Christmas Without You

(Yes, there really is text for this, from the holiday draft.  I will have it fixed soon.)

Musings in the dark

I'll start with the by now requisite lament of the time that has passed since the last entry.  If only somehow my thoughts had a more direct method of appearing here, there would be far more entries.  However, given that a lot seems to be bottling up inside lately, I suppose finding a release for it might not only be prudent, but would have the side effect of raising the post count.  Not that the blog itself is the point of things, of course.

Things were actually getting better in November.  I still missed Mom more deeply than I could adequately convey, but I was actually starting to feel like I was getting some balance back.  I was starting to reach out for new things to do, to find ways to actually live my life.  And best of all at the time, I was going to see the person whom I've considered a best friend since I was a teenager, and spend Thanksgiving with her and her husband.  Getting a break from home seemed like the perfect idea, with the huge bonus of seeing friends.  

To forestall anyone getting the wrong idea, I'll go ahead and say that the trip was lovely, aside from a few fog-delay inspired snafus on the flight there.  Seeing my friend was awesome.  Somehow, it seems that I've been blessed with one of those friendships where the time that passes doesn't truly matter.  I felt as at home and comfortable with her last month as I ever have.  I'm pretty damn sure I don't deserve that, mind you, but I'll take it with gratitude.

The only real problem with the trip was that time still passed, it ended, and I had to return home where the holiday season was starting to go into full swing.  Normally, I enjoy the holidays.  I typically see this season as a time to share with family and friends; to enjoy love, laughter, and the company of those special to you.  Needless to say, the death of the most important person in my life left a gaping void which the holiday season only serves to magnify to tormenting proportions.  

As a result, I've been able to feel myself sliding back into a depressed, directionless gloom.  I can see it reflected it the deterioration of the household routines I was painstakingly establishing.  I can tell it by the days that pass marked only by my apparent ability to continue surviving them.  The contacts that I was trying to establish with people are ever so slightly eroding again, and I don't know how many times I'll be able to apologize  for this and have it be accepted.  Of course, I usually question why people bother with me in the first place, though that's an issue for another time.  I can see all of this happening, and I can't figure how to make it stop again.  

I had a nightmare Thursday night, and what seemed to be the same thing tonight, though tonight by whatever grace, I managed to awaken before things got too bad.  In a very tightly compressed nutshell, as it still causes great pain, I'll just say that I dreamt that Mom was still alive, but we both knew she was dying.  I couldn't stop it, I couldn't save her, and it was like we were both somehow trapped.  All I could feel was an almost animal panic at the thought of losing her that only increased over time.  Waking up to remember that this had indeed happened was one of the lowest points I've hit in a while.  It took the course of a day turning back into night for the full panic of that to hit me.  I had kind of hoped I was done with it.

It only seems to make sense that the pressures and demands of the holiday season are causing this.  And it's really odd, because part of me still very much wants to enjoy the season as much as I possibly can.  I'll be with family for about a week, so it's not like I'll be alone.  And there are so many things to inspire delight this time of year.  One of the things I have always actually  liked about myself is that I have always happily retained a childlike joy in things like Christmas lights, decorations, making holidays cookies ... some of the simpler little joys life can offer.  Part of me deeply wants to still be able to take pleasure in all of  this. 

On the other hand, part of me also wants hide and pretend none of it is happening.  I can want to smash things when I hear Christmas carols.  And let me tell you, there are some of them that can cause pain in only a few notes.  Hearing "I'll Be Home For Christmas" is a fantastic spur to consider the benefits of playing in traffic.  "Blue Christmas" has a similar effect, but "traffic" is at that point is better defined as an eight-lane freeway one is trying to cross at night... during a sleet storm... while the roads ice over.  The description are purely and completely hyperbole, by the way (I promise!) but unfortunately for me, the anguish is real.  I dislike the idea of truly wishing away any part of my life, but I won't be sorry to see this holiday season end.  I'm torn between trying to find some joy in it, trying not to be hurt and ruin things for others, and just wanting my soul to quit bleeding.

There's an eleven-day stretch coming up, from a few days before Christmas to right after the first of the year, that encompasses not only Christmas and New Year's, but mine and my mother's birthdays.  For the first half of it, I won't be alone.  Right now, for the second half of it, I will be.  I am not looking forward to this time with any pleasure or peace of mind.

I want this all to pass so I can go back to where I was feeling that I was maybe beginning ever so slowly to find ways in which to live again.  For the very near future, though, I just want to stop another downward slide.  I know well how I hide from things now - I actually had a pretty good idea of what it would probably be before - but I still haven't figured out how to put a halt to it with any efficaciousness.

All this is why I find myself here at 4:30 in the morning, avoiding the miseries of sleep once again.  People will ask me how I'm doing.  And do you know, I honestly don't know what to tell them.  Is there a scale for these things?  If so, I'm not conversant with it.  Ask me twice five minutes apart, and you may well get two different, but equally correct answers.  In giving those answers, however, I am grateful that I've been given the grace of friends who care enough to hear when things aren't okay, even when I don't specifically say so, and who don't stop with accepting the polite answer.  When the dust settles, I hope to be able to adequately thank them one day, if such a thing is even possible.

And so ... the process of having to think through things enough to be able to express myself at least semi-coherently has once again worked to at least drain off some of the restless energy.  Now I just have to figure how best to get through today.  I may have to put some things off - again - but the deadlines are not set with any real purpose.  

Actually, today would have been my grandmother's eighty-eighth birthday had she still been living.  The day  would have caused Mom her own anguish as it did every year, actually, so I suppose I'm taking after her after all. One thing I do need to do today, if nothing else, is to make a silk flower arrangement suitable for Christmas and take it to my grandparents' grave.  I know this may sound like putting salt into a wound, but I truly have been giving myself a break when it comes to assuming Mom's duties such as this one.  But given the day, and how very important it was to Mom, I feel like this is something I want to do.  I actually have the idea of somehow incorporating a small picture of Mom in the arrangement, maybe even one of all three of them.  And somehow, this idea seems like something that might inexplicably be a comfort.

As always, I love you, Mom, and I miss you.

Time flies

And once again more time has passed that I had thought since I posted here. It seems to be a rule of blogging, at least for those of us who do it on a casual basis.  It's almost not even noteworthy to mention anymore, and yet I always feel constrained to do so.  The time has certainly not passed without me thinking of Mom.

All the time since she has died has been tough, so it seems foolish to point out that I'm having a very, very rough times of things now.  Perhaps that should be still?  On a mundane note, I was laid-off from my job. I actually do not find being laid off to be terribly upsetting.  I don't know if it is because I am numb to it, or because there are much more important things to be dealt with that it's a minor issue.  I am trying to take this as an opportunity to switch directions with regard to work, and since I am (luckily!) safe from financial worries for a while, I'm trying to be optimistic long term.  Of course, the only reason I have this financial security is thanks to Mom.  She's been gone almost three months and she's still saving my butt.  This begs the question of what I am going to do by myself?

The holidays are coming up.  Since we've just gotten past Halloween, we're about to plunge into the holiday frenzy.  I can always remember seeing the de rigueur holiday stories about people coping with loss during the holidays, and feeling both sorry for the people as well as uncomfortable.  It was the people who were alone that really struck me; now I'm one of them.  Not completely, no, and please don't think I'm taking my family or friends for granted.  I don't think I would have made it to this point without them.  But since my closest friend in-town is preparing to move to Arizona thanks to her husband's military reassignment, my day to day life is about to be really void of people who I can count on just to give me a hug.  I truly have no idea how I'm going to make it through the holidays. It's been hard enough so far - I'd much rather run away than have to face Christmas now.

I do have some ideas on how to get out more and maybe some of them will even work.   I'm just not the most outgoing person by far, and I make friends more than I make acquaintances, which takes time.   I worry about the meantime.

I feel like I owe my mother to be doing better than I am and not to squander the potential opportunities I now have.  I just hope she's not too disappointed in me.  Right now, I'm stuck somewhere between wanting to jump up and whip everything into shape so I can get ready for whatever my life will hold and actually being able to take enough first steps.  I haven't felt well, I'm not sleeping well, the list of things I need to do is overwhelming.  When I do rally, it's enough to take care of immediate needs but not much else.  And to top it all off, I seem to be whining now.  I know .. just keep trying.  Maybe that will even work one day.

Oh ... for the record, I got a copy of the original edition of Richard Scarry's Best Rainy Day Book Ever in the mail today.  Some pages are missing and a few are colored on, but by and large, it's a very good copy for its age.  It felt so familiar when I opened it, it was a little odd.  I'm glad to have it, though.

I miss Mom so very, very much and it hurts more than I can say.  But I'll keep going, however badly.

Sleepless thoughts

If I had an actual post published for every time I thought about something I could write about here, there would be significantly more content.  The fact that almost two weeks have passed  is in absolutely no way an indication that I have slowed in thinking about my mom or even this blog.  It's just that the process of rebuilding a "normal" life is apparently a never ending roller coaster just full of unexpected delights.  (If you didn't read that last sentence and infer a healthy dose of sarcasm, please do.)  I never know exactly how I'm going to react to things or what little reminder is hiding for me on any given day.

In my absence from this blog, I passed the two month mark since my mother's death.  Since there's never been any way to determine where I think I should be by different milestones, assuming the task of getting through each day would actually afford the luxury to do so, I can't say that I'm ahead or behind in anything.  The fact that so much time has passed, very relatively speaking, is a shock to me.  We're looking at Thanksgiving very soon, and Christmas beyond that.  (Along with  my mother's birthday as well as my own.  I would truly undergo cryogenic suspension from Mid-November until the second week or so of January in a heartbeat if at all possible.)  On the flip slide, just short of nine weeks is a blatantly insufficient amount of time to have been able to patch back together some semblance of a life.  At least it is from my point of view, since I certainly haven't managed it.  It's not been a lack of desire, either.

I had almost gotten my sleep schedule back to a normal rhythm, or so I hoped, but the last few days blew that out of the water again.  While I won't go into the reasons now, there was an event Sunday evening that I could have very definitely done without.  So now I'm backsliding in several ways, though I'm told that this is to be expected.  Okay, maybe so, but it still stinks.

The gods are showing some mercy to me.  There are several people, friends and family both, that continue to extend their caring and concern to me.  Words will never be able to convey how grateful I am and how much this has helped me.  Even at the times when they are caught not knowing what to say, or caught watching me when *I* don't know what to say, the simple fact that they are there is crucial.  

But "how are you doing" is such a loaded question these days.  I'm not going to insult anyone who cares at all about me and is asking by giving a false answer and cheapening their concern.  On the other hand, it's not easy to convey that mostly, I'm in pain, feeling lost and scared - still.  There's the additional irony that I can make it through the day okay, at least overtly, right up until I'm asked that question.  It makes for some awkward conversations when you spend half your time either crying or trying not to cry.

I'm trying to pull it all together, folks, I really am.  But being alone, dealing with all the financial matters and messes, figuring out what's going on with work, and trying to figure out what I want to do, let alone how, is quickly becoming overwhelming.  There's nothing to do but to get through it - somehow - but many times I can't see the how.  Tomorrow is another day, though.  Actually, since it's just past 3:00 a.m., I guess it's more apt to say today is another day.  

In the interests of not leaving this post completely negative and/or self indulgently pitying, there are some little fragments I've been thinking about.  I may well expand upon them later, but here are some scraps of memories about Mom.

• I had a period in childhood (around age 4-5) where I had many respiratory difficulties.  At one point, I had asthma, bronchitis, and pnuemonia, all of which resulted in a collapsed lung.  I couldn't go outside and play.  There was a Richard Scarry activity book - Richard Scarry's Best Rainy Day Book Ever - that I adored.  My mom sat with me for hours as we colored, cut-out, and made all sorts of things from that book.  She told me later we went through two copies of it.   (Mind you, this was a book that was originally around 500 pages.  Phone books were anemic in comparison.  I saw that it was released in an annotated version a few years ago, though it seems to be mostly out of print now.  I would dearly love to find a copy.)  At some point during this time, we were in my parents' bedroom doing something in the book and I got upset because I saw my dad and brother taking out their bikes.  I loved to go on those rides, but it was another thing I couldn't do.  I don't remember what Mom said or did exactly, but I've always remembered the feeling - she comforted me, let me know she'd be with me and I wouldn't be alone, and that we'd have our own fun. And we did.
• During this same period, I can remember going to Sears after yet another doctor's appointment.  My dad had been out of town, and I was upset in all sorts of ways.  Mom had taken me there to get a stuffed animal from Winnie the Pooh as a special treat.  She could always make things like that seem like an adventure.  It was a Piglet, by the way, and yes, I do still have it.  
• While speaking of Pooh Bear, whom I still love, I also have memories of one of the nights when a Pooh special was coming on television.  (CBS, to be precise.  I can still see the overlapping, multicolored 'CBS Special' logo spinning on screen.)  With the overwhelming media choices today, that would seem like no big deal at all, but it was huge then.  Mom made an event out of it by making caramel apples for us to have during the show.  She told me that she figured that caramel was enough like honey that Pooh would approve.
• Like most small children, sitting still was a difficult thing for me to do, even in church.  Mom would sit next to me and just fiddle with my ear - either gently tucking my hair behind it or just rubbing the earlobe.  As long as she didn't stop, I was blissfully quiet.  The conditioning never faded, either.  Last November when we were at the hospital awaiting the outcome of my uncle's open heart surgery, Mom and I were sitting next to each other on a couch.  My foot was jouncing up and down wildly, a nervous habit of mine, until she reached over and started smoothing my hair behind my ear.  
• A few years ago we extended our Labor Day vacation and went to Orlando after the usual visit to Jacksonville.  We picked Sea World as the park we wanted to go to while there and set aside our last full day for it.  It was raining that morning, and I was scared it would ruin everything.  I was worried not only for me, but for Mom's sake. I wanted a good vacation, but I really wanted her to have fun and relax, and didn't want anything to mar it for her. We were determined to go and make the best of it. It did rain on and off most of the day, but as it turned out, nothing was ruined.  The first show we saw that day was the dolphin show.  While I loved it myself, the absolute best memory of not only that show, but the entire day, was looking over at Mom and seeing the look of sheer delight on her face. I will remember that forever, and be thankful that we had that time together.

I think that's a good note to end on for now.

I love you, Mom.

Week seven

Yes, I know the title is counting things.  I mentioned before I didn't think that "not counting" thing made sense.  I miss her so ...

Life is going on, though, and I finally seem to be making some baby steps towards resuming living mine.  Last night, I cooked dinner for myself for the first time since ... well, since.  It wasn't anything fancy at all; I actually made breakfast.  Grits, eggs, sausage, and toast.  It was easy to do, and I knew I had the needed ingredients, which was a key factor consider the sorry state of most of my refrigerator's contents.  It was unplanned and bittersweet, but I realized that the last meal made in my kitchen, seven weeks ago last night, was when Mom made Nassau Grits for us for dinner.   Maybe that's supposed to be some sort of sign, who knows.

I can joke a little with friends now, which is good, I suppose.  One of my closest friends called tonight, and in talking with her I was able to laugh some.  It feels very, very weird.

This isn't to say I'm through the woods, and at that, this may just be a clearing.  I did break down yesterday when I had to go to the courthouse at noon.  When I got there, I ran into a judicial assistant who had known and worked with Mom.  A lot of the people at the courthouse fit that description, actually.  Anyway, she asked me how I was doing.  I can manage to make it through the days okay, right up until someone asks me something like that.   Before she left to go back to her own office, she made the comment that losing one's mother would never stop hurting.  I had already started tearing up, of course, and that comment really struck me.

When I got to the clerks' counter, I was trying not to cry.  Fortunately, since it was lunch, the place was largely empty.  I apologized and since they had obviously overheard the JA's comments, I simply said that my mom had died recently, and that coming to the courthouse was hard because she had worked for an attorney as well.  That led to the clerk asking which attorney it was, and when I told her, she immediately said, "I didn't know Margie was your mother!"  That led to a conversation with her and another clerk in the office.  Yes, I cried.  They were very nice and understanding, however, and had some lovely things to say about Mom.

I pulled myself together once again, completed what I needed, and turned to leave.  The first person I saw in the lobby outside the glass door was my former stepfather, whom I hadn't seen since Mom's death.  I was crying again before I made it through the door.  He hugged me, asked how I was, and we talked a bit.

After all that occurred in succession, by the time I made it back to my car, I simply lost it and started sobbing, which lasted until I got back to the office. 

I think it was somehow cathartic, though.  For what reason, I couldn't tell you, but I came home and gave the cats tuna for dinner as a treat, and decided I deserved one myself.  Normally that would mean not cooking, and perhaps even going to a good restaurant.  After the last several weeks, it was the reverse last night.  As I was preparing everything, I thought about having made the actual grits while Mom was cooking the rest of the Nassau Grits that night.  I thought about how she always referred to the way I liked my fried eggs as frambled and how she usually cooked them for me since I liked hers better than when I cooked them.   She'd always make me come season them, though, because she could over-salt them for my taste.

It feels very weird to be ... living again, even in little bits.  I feel vaguely guilty, like it is some how inappropriate, but not really.  Sometimes, I even wonder how in the world I can be managing to laugh again at all. 

I don't think Mom would mind, though.

Feeling like a broken record

There's an entry I started a couple of days ago that's still in the draft stage, but as it's hopefully going to be one of the more upbeat posts, at least all things considered, I decided not to mix it with tonight's writing and thus taint it.  Hence the broken record part - this is more about how I hurt.  I'm sorry, but it's not like I know much else right now.  I wish I did.  Part of the reason for this blog in the first place is to try and work through it, since to write about it, I have to organize my thoughts somewhat.

So, I'll have to ask the indulgence of you, my reader friend, though if you're taking the time to follow this, that's quite an indulgence anyway.  I'm finding that although the initial shock and pain of my mother's death was absolutely brutal, it almost seems easy now when compared with trying to deal with the loss.  Granted, part or all of that may simply be perspective, and trouble dealing with this loss is nothing new, but I've been pondering the immense breadth and depth of it a lot more lately.

You see, my mother and I shared a tremendous amount and were an integral, daily part of each other's life.  While we each had our own friends and our own interests, we also had some of both in common and spent a majority of our time with each other.  We shared meals, did the shopping together, went to movies, etc.  While some people may not be able to understand that fully, I can only say that I was blessed to have my mother also be one of my best friends.  Perhaps it's not common, but being different is certainly not new for me, nor was it for her.  She was the person who I could always count on, who always loved me, and who was always there for me and I was that person for her.  

Given this, her death not only leaves me without a mother, but without my closest friend with whom I shared my daily life.  So, in short, life as I knew it, as I have known it for years,  has been smashed into fragments.  I literally have wandered around - in my house, at the grocery store, anywhere - just feeling lost and not knowing what to do.  My weekends have no structure or purpose anymore.  I haven't cooked for myself since my mom died.  At some point, I'm supposedly going to be creating a new routine for my life, but how or when that is going to happen, I have no clue.  I don't have another person's schedule to take into account, and since my boss is jerking me around at work, I don't even have that for a framework.  I'm just ... floundering.

I don't know if this is normal as a part of the grieving process, though I wouldn't be surprised to find it was.  But the feeling of being lost extends to making it so that there's nothing I'm looking forward to right now, big or little.  This would normally be my favorite time of the year, and of course the holidays aren't too far off either.  Instead, I don't care what day it is, assuming I even know, and if there were some way to avoid December entirely, I'd take it.  Right now, I'm just taking each day as it comes, as empty as they all are, and muddling through.  People say I'm being strong, when truly I'm just managing to survive, and only because there's really nothing else to do.  Some irrational part of me still hopes, desperately, that I'll wake up from this horrible, hellish nightmare than I've been trapped in for six weeks.  In the meantime, I deal with things as best as I can, however good or bad that may be, and hope that it will all even out one day. 

But damn ... feeling this lost and this empty hurts more than I can possibly describe.

I miss you, Mom, so very, very much.

More random thoughts

Trying to think of little bits of trivia about Mom is much more enjoyable than thinking about the void she left in my life (as if I don't do that enough) so I'm going to do that again.

• She always had to have popcorn at the movie theater.
• Reese's Cups and Three Musketeers bars were her favorite candy bars.
• Her dream car was a white convertible - the exact model varied.
• She insisted everyone open one present on Christmas Eve - and would laugh at me for never picking the "big" present first.
• I remember her singing around the house when I was little and thinking it sounded wonderful.
• She had beautiful handwriting.
• When pregnant with me, despite being told that no girl had been born into my father's family for fifty years, she refused to ever believe anything other than she was having a baby girl.
• She was the middle of three children, and had both a brother and a sister.
• She liked to be home when it was storming outside as it made her feel more relaxed.  She especially loved it when it was raining when she was trying to go to sleep.
• Purple was one of her favorite colors and she wore amethyst jewelry.
• She could somehow read, sleep, or even crochet in a moving car.  I can't do any of that, so on road trips with her, I usually drove.
• We had made a tradition out of making goodies for some of the judges, staff, and baliffs at the courthouses and she was (in)famous for the rum balls.
• She almost always salted her food before she tasted it.  (Which drove me crazy.)
• She loved having flowers in the house.  Simple bunches of alstroemeria from the grocery store would make her happy.
• Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and butterbeans would be a perfect meal to her.
• She didn't like cold weather.  
• She lived in Florida almost her entire life.
• She could talk to anyone and would make them like her without even trying.

If you are reading this (and to my shock, people actually are) then I ask that you go find someone you love and hug them.  Be grateful that they are there to hug.  I never thought I would lose my mom this soon and tomorrow is never guaranteed.

I love you, Mom.

Ever-changing grief

In the course of just one day, I go through so many moods in dealing with my mother's death.  Last night, at the grocery store, I finally saw one of the main managers whom I had been looking to speak with for weeks now.  Although most people aren't aware of it, this particular location has a true florist in the floral department, and he did most of the arrangements for Mom's celebration.  They were gorgeous - cherry alstroemeria, stargazer lilies, and yellow roses - so I wanted to pass my compliments and thanks to management. 

The manager I spoke to was one both Mom and I knew by sight, and vice versa.  We were in this store, singly or together, two or three times each week.  He'd often stop to speak with us.  Actually, a lot of people did that with Mom.  She was amazingly friendly and able to speak to anyone.  At any rate, I predictably began to tear up while speaking to him.  At least I was ready to check out at that point, and was in my car shortly thereafter, when I proceeded to lose it entirely for a few minutes.  I suggest not trying to drive while sobbing hysterically, for the record.

This happens at random, though at least more infrequently now.  I don't expect it to stop anytime soon.  There are usually also several moments in the evenings, when I have to simply stop, take a deep breath, and will myself not to start screaming or crying.  There's still some part of me that wants her back so badly, even though I know it's not possible, that the grief and need just become overwhelming.

As if there isn't enough to deal with, I'm in the midst of wrapping up her financial affairs and working with the insurance companies, which is another of the very hard things. It was terribly important to Mom that she leave me with as much security as she could.  I never, ever thought I'd have to be claiming any of it this soon.  She'd bring it up periodically, and I'd always shy away from it, telling her that I'd much rather have her alive.  Now I feel badly for the way I would try to evade talking about it, and I certainly know that I don't deserve it.  Mostly though, I'd give away every single bit of it in a heartbeat if I could have just one more hour with Mom.  More than anything, I wish I could tell her that I was happy to have shared my life with her and that I could tell her that I loved her one more time.

Still here

It feels like it's been five years, not just over five weeks.  Missing Mom is now settling into my bones as a fact of life.  I still cry, and in public, but not quite as much.  I guess it's progress.

As I've said before, there are unfortunately a number of things about which I could be supremely bitter, but I've largely managed to avoid it.  I know that it won't do me any good and that it won't bring her back.  Health care, though ... it makes me want to throttle some of these ignorant, selfish, and uncaring people who rant about not needing health care reform.  

All that insurance companies and managed care has done in the past twenty years is to turn medicine even further into a money-making service, completely warped from the purpose of caring for people.  Greed - from the greed of those who make money off of suffering to the greed of those who have no thought for others - has made the current system a travesty.  The small businessmen like those Mom and I have worked for claim not to have the money to provide insurance.  The have second and third homes, fancy cars, and maids to clean their houses, but no money.  If you work and own a home, like I do (and Mom did), then you don't qualify for any help.  

And since Mom already had high blood pressure, she was turned down from private insurance (that would have been horribly expensive) because under the system, you couldn't already be ill, because then, gods forbid, the insurance company would actually have to give you some of the care you were paying for.  It's a truly pathetic commentary on American society to have some of the best health care in the history of the world theoretically available, yet inaccessible by a large part of the population.  

Health care is NOT supposed to be the privilege of the wealthy.  While in all honesty, I can't say for certain that even the best care would have saved my mother's life, it is a horribly bitter pill to even have the faintest thought that, if we have been rich and could have afforded all the tests, scans, and  hundreds of dollars of medicine each month, she might still be alive.  I devoutly wish I could impose that feeling on every opponent of health care reform, with the person in need being one of their loved ones.

And yes, that is a digression, of a sorts, but it's part of what I deal with.  My mom deserved so much better, and I can only pray that she is now freer and happier than she was on this plane.  As always, Mom, I miss you so much.

Random memories

So things are still very much day to day.  I could say a lot about how things about going now - how work is driving me crazy when I couldn't care less about it, how it's starting to feel like people are now expecting me to be okay, etc.  Instead, I'm simply going to jot completely random things down about Mom - things she said, things we did, things she liked.  There is a ton of "trivia" that I want to remember.

• She liked plain potato chips only - nothing flavored.
• We both had a distaste for overly flowery, overly fussy ("frou frou") things and would jokingly mock them when out shopping with each other.
• Jimmy Buffet was one of her favorite musicians.
• "Happy Feet" was a movie she loved - even to the point of getting a stuffed Mumble.  I can remember the day it came out on DVD because she had been waiting for it.  I had gotten it for her a lunch as a surprise and had it ready to play when she walked in her door that evening.  She had had a bad day at work and when she heard the movie playing, she thought it was a commercial, remembered the release, and wanted to go get it.  It was fun watching her realize I had it for her.
• She drank her coffee black.  Her Mother's Day gift this year was a Keurig coffee maker, which she absolutely adored.  She often told me how much pleasure it gave her, for which I'm grateful.
• She screamed in the theater during the original showing of ET (when the government agents were searching the house in space suits.)
• She knew how to sail and how to fly a small plane.
• She would fearlessly jump into projects, just like her father did, especially ones of the DIY variety.  Where I'd want to go look things up, do test cuts, and the like, she'd already be applying a saw to things.  
• On a related note, I gave her a couple of power tools she had wanted one Christmas.   The joke thereafter was that I never thought her favorite presents would be from Black and Decker.
• She collected elephants - but only the ones with their trunks up, as she had been told those were lucky.
• She'd always sneeze in multiples.
• When she used my first name and a shortened version of my middle name together, something fun was up.  If she used the full version of both, I was in trouble.
• Peanut butter was an absolute staple for her.
• She hated unloading the dishwasher.
• Keeping a pretty lawn was important to her because it had been important to her parents.
• She hated driving in the rain and didn't like it when I did it, either.
• She'd go through cycles of letting her hair grow out to her shoulders, then cutting it short, and then letting it grow again.  It almost, but not quite, matched the seasons.
• She loved to read and we shared our fantasy collections.
• She liked her fried eggs sunny side up.  I like mine hard, for which she coined the term "frambled" at some point when I was little.

Not a lot for now, but it's been good to think about her.

The prelude is done

Well, I really didn't mean to let this many days pass without an entry.  It's certainly not that I haven't thought about making one, though I was usually not anywhere near the computer at the time.

I spent my first "normal" weekend without Mom this past weekend.  Normal in this case meant that I wasn't traveling and didn't have anything special planned.  I had hoped that I could get caught up on household chores and at least make things look a little more usual.  As it turned out, that was a vain hope.  I continue to underestimate the effect of grieving and now, depression, on what I can manage to do.  The weekend found me completely adrift and sandbagged by the absence of anything resembling a normal routine.  Mom and I shopped together on the weekend and Saturday night was our night to cook a really good dinner for ourselves if we didn't have other plans.  Also, she would have been watching my alma mater's football game with me this week. Instead, I had an empty weekend where I'd either wander around aimlessly or try to occupy myself with minutiae so I didn't have to face the void Mom left.

I don't think anyone can really understand how very, very lost I am right now.  There have been precious few things or people in my life that have ever been constant, and chiefest of those was my mom.  With her gone now, there is no certainty in my world.  The new constant is that I am utterly alone and scared.  I also fear that people are going to soon be tired of me being sad and depressed; that they'll be telling me to get over it and move on.  I need all the support I can get and I'm bad enough as it is asking for it.  Somehow, I hope people will stick with me.

They say grief is a personal journey for us all.  All I know is that at just under four weeks, mine seems to have just begun.  The shock and immediate pain has faded, but I am left in a featureless nowhere, not knowing where I want to go, let alone how to guide myself there.  The rational part of my brain has accepted that Mom is gone, but my soul is torn and bleeding.

Feeling lost after loss

I traveled to my uncle's this weekend and it was good to be around family.  It felt very weird to be there without my mom, though.  College football started this weekend as well, and I'm a big fan of my alma mater's  team.   Watching their first game without Mom was just another in the increasingly long string of jarring notes that my life has become.  She had given in to the lure of football finally, and had been enjoying watching the games with me these last few years.  I'm grateful to have those memories, and in time they will make me smile, but right now it's yet another thing I miss.

My grief is settling in now, from a sharp, keening note to a low, steady pulse that fills my waking world.  I cannot count how many times each day it hits me that my mother is gone and I'm by myself  We won't share dinners anymore, or the weekly shopping trips.  If I need someone to bring me medicine when I'm sick, she won't be there.  I won't get to tease her anymore when I have to help her with the DVD, the DVR, or her computer.  Since I don't have a spouse or children to help me through this, I find myself very alone and intensely aware of the fact.

I had planned to get the house in order for the first time since Mom died.  The refrigerator is full of food that needs to be thrown out now.  The ice dispenser in the door didn't close properly over the weekend, causing the ice inside the bin to melt and coat everything in the lower two-thirds of my freezer in more ice, so I need to thaw all of that.  There's laundry to be done, dishes to be washed, and a whole host of other mundane household tasks that I need to see to.  I thought I would start to tackle it today, but I barely made a dent in it.  It seems that I can manage things to the extent of taking care of my immediate needs, but no more.  I don't know how to move through this empty world I'm in now. 

I know Mom would want more for me, and I want to make her proud of me.  I want to be worthy of all the legacies she left me, but I don't know how to start.  It's still a situation that can only be managed day by day.  I find myself casting around for plans on how to do things, but no matter what thought I first have, it always leads to the fact that my mom is gone.  And there I stop. 

Never the same

I'm just going to make a brief post tonight - I'm exhausted in more ways than one.  My mom was very close to her brother, and Labor Day was always a time we went to go visit him and my aunt.  Since being with family sounded like a good thing, I made the trip by myself.  It's a long drive, and even more so solo.  I was accustomed to making this trip once every few months with Mom and I can tell you it has changed almost beyond belief now.

I'm used to being here at my uncle's house.  One of the things my mom especially liked about us visiting is that everyone was comfortable enough with each other that they didn't feel like they had to have things planned to entertain us.  We just enjoyed spending time together.  It's very good to be in their company, but we were all hyper-aware of who was missing.  My aunt had commented that it was odd not to think of Mom sitting there with her crocheting. It made me think about the fact that my life is not the only one with something missing.

I wish you were here, Mom.

A long road

Two weeks.  I still can't quite wrap my mind around the fact that my mother is gone, even though it seems like there's a reminder in front of me every time I turn my head.  Her love is still with me, along with many memories, and I'm trying so hard to firmly establish them in my heart for the rest of my life.  I miss her voice, I miss her hugs, and I miss her company. 

My world is completely awry, and I don't know how to set it straight.  Some times, I don't even know if I want to set it straight, because nothing seems to matter.  There's an emptiness past the sadness of grief that is somehow even worse.  

Did she know how much I loved her?  Was there something I could have done better that would have allowed her to still be here?  What did I do wrong?  I try not to torment myself, but sometimes when I'm faced with this senseless, gaping void in my life, there doesn't seem to be a limit to the questions that can be asked in hopes that something might somehow make sense.  

I look at the little tag line for this blog and it strikes me that it's improbably optimistic.  Maybe in some number of weeks, or months it won't; with some passage of time perhaps it will seem obtainable.  Right now I'm reeling and the only goal is to make it from day to day.

I miss you, Mom, and I love you.

Not an auspicious beginning

Last night I had hoped to relax and somehow at least feign being prepared to go back to work today.  This did not occur.  Whether there was a trigger for it, or if it was a culmination of many things, I had an anxiety attack last night that led me to call EMS.  Now to my scant credit, I did tell them the chance existed that it  was just an anxiety attack, but when your mother has just died of a heart attack, your chest hurts, and you're alone, your mind can mess with you in some serious ways.  The EMS personnel were very pleasant and understanding, however. 

I did go back to work today.  This is going to be very tough.  I cannot focus worth a darn and there's a ton that needs to be done.  For the record, I should at least say that I work in the legal field, where there's always stress and deadlines abounding.  My mother worked in the same field, and I had a taste today of just how painful that's going to be for me in ways I didn't even think of until they occurred.  I went to one of the courthouses to file some things this afternoon, and for once managed to get there without being as rushed as normal.  Mom was better at that than I was, and the time of day was, in fact, when I would have been most prone to run into her if she had needed to be there as well.   I caught myself looking at the clock and wondering if I had just missed her.  I think that, as I feared, now that I don't have to be in "crisis mode" anymore, the reality of her being gone is a much more overt and intrusive fact that gets thrust in my face repeatedly.

I miss her so much.

I don't know all the varied stages of grief yet - some articles say there are five, some say seven.  They all list moods you may or may not have, in varying order, with nothing ever being the same.  Wherever it is in their list, I'm definitely getting to the "what's the point" part of the program.  I lost the one person who loved me more than anything, who accepted me unconditionally, and with whom I shared so much.  That leaves a void that is currently making anything and everything else seem pointless.  Yay, depression.

I did go to the doctor today, as the nice EMS people suggested.  I was pleased to know that my blood pressure was a much nicer 130/82, instead of the 180/110 from last night, even if it was probably the result of the anti-anxiety medicine I had been given at the outset and hadn't been taking.  Actually, one of the EMS folk make a point of telling me that they give this particular medicine to pregnant women, by way of pointing out that it's not some heavy duty prescription.  I don't like the idea of medication like that ... well, I suppose it's more accurate to say that I am respectfully wary of it, though I'm not stupid enough not to take it if deemed necessary.  It certainly helped last night, even if it didn't cure the chronic embarrassment.

Getting through this week, or even just getting through tomorrow, is going to be a painful slog.  And as if that wasn't bad enough, tomorrow night will mark two weeks since I last saw Mom alive.  They say you're not supposed to mark that in your mind, but how can you not?  And how in the hell can it have been two weeks already?

First post

My mother passed away eleven days ago, having had a heart attack in her sleep.  She was sixty-four years old.  I am her daughter.   And so, for the purposes of this blog, at least for now, I will go by Margie's daughter.

Mom and I were both single - she actually raised me as a single parent for most of my childhood, and we lived in the same place.  We saw each other every day and shared our lives.  As a result,  I lost not only my mother but one of my best friends in the same moment.  I know it won't come as a surprise that it should be so, but I cannot tell you how painful this is.  I know that ultimately, having been able to share as much with Mom as I did will make even this pain worthwhile, but it's hard to see that right now.  However, pain of loss is one of the prices of love, and so I will pay it.

Last night, we held her Celebration of Life and as it was ending, it hit me that when we left there, when I no longer had to worry about getting everything planned, and when I didn't have the immediate need to do certain things to focus upon, she would truly, finally, irrevocably be gone.  Not in spirit, because I do feel that Mom is still with me, but gone in that I will never get to see her again, I will never get to hug her again, and I will never get to spend time with her again.

This blog is meant to be a way for me to remember and pay tribute to my mom, and perhaps as a way for me to heal.  I do intend to refine the generic format, add pictures, and otherwise make it special, but for now, I just wanted to start.  I cannot believe that it's already been a week and a half.  Some memories I haven't been able to dredge up yet, thanks to stress and grief, yet I still want to get details of those last days down while fresh. Whatever the impetus, it was time to begin, however tentatively. 

Why people, myself very much included, choose to do this in a public format is in some ways beyond me, although if that becomes a problem, I can always change it.  I think, however, that part of it may have something to do with the fact that sharing things with others somehow validates the effort in a way that simply writing in a journal doesn't.  I'm sure Google would give me hits galore with research on this, but right now I really don't care. 

This is my journey of how to learn to live my life after my mother's death, and it has begun.