Let It Go

I have a bad habit of keeping things when I have no use for them.  I keep coupons past their expiration dates.  Empty shoe boxes.  Birthday cards, anniversary cards, Christmas cards, love notes, just because notes, small pieces of paper containing handwriting.  Like I'm hanging on to them in case the words that were written decide to fade off of the paper, which means they no longer exist.  That the words of love that feel forgotten will just float away.  I think that's why I love Facebook so much.  It documents everything.  Every photo, every funny or heartfelt comment.  And at any time you can go back to that time in your head and there it is, right in front of you.  Well, you and whomever you are friends with.

Now my addiction to shoe boxes?*  That's something I just can't explain.  It's like one day I will finally figure out the true reason for keeping them and I can be all smug and tell Thomas, "See?!  I TOLD you they would come in handy one day!"

Then there is the part of me that just forgets when it's time to get rid of something.  Duplicate photos stashed in tucked away computer folders.  They don't take up "space" in a physical sense, so what's the harm?  It's not that I'm attached to digital photos, it's just that I forget they're there.  Floating around in my hard drive just waiting to be looked at, uploaded, or discarded.  Emails in saved folders that have no redeeming quality other than at one point in time they were needed.  Paper documentation from my first drivers permit to my last drivers license with the fat face smiling back at the camera.  My first home purchase, my second home purchase.  And of course both records of their eventual sale. But just like the shoe boxes I hang on to them, as if one day I will have a use for them.

My cell phone is no different than my computer.  Folders and files sit in the memory banks waiting to be queued up and looked at. Call logs date back to the day I purchased the phone over a year ago.  Text messages from months and months ago are there too.  These are the things that I forget about.  My life is filled with enough to remember to do, so forgetting to delete something that means nothing is not at the top of my To-Do List.  It's not until I start to go through them all am I reminded of why I couldn't delete them in the first place.  Like Facebook, my phone stores a photo or a memory of words within it that at a moment's notice I can go and remember that time and that day.  Even when those times hurt.



I took this photo somewhere in the skies over the midwest on the morning of September 4th.  It was early and I was exhausted.  I hadn't even gotten to her yet and I was already mentally wasted.  I was terrified but all I knew was that my family needed me more than they had ever needed me in my life.  I was sad that I had just wiped the tears from my husband's cheeks as we said goodbye at curbside check-in.  I knew I was going to remember those moments for the rest of my life, but this photo speaks volumes of emotions to me.  To some it's a photo of clouds, to me it was just the beginning.




I took this photo on the night of September 7th.  By boarding time I was going on about 8 hours of sleep over the past four days.  I had a couple of beers in the bar before getting on and immediately took the First Class flight attendant up on her offer of a stiff drink before take off.  I remembered that I had procured some heavy duty sleep aids before I left and as the pilot announced before take off that we were expected to experience turbulence over Oklahoma City I decided that for the first time in my entire life I was going to sleep on a plane.  I didn't want to be awake for any of it.  As we taxied toward the runway I swallowed the pill.  As we were headed for take off I pulled the blanket over me, closed the window shade, and closed my eyes.  To this day I don't remember taking off, and I don't remember any turbulence.  That was the best hour of sleep I have ever gotten.  The pilot's voice over the speakers woke me up.  I heard Dallas.  I heard flight attendants prepare for landing.  I opened the window shade and saw the lights of Dallas below me.  I snapped this photo with tears in my eyes.  Knowing that I was 500 miles away from the pain I had just experienced.  I was within minutes of seeing my husband for the first time in days.  I was home.  My real home.

These photos are among many that sit in my phone.  Along with the text messages between her and I in the weeks and days before her death.  Along with the text messages from those who reached out to me after she was gone.  And just like those greeting cards I keep, I can't seem to part with any of them.  As if I am daring my phone to blip and erase it all for me just so I don't have to go back through it all and do the deed myself.

I feel like I'm starting to get to a good place in my own grief process.  I don't think about it every day like I used to.  My anger is slowly dwindling.  My sadness is more about the loss of what could have been instead of what really was.  I'm beginning to let go of things in my life that no longer bring me the joy it once did.  Why hang on to something if it hurts?  Why keep something for the sake of keeping it?  Let it go, throw it away, donate it, delete it and then empty the recycle bin.  Life will and does go on.  I am finally beginning to realize that holding on tight to the past and never wanting to let it go can hold you back, can keep you from moving on and letting yourself heal.  I don't want to dwell in that any longer.

I'll start with the expired coupons, then to the cards.   My memories and emotions are more difficult to let go of, and I know I will have to put the true memory of those three days into words before I can finally push past them, but for now I let them sit.  Happy that with each day they become older and with age comes wisdom. It's so much easier to write about it now, I can only imagine that when my heart and mind know they are ready the words will flow and then I can tuck it away right here in this little corner of the internet.  Out of my head, but permanently written just in case I ever want to come back to it.

The shoe boxes though?  We'll see about that...




* I swearz on everything holy I am not a hoarder.  I'm a hider.  There's a differencel.  And I just so happen to really like shoe boxes.

A New Year

Amazingly enough, December was a good month.  Did my entire office get laid off in which we all simultaneously panicked?  Yes.  But after a few days of trying to figure out just what in the FUCK we were going to do now it all seemed to calm down.  We all took a breath and looked for other employment.  We all found it...eventually.  I was the first, of course.  Like there was any doubt in anyones mind about that.  I can't handle NOT working.  It's not me.  It's not how I operate.  I did take the entire month to finally make my decision and chose to start the beginning of the new year.  A new year, a new job.  Funny enough it's the exact same job I had before.  Same company even.  Just a different environment.  It's taken some getting used to but it seems to have smoothed itself out nicely.  

I miss my friends though.  My boys.  The ones I've spent the last nine years with.  I've been there for marriages, new homes, births of their children.  They made me laugh.  I don't laugh as much now.

We spent Christmas in Missouri.  Moving my grandmother was challenging, but it kept us from remembering.  At least for the majority of the time.  I teetered between ambivalence and anger.  There wasn't sadness.  The goal was to get my grandmother moved, get her comfortable, and then get the hell out of town.  We accomplished it nicely.  I spent Christmas Eve with my father's side of the family.  That sentence still blows my mind.  Many years I did not even think about those people, and now they're in our lives.  Life is strange.

New Year's was spent at home.  Just Thomas and I.  It was better than any fancy dinner or drunken party.  It was just us.  I wanted the year to finally end and it did.  The year that I couldn't imagine getting any worse.  The year that kicked me square in the ass and then had the nerve to laugh at me.  But it's all over now and now we move on.

I turned another year older this week.  I didn't want to think about it but for a brief moment I was sad when I remembered that she wouldn't be calling me.  There would be no birthday card from her.  The moment passed when I remembered that one year that she forgot my birthday.  She was too busy being a drunk.

Her loose ends are, for the most part, tied up.  The burdens that were hanging over my head for so long are practically gone now.  I know it changed me though.  Permanently changed me.  It's not bitterness, it's reality.  I'm okay with my reality.  I look forward to putting last year behind me and moving forward.  Take all the bad I was given and turn it in to good this year.  Learn from my mistakes and grow from it.  Prove to anything and anyone that I am better for it all in the end.  We all are. 

Really, Jesus? Really?!

Just when you think you can breathe a little sigh of relief as life starts to calm down.  BAM!  Shit just got real, real fast.

It seems that someone wanted me to have a little time off during the holidays and yesterday morning my boss, my co-workers, and I were told that our insurance services were no longer needed by my company.  After 9 years of working with the same people, going to the same office, dealing with the same clients, it's all over.  

I should be in a panic because I'm out of a job, but I'm not.  I just feel like someone died.  Again.

Dear Lord,

Uncle.  Please.  I'm pretty sure I've had my fill this year.  I know you'll only give me what I can handle but I'm at my limit.  Help me out here.

Love,

Mo

A Hint Of Light

I made it through Thanksgiving with just a few fleeting moments of sadness.  I sat in the dining room, swirling a glass of wine, and thought of Thanksgivings from the past.  Trying to remember a Thanksgiving with my mother.  Funny enough, I couldn't.  I have several memories burned into my brain but not a single one of them contain my mother.  My grandmother is the only person I can recollect from those times.  Her in the kitchen at dawn, already starting on the cooking for the large group of people she was expecting later in the day.  Her homemade bread dough laying underneath damp dish towels, rising, telling me to hurry up and close the back door as to not let the cold air in the warm humid room.  Her rushing at the last minute to take time for herself to get ready before every one walked in the door.  The house spotless, smelling like roasted turkey and every pie you can possibly imagine.  The day before she and I would clean the house and while she made the next days desserts I would polish the dining room table and chairs.  Her mother's antique table cloth, ironed and beautiful, was the final touch.  The day after Thanksgiving wasn't for shopping in my family, it was for pulling out the Christmas decorations.  For three days her and I would put up the 9 foot tall tree, decorate the house from top to bottom, and my grandfather would do every thing in his power to put as many Christmas lights on the outside of the house as humanly possible.

Thanksgiving for me isn't about family or even giving thanks.  For me it was about that time I spent in the kitchen with my grandmother.  Watching her move effortlessly around the kitchen.  Never once pulling out a cook book but remembering how to make a dozen different dishes from memory.  The warmth of the kitchen from the oven having been on constantly since the day before.  Her and I talking about everything and her trying to instill in me some sort of culinary skill that I really never retained.

This Thanksgiving I thought of her, and I was sad for her.  Not because I wasn't there with her on that day but because I knew that her mind was filled with her own memories and her own sadness.  I was sad because I could feel her grief from 500 miles away.  

She told me this week that come hell or high water she was planning to move in December.  I figured that would put us in Missouri right around Christmas time, to help her finish packing, and to help her move.  Getting her moved and settled will be the last major hurdle to overcome.  Of the two hurdles already jumped this should be the easiest one.  Easier than deciding to turn off the machines and easier than burying.  As Thomas said to me, "This is a light at the end of the tunnel."  He's right, it is.  The physical portion of this death is finally coming to a close, but it's the emotional part that I'm almost certain I haven't sprinted past yet.  Keeping my brain and my body occupied with other things can only help me for so long.  At some point I'm going to have to grieve and then let go.  

A part of me thinks my grandmother chose to move in December to keep herself occupied as well.  Stay busy with other things so as to "forget" that Christmas is upon us.  A holiday that to me does mean family.  A holiday that meant all of us being together in the living room, each opening one gift at a time.  A loud crazy night filled with love.  Those are the memories that make my heart hurt more than I could ever describe.  The memories of how just a few short years ago I took Thomas "home" for Christmas and he was absolutely blown away with how overwhelmingly Christmas-y everything was.  I am so grateful for that.  So very grateful for that particular night to be so alive in my mind.  The night I cried with laughter and cried with happiness.  For the diamond stud earrings Thomas gave me that I had been wanting for so long.  For the ring my mom surprised me with.  The ring my father had given her when he asked her to marry him.  And mostly because she finally believed it was time for me to have it.  I had become enough of a "grown-up" to have it and as I cried she cried and she hugged me and told me she loved me.  In my heart I know there will never be another Christmas like one. It can't be recreated.  But there will be other Christmas', full of love and family and new traditions.  I will always think of her though.  I will always remember the look on her face, the look of pure joy, when she saw my surprise at receiving the ring.  She was so happy.

One holiday down, one more to go.  This year all I want for Christmas is for it to be over with.  

Worry

I 100% accept every emotion I have felt in the last two months. I bring it on myself. For the worry, the anxiety, the everything-is-out-my-control psycho mental moments. I stepped up to the task of "handling" what needed to be handled. Because truly, who else was going to step up to that daunting task? Nobody, that's who. Whether it be lack of funds, lack of knowledge, or lack of giving of a shit there was no one else to take over and be The One In Control. I'm amazed that I've been able to accomplish what I have based on the fact that I know fuck all.

I have no one else to blame. Not a single soul. Could more people step up and play a stronger role in taking the million pounds of burden off of my shoulders? Sure, they could but I don't blame them for not doing it. Not their responsibility. And that is what gets me in the end. When did this become MY responsibility? Was it because she birthed me 30 years ago and attempted to raise me? I guess it is. Or was it because I made it my responsibility because I didn't want that burden on the shoulders of the people that I love, even though it hurts me every single day?

Not a day goes by that I don't think about it. Sure, there are plenty of days when I don't think about the entire ins and outs of the situation. Days when I refuse to acknowledge that there is still so much left to do, left to pay out, left to wonder about. Then the days that I do choose to face reality and the thirty seconds of "what ifs" run through my head so fast it makes me dizzy I am left with anxiety and a lump in my throat.

I hate her. I love her. I'm relieved. I miss her. I am angry. I am sad.

These emotions are present and they change constantly. One for the other, one no better or no worse than the other because they all equal pain.

I've realized that I have been avoiding having conversations or exchanging emails with my grandmother. It never brings good news and knowing that she is in full depression yet refuses to do anything about it pains me even more. I know she is hurting. Hurting more than any of us can know or can imagine. But what she doesn't know is that she is hurting me in return. I am the sounding board, I am the one she knows she can talk to and pour her emotions out to without judgement. Every therapist needs a therapist though. A person can only contain so much sadness before they themselves are brought down. So instead of telling her that I need more positivity in my life I don't talk to her much anymore. Besides, what is there to talk about? The weather? Yea, I know it's cold there. The news? It's all crap anyways. My mom? All we do is end up saying the same things over and over again. We get absolutely nowhere.

Until she starts making some major decisions I will worry. And for a person who isn't good at worrying so I never really did it, it's chipping away my soul. Day by day it eats a little part of me away. The old me who didn't worry, the old me who wasn't anxious constantly wondering when the next bad thing is going to happen. The new me waits every day and I'm thankful for the good times when Thomas hugs me tight and tells me it will all be okay, when I laugh, when my friends message me just to ask how I'm doing. I am grateful for the good that I'm given. More so than I can ever put into words.

Moving On

It doesn't feel like it's been six weeks since she died. Some days it feels like it was yesterday, some days it feels like it was an eternity ago. The days when it feels like it was yesterday are few, but there are moments when I forget. I forget she died. I forget how she died. But something triggers the memory and then I remember. It takes my breath away. I haven't cried in weeks because there is nothing to cry about. What's done is done and shedding tears isn't going to make anything change.

I think what angers me most is that while her and I weren't close, hadn't ever been close my entire life, I feel like she took that option away from me. She left me to wonder about a relationship between us that could've developed. Had started to develop for a short period of time. I'm angry at her because I will never have the opportunity to look her in the eyes, tell her I forgive her, and actually mean it.

I'm also angry because I should be concentrating on more important things in my life. My job, my new house, my husband, my friends, my responsibilities but I can't because I feel like I have this heavy burden hanging over my head. It's constant. Knowing that there is still so much left to do. Obligations of helping my family and trying to keep the burden off of them. While I had prepared my mind for her death long ago I really had no way of comprehending the repercussions of her dying. I'm only one person and I cannot fully fill the void the she left behind. All I can do now is wait.

I worry about my sister. She's so introverted and she's so angry. We really don't talk much because there really isn't much to say. I always thought the older we both got the more we would have in common and we would grow closer. I think our mother's death has caused a rift between us that may never heal. Only time will truly tell how she recovers from this. Maybe one day she will understand why I had to do what I did and what I said.

While there are plenty of moments of bad there are still many more moments of wonderful in my life. When I have those moments of bad, when things just seem so overwhelming, I remember that my life is good. I have it good. We will all get past this and we will all move on. Right now I'm doing my best to focus on my work and on the house. Every thing we do ourselves is a victory because it's usually something neither of us has ever done before. There is still so much to finish but it's a work in progress. A work in progress that Thomas and I can be proud of.

04/20/60 - 09/05/11

I buried my mother on September 24th.

That same day two years prior I saw her in Las Vegas, all smiles, prepared and excited to walk her first born down the aisle.

I buried my mother next to her father in a small cemetery that is filled with other people I have lost over the last 30 years. I hugged my family members and stood next to my husband and wept like a child. The last three weeks of sadness, frustration, and anger pouring out of me like a river. I don't remember much of the short service or what the pastor said. I just remember gripping the tiny golden urn in my hand which held a small amount of her ashes. I placed a single red rose beside her grave. My sister and I held each other and cried. All I could do was stroke her shiny brown hair and tell her that everything would be okay. One day.

I spent my 2nd wedding anniversary sorting through the last 51 years of my mother's life. Paperwork, clothing, belongings, all had to be cleared out. Tying up her loose ends will take more time than I really care to think about.

I find that I have to correct myself now. Present tense to past tense. Old habits are hard to break. But I know that everything will be okay. We will all be okay. One day.