tactfullyblunt

"Now you stab mommy"

That's what a man told his son. After he himself finished stabbing his wife, the man gave the knife to his son and said that. His son? TWO-YEARS-OLD.

A man takes his daughter on a plane ride. Straight into her grandma's house, killing himself and the daughter. She? EIGHT-YEARS-OLD [Grandma's ok though].

A man has some heartburn with his wife for reasons still unknown, but suspicions are that it's because he thought she was traveling to her job in Puerto Rico too often. What does he do? Dismembers her with their two kids in the house. FOUR- and SIX-YEARS-OLD.

What. The. Fuck. People?

What kind of a world are we living in where stuff like this happens? To KIDS!

It's not like this is the first time things like this have happened, nor is it the first time where I've been left agog with wonder at the human condition. Somehow it just seems that much more shocking if kids are involved, because I've heard variations of these stories involving other adults more times than I care to consider, and while it's not ok, the "wrongness" is dialed down a little.

Does it make it worse that these people did these things to their own children? Is it any better that things much worse than this are happening half a world away between adults who are completely unrelated to the children they are murdering, mutilating and discarding? When I start considering all of the angles, it boggles my mind. I'm feeling a little nauseated, actually.

....

Unrelated, but this morning I was turning into my gym, thinking happy thoughts, looking forward to spring when it occurred to me that I had no idea when the last time I called my mother was. I wondered how she was doing, and made a happy mental note to pick up the phone to call her today. Only a small blip on the radar was the thought that she's probably annoyed with me for not calling sooner. Oh, well, I thought, maybe we can make plans to do something together--I could use some sewing pointers.

And then it hit me that she has been dead over two years now. And then it hit me again that this is the first time I thought about that and didn't feel like I'd been punched in the gut. Of course I wasn't happy about it, but my thinking was actually, "Oh, well then, that explains why I've not spoken to her in a while" and then a mental laugh (and not a malicious one either).

And then? Then I realized that this was a new way for me to think of her--that while she was alive I would never have been happy about calling her. Nor would I have looked forward to making plans to do something with her. For that matter, I don't know if I'd have taken up sewing had she still been alive. Maybe, I don't know. Regardless, the thought of her put a smile on my face, a smile that she isn't alive to take away from me (as she did numerous times in life; sharing in another's happiness? not her strong suit).

I don't cotton to revisionist history, but I'm wondering if this is a sign that I can have a better relationship with her now that she's dead than I'd ever have had while she was alive?

Happy Birthday, Monkey's Uncle in the J

Dear Mom,

I know you don't need a reminder, but it's been a year since you died. I figure the novelty of spying on your kids has long since worn off, what with your happy hours with JFK, Jimmy Hoffa, JP II and Peter Jennings and all, so I just wanted to share my knowledge bumps with you (in no particular order of importance).

No matter how many talks we had in the lead up to your "transition"--a year later and I still hate that cheesy word--the rest of the world remains unclear about exactly how I felt about you. The moments with the fahmalee have been bad enough, but far worse have been the totally insensitive and way off-base assumptions made by people outside the family. Unfortunately, people have willingly stepped into that vacuum to talk about shit they know nothing about, even going so far as to use our relationship as an excuse for their own poor behavior. This has been a bit of a challenge to me.

I suppose you'd think that would make me upset with you, but it doesn't. I'm pretty good at seeing exactly who is causing the upset, in case you didn't realize that before you died. Besides, if there is one thing I have learned this year, it's that far too many people take this life too seriously; so seriously that they're willing to use the dead to do it. I have done the best I can to bring humor to every situation, even at my own expense. I've dropped the ball on this quite a few times along the way, so I'm aiming for more humor this coming year.

Still and all, it's been a tough slog through the holiday season. It's strange how many people seem to feel it ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE to make comments about how they can't understand how anyone could be sad during the holidays (one person even said that it was rude!!). Even when I've casually pointed out (with not a tear in my eye) that some people have lost a loved one and that makes it a little difficult to plaster on a smile all of the time, I've almost always been met with a "get over it" type response. My knee-jerk response is to wish all manner of hateful karmic things on them, but when I come to my senses I often find myself praying for these people that they never have to have their childlike innocence stripped from them. After all, with such spoiled child behavior, it's obvious that they couldn't handle losing someone during the holidays.

As a person who already had a tendency to feeling low this time of year, the cosmic joke of your passing during the holiday season isn't lost on me. I've done really well this year but malls and Christmas decorations have made me a little misty a few times. I've introduced as many new traditions as I can as a way of dealing with your passage (including hosting a Happy Unbirthday party with the fahmalee as a way to mark the anniversary of your death). Most of them involve food and activities, so you'll be happy to know that I've gained back all of the weight I'd lost last December. I was looking fairly hollow there for a while, but there is no worry of that now, fo sho.

I'm sure you'd be shocked to know that overall, despite the times I've risen to the ugly behaviors of others with my own ugly behaviors, I've gained a lot of ground in the loving department. Without sharing too much of our recent private interactions with the internets, your family is tentatively poised for great growth this coming year thanks to a few carefully placed connections made over Christmas. It would be great if this time you gave your blessing and allowed these relationships to grow beyond what you were comfortable with during your lifetime. They are no longer a threat to you, and in fact, would be a great testament to the children you created.

Mostly I just wanted to say that while I've never been one for revisionist history, I've learned a lot about "us" this last year--I miss you more than most people give me credit. That and also somehow I feel like my New Year this year began on December 31.

Give my love to Sleeping Bear,
Jen

hello again, hello

Today I ate my lunch with your hair.

Not the crisp, grey wig you wear now.
Even after ten years, that wasn't ever really you.
No, I mean the hair you taught me to expect.

I never really noticed your brown teeth, green skin and
red-rimmed eyes, but each time I saw you it was like
my mind had to relearn: Her perfect hair is gone.

I saw your hair one other time, last January at the Home Depot.
It was bobbing along atop a bright green stadium coat,
With great, long, proud strides next to a tall, white-haired man
Who held out his hand.

That is how I want to remember your hair.
Not forever tied to Christmas at The Mall.

conspiratorial irish whispers

Oh Internet, how ye foil my vain attempt to proclaim this day in history as "Jen Becomes Adult Day". Can't frickin' be an adult if you can't access your (ha!) assets in order to flog yourself with how far behind you are in paying your bills.

Can you tell I thought I'd be further along the financial food chain by this point in my everloving life? The fact of the matter is that in the last few weeks I've gotten overly sick of my brain, my body, the internet, the house that is.never.clean.or.finished, and, well, everything about my self. Add to that the strange omnipresence (in the last two or three weeks) of my mother's ghost and you've got me: a woman on the edge. A me finding my ass suddenly aflame with the desire to do.some.fucking.thing.about.it. If only I could find the right zealotry.

So far the best I've been able to come up with is to go back to being totally anal retentive with my pennies, clean like someone with OCD, make incessant lists (and actually do (!!) them), and just return to what seemed to work on some level for me in my 20s by going all perfectionist on my life. The problem with my doing that, and the reason that I've ultimately been so resistant in the last few months, is that not too many people were willing to be part of my life then. I mean, they were part of my life by dint of proximity, but they weren't actually willing. It was more like I was a force of nature that just sucked up everything around me and then threw it all back out, spent and shrivelled. I thought I was so "advanced" with my volume-at-11-emotions but I was totally unbending and completely unforgiving of the faults of those closest to me. I'm not the most consistently social person yet, but now that I've got people around me who actually enjoy my company and stay in contact with me, as God is my witness, I never want to go hungry again!

Working toward adulthood has been a fine line to walk and I'm not sure I'm doing a great job of it. In fact, I've been a lazy shit. Which is probably why yesterday I took advantage of the fact that all of my female siblings were home and suggested we go through Mom's closet. It wasn't originally my intention to do that when I got down there, the idea and the words just sorta fell out of my mouth. And, despite the fact that the clothes smelled like she'd just worn them yesterday and some misty eyes, it went smoothly.

Mom wasn't much of a fashion plate in her later years, but she had saved so many old clothes from her youth that there were things back in fashion. We all had emotional responses to different clothes, but it was the 70s era clothes that made me miss her the most. She was so pretty, so thin, so everything this chubby-little-girl-everyone-always-mistook-for-a-boy wanted to be. Cathy tried on one of the cocktail outfits and instantly I was five again. Dad didn't remember that outfit, but I sure did: a black, one-piece looooowww-cut, halter topped, flare-pants jumpsuit with the accompanying lace-backed, bell-sleeved jacket. I don't remember knowing what sexy was at five, but I thought she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen walking out the door wearing that, tossing her Farrah hair over her shoulder and telling me to behave for the baby-sitter (who proceeded to drug me with cough syrup so she and her friends could drink all the alcohol in the house). Cathy looked really good in it. She said she was going to use it for her Halloween costume this year...I think she's going as a hooker.

I miss my Mom today, but I'm ok about it. Because I know somewhere out there she's throwing around her Farrah hair and totally flirting with Peter Jennings. We both had a crush on him but I'm ok with Mom getting to him first--because she's so smokin' hot. Rock on, Pete, you don't know what's about to hit ye.

.......

In this photo I am thinking how wrong it is that my Mom is so durn cute.

My Dad said that a Gunny he works with said "Who's the ugly dame?" when he saw this picture last week. This, people, is my father's father and is the gene pool from whence I come. Thank the Christ I got his sense of humor as well.

vision. getting. cloudy.

deepbreathsdeepbreaths

A coworker just came into the room to call the ICU and check with her father's nurse on his condition. Due to complications with his cancer (my question is, how can cancer really get any more complicated?), he has contracted pneumonia and is having heart palpitations. She asked the nurse if she was allowed to speak to him and I can only infer that the nurse said he was elsewhere getting tests and would be back later. So coworker just asked the nurse, calmly with no tremors in her voice, if she would let him know that she had called and that she loved him.

Listening to the whole conversation just totally left me watching a movie of my mother from last year in August when she was at Georgetown, wheeling her from the helicopter to the ICU, then up to the Bone Marrow ward, then repeatedly downdowndown for the numerous CAT scan, MRIs and xrays.

At the end of the movie I was left with one thought: I wish I could tell my mom how much I love her.

For some reason in the last 48 hours, I've had two people call in reference to my mother's death, my aunt has checked in on me (I've got to call her back tonight), and several people have talked to me about friends going through parents' dying and death. It seems to come like this for me, several weeks of relative quiet (although I thought of her a LOT in Ireland, and I even let go of a part of her there) and then I get whallopped by external cues.

Despite my relationship with her, I miss her.

happy momorial day

I have lived in my neighborhood for 11 years but I still almost drove right by the turn to my house. I was writing this post in my head and it was going something like this:

It was as she was driving that she realized again what she was doing instead of living her life. She was so rattled that she nearly missed her turn. What was so important about the study of herself that there were so many moments like these? Was it really so necessary that she study herself as if there was a PhD riding on it? PhD Candidate, Miss Self-Centered, being hooded by Dr Know-It-All for All-Time-Champion-Self-Study. Dissertation "Comparison and Contrast of Self With Others: Does Anyone Really Make Any Headway or Is It All a Cosmic Joke (with Alien Flagella)".

It's not often that I think of myself in the third person, which is why I think I nearly missed my turn. Ultimately, by looking at it that way, I think I was trying to shake myself into writing more regularly about interesting topics (besides birds and cake). It's obvious that I'm stuck in a rut these days and I'm doing my best to shake it loose. Despite the writing malaise, I've been remarkably creative lately, and while I really don't have much concrete to show for it, I'm doing a bang-up job of reminding myself of how just thinking creatively is a success. I am proud, which is something I rarely allow myself to experience, so I know I have made some progress, even though pride is one of the seven deadlies.

Today, incidentally, is the six-month anniversary of Mom's death. I'm certain that if she is still watching or aware of the fact that it is also Memorial Day, she is probably laughing. She always was one for the drama, my mother. Which is why I think I'm more apt these days to see her in slightly odd tableaus instead of through the "regular channels". For instance, at the Home Depot on Saturday, I was returning the cart while Bill revved the Jeep when I saw a triangularly-folded flag in the rear window of a Honda. It was setting stars-side-up, resting cattywompus off the back of the headrest, half in the sunlight and half in the shade cast by the roof--which is what I think caught my eye. Truly, it couldn't have been a better study of light and dark if Orson Welles had set up the shot himself (and who knows, maybe he's working for TSP now). I immediately flashed back to the soggy January day when the marines came to hand my father the flag from my mother's coffin as we all huddled next to him underneath the tent.

Mom was a Navy nurse for a relatively short period of time in her nursing career, and despite some hellacious stories of the Viet Vets at the Gainesville VA Hospital where she did some of her rounds, she'd never left American soil (even her stint at the GVA was done after she was no longer in the Navy). Still, in the last few years of her life it really appeared to irk her that she wasn't entitled to the same veteran's benefits that Dad gets. So it was a great thing for Dad to arrange an honor guard with 21-guns for her funeral rites, and I hope that gets him some points in the positive column with Posthumous Monica.

And, while it was movie cool that she got the honor she'd wanted during her life, it was just as movie heartbreaking to see the tears well up in my father's eyes as the master seargent handed him the folded flag, thanking my mother by proxy for her service to her country. It was one of the few times I saw my father cry in relation to her death, and probably the time that hit him hardest. That folded flag. You can't get much more closure than that for someone who's spent most of their life devoted to the military in one form or another.

All of this flashed through my mind instantly in the Home Depot parking lot and then I wondered: who would leave a flag folded that way, an obvious sign that it came off of a coffin, in the back window of their car? Especially in a state that implies it was casually thrown back there as you would a box of kleenex or one of those crown-shaped air fresheners? It left me wondering about the driver's relationship with the person who had passed. It was this thought, out of all the ramshackle thoughts about the flag, which brought the tears to my eyes.

But I shook them off before I reached the Jeep and Bill was none the wiser. I am, after all, making progress.

funny, innit?

Yesterday I got one of those orange slips in my mail that used to make me feel like jumping for joy when I was in college because it meant Mom had gone to the dollar store and bought out all of the post season candy. This time, the originating zip code made me think it was going to be from Hospice. Joy.

It was almost my turn in the post office this morning when someone at the back of the line called my name. Who is it but J., my wonderful ex-upstairs neighbor from the mansion (who brought me cake the other week after hearing about Mom). I have my turn, sign for a letter from an address I don't recognize and start heading for the door when J. motions for me to wait, which despite my busy morning I did. My letter was from the registrar of wills; I was thankful I waited.

Seems a mutual friend is going to be in town this weekend (for a funeral) and wanted to have a girls' visit. As we were making plans we got to talking about how we've been handling things. J. lost her life partner of 25 years in a boating accident last Labor Day. We swapped war stories and realized that there are so many things you don't expect from grief. Some things are like gifts from the other side and others kick you in ding-dings you didn't even know you had. But today we acknowledged that there was a reason we ran into one another, both of us behind in our schedules. We hugged and said a misty goodbye.

I got into my car and rounded the corner towards St Mark's Church. I wasn't even all the way through my turn when I saw the big black box being loaded into the hearse. I thought these reminders were only supposed to come in threes. It's just like Mom to hammer me over the head with the hearse.

I get it already. Sheesh.

ain't nothing in the world can't be cured by bob evans

Last November my father called to ask if I would drive him to get his "mechanisms checked" in January. Things being what they are, he had to reschedule for this Friday morning. While I know this is yet another thing visited upon him by aging, there is a part of me that is concerned. The old dude is a scrapper and seems to be in perfect health so I'm holding on to that fact.

Three years ago, after his last visit, my mother had quite a time getting him home. It seems that it all starts out laughs and jokes until he gets (as she put it) cantankerous and demands (demands!) to be taken to Bob Evans. Apparently he is of the belief that if he is required to flush his system so vigorously the night before that he needs to, ahem, plug the hole the morning after with lard. This is something I cannot understand--at all--because eating that food has absolutely the opposite effect on me.

The thing that makes me really wonder is that they send you away with photos of your incredible journey. Photos. I'm all for being excited about your work, but for the love of all that is good in the world, a colonoscopy is not a summer trip to Wild, Wacky, Who-Ha World, people. I don't want photos of my Dad's intestines to put in a keychain viewer or on an airbrushed t-shirt. And I certainly don't want them after he told me that Mom took great satisfaction in telling him how dirty his intestines were the last time:

"See that? That's poop, Bob, POOP. I told you you weren't done. I can't believe you made Bruce look at that..."

With that you get a window into my mother's pathology: she was infinitely more concerned that her friend Bruce saw feces in her husband's intestines than she was with the fact that her friend Bruce was poking around her husband's heiney-hole. If there ever was a reason for me to be thankful for not going to med school, it would have to be knowing that Bill will never have to make small talk at a company holiday party with the man who inspects his rectum (you're welcome, honey).

Man, I hate Bob Evans.

ask and ye shall receive, dangblastit

I want to be clear: what follows is merely a way of relating information and *not* whining on any front. I take my fortune where I may, and I am glad for it.

Yesterday I was concerned I'd not have the stones to be creative three days next week. So I got a phone call from another source asking me for my creativity, bringing it up to five days of creativity. Five! Five days of creativity! HA-Ha-ha!

Yesterday I was upset that I'd only read three books of nine. So I read another. Four! Four books read! HA-Ha-ha!

Yesterday I whined about not having assembled my OCD plastic-sleeved organizational binders for the house, gardening, and graphic design ideas. So I cut up some magazines I've had since last year and updated the existing house folder and made two new ones for the others. Two...I'm over this, so you can fill in the blanks for yourself, Count.

As I was getting the cleanest edge possible with my ruler and xacto blade (*cough*OCD*cough*), I flashed back to August 2004. I was lying on my stomach on the cold lineoleum floor of a darkened room on Georgetown University Hospital's Bone Marrow Ward. The IV machines clanked away and Mom slept in the largest pair of old lady wraparound sunglasses I could find. She'd complained they were hurting her face, so I'd spent the last half hour fashioning padding for the nosebridge and sides out of old bandaids I had in my purse. That seemed to help, for the time being anyway, and she was peaceful.

There was one tiny sliver of a floor to ceiling window in this room, and the shade was always drawn. Any light that could've potentially come in was blocked by the building almost immediately next to it, but we kept the shade closed out of deference to Mom. Pretty much the only way I could survive being in total darkness for 8-24 hours at a time was to lie on the floor next to that window, prop out the shade about an inch or so, and read by the smallest amount of light possible. When it got dark, I used a flashlight. I think that's why I read so many gardening magazines; I needed to feel connected in however remote a way to living, growing things.

Periodically Mom would slur out, "What are you doing down there?" When I told her I was reading a magazine, her response was always based upon her comfort at the moment. Sometimes I was being too noisy, sometimes she was just checking to make sure I was still there, sometimes she'd have me turn on the Olympics and still others she'd say something particularly nasty and unwarranted. I can't tell you how often I had to remind myself of her situation and the fact that ultimately she really needed me. I choked back some bitter tears in the face of that. I remember thinking that it couldn't possibly get much worse. Ah, the naivete of youth.

So here I am in 2005, having seen it get much worse than last August, and I'm still pouring through all of that detritus selfishly trying to figure out what I am supposed to do with it. Bill has been gently prodding me to start writing a book (a book!) about the experience of taking care of Mom. Sometimes I think it's a great idea and others I'm reminded of how many other people have written about taking care of a dying parent and I lose my gumption. I'm just not sure how many people would want entre into the purely gallows humor I have. Even I find it frightening, some of the things that go through my mind as the shit comes down. The question I keep asking myself is would I read my book?

I really don't know. I've had a hard enough time living it, I don't know if I could read a book about it. Well, unless it made sense of it all. That I would read five bajillion times.

sometimes the old ways really were the best ways

Modern grief is hard.

Back in the day, when people by-and-large lived in small communities and everyone knew everyone else, they still wore emblems of loss after a death in the family. That way, in the off chance that a stranger should happen upon their little burg, there would be no confusion because a black dress or arm band would scream out at them, "HALT! Death hovers here. Please be gentle with me."

I'm making a huge leap here, but it seems from the outset that certain things must've been made easier for the grieving because of these visible symbols. From what I've read, unless you were a widow with mouths to feed and financial support to be procured, you pretty much could grieve at your own pace and everyone else would know exactly where you were in the process. When you finally removed your funerary weeds, everyone knew that while you would always feel the loss, you were finally ready to resume your place in the land of the happily living.

I thought about this because while I am doing (what I think is) relatively well, I am still having trouble actively seeking social activities. I do leave the house, I've had two or three phone calls with friends (family doesn't count because we often talk of our loss and how we're doing), and last night I even stayed out waaaay past my bedtime with a friend (thanks, Joelbrett). Even so, I feel a little reticent about interacting because my experience has been that people are so uncomfortable with their own notions of death that they generally assume that if a month has gone by since the funeral, that if you talk about it once or twice, and/or if you act like everything is just as ok as it was before the loss, that you're magically over it and you'll never need to talk about it again. Maybe if I still had the black garb as a cosmic shout out/protective barrier it wouldn't be that way, and what's more, I wouldn't have to explain myself.

In three days it will be a month since Mom died, and the rubberbanding between detachment and acceptance has given me some emotional whiplash.

I don't know that I need to talk about Mom right now, but the option to talk about her loss would be nice from time to time, even if it's eight months from now.

If you see me and I am smiling big, don't assume that I'm totally lying to you; I'm also partially lying to myself. Eventually I will be over it and I won't have to worry that I'm going to burst into tears if I see a woman in a public place with hair like Mom's before she had chemo.

She sure had beautiful hair.