort of robbed them of her sprite-like ways because I was so hurt by it, her lack of an anchor, as a child. I wanted to protect them from that, but I see now, that by just being their mother, I was protecting them from that. They weren’t going to be with her 24/7, as I was, yet I couldn’t really unplug from those memories, at least not then. I was aware of it too. What I mean by that is that I was aware that I was in the way and yet I wanted to be out of the way, and yet, I wouldn’t be out of the way. I was and am so hell-bent on providing for them a healthy life that I suppose in some ways I’m stifling an unanchored life…? that doesn’t make sense. I sense now that I’m becoming my own judge, jury and executioner. Breathe. 

Mom used to say, “Jesus said to ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’ or something like that…” and I’m being a little flip in my treatment of that memory, but she did often say something very similar to that, depending on the tenor of our conversation and her state of mind.

As I wept last night, my throat hardened and tightened and I knew that it was because I was and have been disallowing a truth for almost all my life: that I loved her and needed her so very much and that as much as I wanted to hate the physical incarnation of her addictions: her, I know rationally that doing so limits my exposure to her, even now in her death. So I thought and mostly felt some more (even though it was reeeeeally difficult to feel the feelings) and said to myself, “I do love you, and I always did and I guess I always will, even though I hated how things went down between us.” And my throat softened.

I always have to allow that reality, that caveat (that she was messed up too). I’m not one to paint a dead rose as one in bloom: shit was hard between us. We were each others’ teachers, of this I have no doubt. I am easily able to say now, that I am grateful for her being my mother and that she taught me the most important lesson of all: to get real with yourself, because she had such a hard time doing it herself.

I realize that Mom was an instrument of God for me and my brothers and that her mission was to teach us, in one way or another, about the dangers of addiction and alcoholism. And to live as an example, as harsh as it was (and it was harsh) so that we would be able to break a cycle. So that we would be able to live consciously and as deliberately as possible.

Mom was such that there was no patois of our dynamic, after all, she was an actor and an illustrator. As good as she was at stringing words together, Mom really seemed to fail at times in speaking and writing… it sometimes devolved into a bathos and her notes to me could cut like a backhanded compliment. “It was the booze talking…” I remember her saying one time. In vino, veritas, I would hiss back. In a way, she ended up unduly sacrificing herself for our sobriety. The tenor of our relationship was mostly mistrust, which really … sucked.

If my mom existed so that I could spare my sons an alcoholic mother and hopefully influence their own lifetimes in awareness of alcoholism and their genetic predilection, then her existence and my forgiveness of her is not for nothing. That’s the lesson I feel I’m steeped in right now. That’s where I can step into forgiveness. For me, right now, forgiveness has to be or at least look like a transaction.

I have actually begged for her to appear in my dreams. She does, sometimes.

The current book I’m reading, A Manual for Cleaning Women — Selected Stories by Lucia Berlin, is an emissary of sorts for me right now. In it, Berlin writes clearly about alcoholism, witnessing her mother’s and her grandfathers’ own travails and also her own. The shakes and delirium tremens, the self-loathing and mental anguish. Through her, I have a glimpse of my mother’s struggles and demons and I am leaning toward “forgive the drinker, hate the booze.” I suppose I could’ve used this book a few years ago. But it is what it is. Mom and I were as good as we were going to be around the time she died, we’d had several real adult and womanly conversations. Berlin has also made me a little braver in my own writing. Life is too short to have to fear what other people (through their own filters) think of anything I do.

When Mom aged, she softened, as so many of us do. Gone were the harsh and defensive edges of projected self-recrimination and doubt. At least around my kids, they were softened or completely worn away. She still had her self interest, poised above all others, but her kindnesses toward my children were absolutely sincere. In a way I was envious of them, their ability to be so at ease with each other. She had no worries about failing them and they had no fears of not living up to her expectations. It was like a little team of back-patters. I am happy that they all had those moments together.

I recall a day when she wanted to be with us, but logistics made it difficult (or maybe just I did) and so we all played Monopoly with her on the speakerphone. One of the kids would roll dice for her, the other would move her token (usually the thimble) and the other one would deal with her bank (that was usually my oldest son). She just liked being on the other line, hearing us all play together. I remember wishing she’d had an computer or iPad or something so that the boys could play online Scrabble and Pictionary with her; she would have loved it.

The day she died is different from today. Two years ago, it was Labor Day. Everyone in my family was with their own families, no one was alone to have to hear the news. I remember, clear as it happening right now, that when my father called that day, I was on my deck with my husband. I just knew. You know — how you just know? I just knew. Dad’s voice was unsure, but upbeat, like he was calling me to tell me that he’d cracked up my car but that everyone was ok… “Your mother has collapsed in the driveway. She’s in an ambulance now… the officer here wanted me to call you…”

….  ‘Officer…?’ …. 

We went over to their house as soon as we could. I’ll never forget it. The angle of the sun. The heat of the day. The wait in their front hall for an update. Then the update from the officer, “Mary didn’t survive…” and I thought he had the wrong person… “Mary? Who is Mary… ” … “Your mother, I’m sorry… she didn’t survive…”

Oh.

Then the drive to the hospital. And the phone calls and texts to brothers — where was my younger brother?? — and cousins and in-laws and close friends from the back seat of my own car as my husband drove and my father sat, granitic, in the front passenger seat. It was about 4:30pm at that point.

So tonight, I will have another root beer float, as I did that evening when I’d found out she’d died. She was on her way to get one that day. I got mine from the Baskin-Robbins down the street from the hospital. I remember for weeks after that, just telling people that my mother had died. I told my cleaning ladies. I told people I barely knew. I always got a hug for it. The freshness is still there, of that moment. I feel like that’s the greatest gift of being sober and in touch with your feelings: that joy and pain and all the others in between are right there, just beneath the surface teeming to leak out. We should let them every once in a while, it keeps us real. If your mom is still around, give her a hug for me. If she is not, think softly of her for yourself.

Thank you.

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.