I had a grief attack yesterday. One moment I’m mopping the floor the next I see the queen mum’s pained face in front of me and that month before she died hits me between the eyes. I am surrounded in sadness. I feel so alone. Lonely, lost, lousy, little, loser, lonesome. L words rumble through my head. Tears create puddles on my face. I am all of those L words. I scream and cry, letting it all out. I try to find kinder L words to replace the one’s I feel. Laughter, living, lovely, looking, light, loose, lucky. Life. Soon maybe I will.
Month: March 2015
dream
I peaked into my mothers’ bedroom and listened as she quietly snored, I found the noise comforting. I couldn’t see her just a bundle under the covers, she would often stay in bed as long as possible. And then I remembered my mother isn’t in bed, she doesn’t have her apartment anymore, she is dead. I started crying, and then I woke up.
Letting Go
My father once said to me that I was like an old dog with a bone, I just wouldn’t let go. I guess he was right. Thirty years ago I fell in love with a man who broke up with me after three years together. Now I see our relationship was based on drugs, we spent many days high on some great LSD that we would chew every morning and see where it took us. The sex was good and I foolishly thought we were communicating with our lovemaking. He had been in Vietnam and wouldn’t discuss it with me. I believed I could understand what he went through but time has taught me that isn’t so. I used to worry that when the LSD ran out so would we and in some ways that was true it just took a couple of years and different drugs to figure that out. Even after we broke up I still loved him and I guess I still held hope. I kept all the love letters he had written and pictures of him and occasionally would take them out and look at them. Feeling the love.
After my mother died we started communicating and he was very sympathetic and supportive. He had married the woman who would call him up late at night while we were together. He always denied there was anything between them and decided it was time to explain why he broke up with me, I am so glad he did. In reading his version of what happened those many years ago and comparing it to what I remember I realize how little we really knew each other, how the trust was never there, how the support a relationship needs to survive did not exist. I threw away those love letters and got rid of his pictures and finally let go of that bone.
Sweetie and Grace
The queen mum loved my dog Sweetie and Sweetie loved the queen. I was surprised, as I thought Grace might be a bit of a dog snob having raised purebreds. Grace immediately saw what a great personality my dog had and it seems I had finally given her the grandchild she always wanted. Sweetie got Grace to walk around the block or take a walk on the beach at Port Hudson. I brought Sweetie to the nursing home to visit so the dog knew Grace was not well. The night my sister called to say mum was getting worse I jumped out of bed got dressed and Sweetie who never got up that late insisted on coming with me to the hospital. After the queen mum died I went every day to her apartment to deal with her things but Sweetie refused to come with me. The dog took to her bed and barely acknowledged me. I started telling her that she had turned into Grace, all she wanted to do was sleep and be left alone. This went on for over a month then slowly she started acting like her happy self again.
Boxes of love
I am still sifting through boxes of pictures, letters, cards, newspaper clippings that belonged to the queen mum. She kept every card her kids ever sent her. She kept a list of Christmas cards that she received and a list of cards she sent. In the past few years the list had gotten smaller and as I looked at her address book I noticed the scratched out names of friends that are gone. She kept everything that had anything to do with my brother Sean who died in 2000, his death broke her heart. So now I struggle with throwing away the pictures of the memorial gathering and remembrance book that his friends signed, the newspaper articles about his life, his obituary notice. It isn’t just his obits she kept but the one for her mother, her father, her two brothers with rosary cards in their honor. Who would I save these for? Who wants to know? Who would see these pieces of paper as treasures, touch stones to their past. History. As I throw these things away I feel I am not only throwing away my mother’s life but a part of my own. I am grateful we have memories, you don’t have to throw them away.
1969
I don’t want to call you “dude” or “peeps” or think of you as being “part of my hood.” I will never put a smiley face at the end of a sentence or a big red heart, and I am definitely not getting a tatoo. When I was young I lived on the north shore of Oahu one winter. Next door was a house full of surfers that lived on granola and LSD. There was an older guy who seemed to be their “guru” preaching peace, love and psychedelics. I had a hard time taking him seriously because of the playboy bunny tatoo on his arm. Right then I decided I didn’t ever want to make that kind of commitment. It was an exciting winter watching the boys surf pipeline then come home and ohm.
Yoga
I finally went to a yoga class this morning. After the queen mum died I bought a yoga class certificate (on sale) and told myself I was going to go as part of my “taking care of yourself” plan. It’s much easier for me to take care of someone else than myself, I think this is a challenge a lot of caregivers deal with. I set the alarm which I don’t often do so I wouldn’t have an excuse for not going (I’m good at excuses.) It was great as I haven’t taken the time to stretch and breathe in a while and I know how powerfully healing it can be. I used to do yin yoga which is basically stretches on the floor with lots of breathing and onetime as I stretched then relaxed and stretched again my body let go of an injury I had forgotten about. Our yoga teacher today reminded me of a willow tree, long and lean and limber but the best part is she seemed to appreciate that not all of us are willow trees.
Tears
Today was the first day since my mum died that I did not cry. Oh shit, I still have an hour left of this day, maybe I should have waited before making such a brash statement. Yesterday there was a lot of wailing and breast beating, even I didn’t recognize my own crying at one point, it came from a place I have never been before. I imagine that this anguish is like malaria, it probably won’t kill you but it takes its toll in sweat and tears. I always knew I would have a hard time when my mother died, I had tried imagining it while she was alive and I would start to panic. Now it has happened and I am inside the eye of my own hurricane. I should have kept quiet, here come a few sad tears, they hardly count.
Here’s my application
I just turned 65 years old and I am looking for a job. I applied for unemployment but they are giving me grief. I hate bureaucracy. I don’t like being told what to do. So I have to sign these papers agreeing that I am ready and willing and able to work right now. I need to be able to lift 50lbs and stand or sit for eight hours and always have a smile on my face. They don’t mention if I am allowed to cry while I’m smiling. I still cry a lot, I never know when it is going to happen. It reminds me of the weather here in the Pacific Northwest, one moment it’s sunny the next cloudy and overcast. Just like me.
Tuesday
I am working on getting rid of stuff that belonged to the queen mum today. It always makes me emotional and today angry. I believe what happened at the nursing home has traumatized me, and I still wear my grief like a second skin. Today I am looking through the stuff that was in her desk. Everything we could never find so we bought another was in that drawer. Now I have 4 staplers, 3 measuring tapes, 6 pairs of scissors and more pens that I want to count, and push pins and rubber bands and on and on it goes. I have had a couple of people give me suggestions on getting a job. Like I don’t know to look in the newspaper, I hate it when someones suggests the obvious to me. In my heart I know these suggestions come from a place of love and yet it makes me mad because neither one of them has worked a low paying job in forty years. They have no idea what it is like being an itinerant worker these days. I was so surprised how cruel women can be in the workplace. I still have no idea why they didn’t like me and decided to make my working life miserable, no sisterhood working there. And don’t get me started about ageism in the workplace. I see another box to go through, it looks like kitchen stuff, oh good just want I need another potato peeler.
The Buzzy Donahue Show 