Residual Aching....

My mom was alive a month ago today.  She was in a hospital bed with enough tubes to play Double Dutch with, but she was most definitely alive.  Her absence doesn’t feel real yet, but I know that it is.  And I know that at some point in time her non- presence is gonna hit me like a Mack truck.  The beauty of living 6,000 miles away from family is that distance can at times at least, make the heart grow fonder.  I’m not sure how many miles away her soul is now, but I am certain this greater distance between us is having a powerful effect.

Grief is a funny thing.  I am technically “grieving” but I am, in full disclosure truth, sitting at my computer with my chirping cell phone and hot cappuccino nearby.  Odds and ends of my life, my husband’s, and our kids’, are on the table at which I’m typing.   I’m surrounded by pale yellow walls, our son’s bright artwork, a blue bowl, my own multi colored nails, and a bright red Krav Maga T-shirt.  Nothing around me screams GRIEF.  Everything inside me does.

The last almost 6 months were so amazingly “mom- centric,” which is funny since so much of my life was, too.  Crisis after crisis turned my thoughts inside and out in a way I can only compare to that scene in The Exorcist. You know the one where Linda Blair’s head spins around and you wonder how her head hasn't actually fallen off? Yeah, that one. It seemed like every time I turned around, despite the brief periods of calm, a doctor was calling, I was authorizing a procedure, or something life threatening was happening- or was about to.  My mom’s blood pressure would frequently drop so low that doctors and nurses alike wondered how anyone with those numbers could be talking.  There was respiratory distress, necrotizing fasciitis, a strangulated hernia, a couple of rounds on a ventilator, a heart attack, infections with minds of their own, and a feeding tube that simply refused to stay put.  As always, mom kept me on my toes, making me wonder when the next “thing” would occur and when I’d be able to find a modicum of sanity.  I know now that no more “things” will happen but I’m still searching, more desperately now than before, for my sanity.

I am left with tears and a sadness that runs deeper than my soul.  My parents weren’t supposed to die and my parents were just going to get sick, and then better, like they’d always done.  Well, someone rewrote the script because my parents are now gone.  For a time I was fixated on the term “orphan” seeing as how it’s what I’ve become.  Yes, yes, I’m much more than that and I’ve accomplished things and have a beautiful family, but the brass tacks of it is that I’m parent-less and that stinks the big one.  In fact, it stinks the biggest one there is and I’m not too grown up to admit it.

So many times during the year people said, “Wow, it must be so much harder for you with you being here while she’s in New York.”  I tried to poo-poo that a lot and I think that there were indeed times when it was harder.  But in no one’s and everyone's defense I have to say, losing a parent isn’t easy no matter where you live, how close you live, or how many miles and oceans separate you.  The pain knows no boundaries, and my complicated grief seems to know how to find me.   What makes it really hard? The fact that my mom and I didn’t share a warm and fuzzy kind of relationship.  We enjoyed that when I was younger, but as life happened, and it does tend to do that, our differences became more evident and our sensitivities, ironically enough, worlds apart.  As I got older I learned to do a lot of “uh huh- ing” instead of asking her why she didn’t listen for my answer after she’d asked me something.  I learned to avoid as much confrontation as I could, listening to her tell me about what she had for dinner, the movies she’d seen, the work she did with a disabled boy she’d worked with for what seemed like forever, and all the things that existed in her universe.  I learned not to tell her about my ailments, all thankfully minor in the grand scheme of life, because I knew that hers were worse.  I stopped telling her when the kids got sick because she’d call day after day, sometimes more than once a day, as if what they really had was The Plague.  We often spoke around each other, though we occasionally enjoyed talking about family lore and silly stuff.  Her tone would change when we discussed easier times and I liked that.  I miss that.

My mother was not an ogre, but she was a frightened woman who let life break so much of her spirit.  I understand more of what happened and how she reacted to it, and I hurt differently than I used to; now I hurt for both of us. And I’m not talking about some drippy, self-indulgent, woe- is- me kinda’ pain, but a pain that lets me know that I see both of us as more human, more real, and more fragile than I did before.  My mother hid her torment in food, a habit that became a condition that became an illness that ultimately led to her demise.  She hid her fear in anger and her love in apathy and self- loathing.  She was abandoned by her dad when she was 10, verbally and emotionally abused by others, and her first husband beat the bejeebers out of her.  A survivor?  No doubt about it.  A confused little girl who wanted and deserved to be taken care of?  No doubt about that either.

My grandmother had a signature chuckle that I recognized as such only after I started to hear it from my mom.  I remember noticing it one day and telling her, “You have the laugh!  You do the laugh!”  She laughed again and said, “What laugh, Rachel??”  I tried to describe it, explain it even, but couldn’t until she did it again and heard it too.  I started to hear that chuckle within the past year, except it wasn’t from my grandmother or my mom- it was from me.  It’s a strange heirloom to describe, but I do like sharing it.  I feel like I’m the Keeper of The Laugh, and I like that.  When I hear it, I feel like the best parts of my mom and grandma are within me.  It’s one of the more comforting lessons I've been afforded. 

I’ve made an officially unofficial decision to let my grief take me wherever I need to go.  I’ve felt anger over missed opportunities, pain, jealousy, and fear.  That fear by the way, is a heartbreaking kind of thing.  When it strikes I feel like a lost little girl whose mommy and daddy are nowhere to be found.  As a parent, I feel terribly for that little girl and want her to understand that she’s not lost at all- but I can’t get to her to tell her that.  My grief is so different from what I experienced with my dad for many reasons.  Some of those reasons are obvious, and some are becoming more so as time moves on.  When I lost my dad 16 years ago, we had two kids and their biggest issues in life were being fed, clothed, and having clean diapers.  This time, there are four of ‘em and I have to remain cognizant of their grief, too.  I hate seeing them in pain and I hate that they’ve seen me in so much of mine.  It’s hard for them to understand, despite the fact that they’re not babies, that I’m still grieving.  Yes, grandma’s gone, Shiva is over, Shloshim is over, but I’m still grieving.  And while they won't generally find me huddled in a corner crying my eyes out,  I feel like I’m moving slower, listening slower, doing everything slower.  I find that grief hits at weird and unexpected moments; some days the fog’s there and some days it's not.  It’s a nagging, soul- sucking, draining feeling that has planted itself in every cell of my body.  Some days it physically hurts and others, it just hangs out and stays quiet.  I don’t know how else to explain the feeling especially since I'm certain my “Look, today’s she’s happy… Uh oh- now she’s not” shifts must be maddening.  For whatever its worth, I’m not a fan of them either.

Life will go on and I know that time and love really do help.  I know that I’ll think about my mother every day, just as I’ve  thought of my dad every day for the last 16 years, and that I’ll carry them within me always.  I'm grateful that the ability to forgive my mom has started so early on in this process and that I’m doing what I can to be kind to myself.   We are on the cusp of Sukkot and like Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah before it, the holiday feels like it’s happening around me, at me.  The emotions are still too raw, the energy too lacking.  I have a year and a lifetime beyond it to process my grief. And when I’m ready, the residual aching will free itself so it too, can be healed. 

Mother's Day 2013

I'm sitting at my mother’s bedside in Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, not remotely liking Mother's Day or the fact that today *IS* Mother's Day, as she moans and makes noises while awaiting a nebulizer and chest X-ray. I'm not sure if this is worse or better than hearing her talk to folks that aren't in the room, including old neighbors and former relatives. She just prepared lox and bagels for someone and has been fixated on the laundry. Suffice it to say these moments are anything but 'Downy soft.'

My children have wished me a Happy Mother's Day from Israel, where we now live, and I so appreciate that. Truth is, Mother's Day is the penultimate Hallmark holiday which is why there is no such day, that I know of anyway, in Israel. I think my kids know that while I'm grateful for their Mother's Day greetings, it’s the care, concern, and devotion those greetings encapsulate that speak volumes to me. They know how much I am struggling and hurting and doing everything they can to keep me smiling. When we lived in America, I was not the day's biggest fan. It's nice to be celebrated, but that's what my birthday is for. I remember telling my husband awhile back that I didn't want to go out to eat on Mother's Day because sitting in a crowded restaurant listening to other families celebrate, while others pretended to celebrate, hardly made it a fun day for me.

Today's cards and greetings and Facebook posts are all about the positive; for the best moms in the world, the ones who would do anything for their kids, the ones who are amazing grandmothers and save the planet in a single bound, capeless. There are no celebrations or cards for moms who have been hurt or hurtful, moms who have been beaten down and never learned that they didn't have to relive the pain. Nobody gives flowers to the most stubborn mom or the one who hasn't always chosen her words carefully. Hallmark hasn't figured out how to celebrate those moms.

Life with my mother wasn't always a picnic. In the last few days and weeks though, I've acknowledged that there are things I will forever be grateful to her for. Her artistic rendition of a pigeon in the second grade, her ability to pull me onto dance floors at weddings to get me to boogie even when I thought I didn't want to. Her love of books and pretty jewelry, her strong sense of identity as a Jewish woman. Her advocacy when I was bullied in elementary school and her pride when I won an award, got a good grade, and became religious. Our relationship has very much been on her terms because she could not understand or even try to understand mine. Ours has not been a relationship of listening and sharing and respect. I have grieved that for years, but more so recently. We have argued and fought and I have often wondered if it was even worth it. Disagreements that result in little more than promises to never do "it" again leave one feeling truly unheard and disrespected. They leave you breathless in all the wrong ways.

Though I've been a mother for almost 18 years, today I feel very much like a daughter. Feeling like a daughter at this moment, in this place, hurts. My mother's roommate's amazingly loving and attendant daughter is primping over her as I type. She keeps telling her mom, who lay in bed contracted, with mitts on her hands and the inability to speak after suffering multiple strokes, that she's gonna get better. This adoring daughter is telling her mom that as soon as she gets better, they can go shopping again. That mom will be able to tell her what she likes and what she doesn't when they hit the stores the way they used to. This daughter is praying for her mom's strength, assuring her that she is right by her side. She is crying and telling mom not to worry and that all will be alright, though it is pretty clear that she is trying to convince herself of that. There are even moments when it seems she believes her own words. All of their moments, especially the ones I've been given access to, make me hurt for all of us. Two elderly, ill, frail moms, with their tired, emotional daughters at bedside. 

I guess I hate Mother's Day because I can't stand all those cards and flowers and balloons and sales that are seemingly in my face. I don't begrudge those who are happy, most of the time anyway. But the constant reminder that today is a day to celebrate moms seems almost cruel right now. It hurts because I can't celebrate my mother- celebrate that she's laid up in bed with an increasing amount of bed sores, congestion, confusion, and irritability? Celebrate the mom she was before her health went down the drain? Celebrate the mom in the next bed who is trying desperately to communicate with her children? I guess I don't have much celebration in me right now. 

I love being a mom. My husband and I have four children who make me cherish being a mom more than life itself; their birthdays are my real Mother's Day. Each celebration of their lives reminds me of when I became a mother for the first, second, third, and fourth time. They are my life and soul, beings who turned two young marrieds into two young marrieds- turned-parents. I adore watching them develop into the extraordinary individuals they're becoming. 

As for Mother's Day? I'm still not a big fan. Somehow though, I'm grateful my mother's here today, still breathing life that is celebrate-able. The fact that she is here despite the ailments that plague her is pretty miraculous. In that sense, I guess today is noteworthy. Any day where life is present is a good one. Any day where death is not ready to swoop in can be considered a good one. So mom, today, in some sense or another, is a happy day. Happy day to you, mom. Happy Mother's Day to you.