Batteries

Part of the coping process is that you have to deal with the ignorant and irritating things that people say and do, and not let it get to you. I was walking down the street the other day listening to two rude women having a conversation very loudly about Christmas. One of the women went on and on about how the worst situation that she could imagine was that they didn't have any batteries on Christmas morning. This usually would have elicited a response in my head about how practical she was, but since my mother died two days after Christmas, my perspective has somewhat (nee completely) changed. It wouldn't have been so bad if the woman didn't continue her rant for a whole block, going on and on. Then she proceeded to say that she would rather be dead than not have batteries on Christmas. Being a big fan of the overdramatic use of hyperbole in my general conversation, I thought it was pretty funny, but at the same time I was thinking about my mother and how this woman really needed a dose of reality and perspective.

Part of the coping process is that you can't let people like this anonymous woman get to you. You could be proverbially dying of grief on the inside, but you can't just march up to people and yell at them for being idiots about batteries on Christmas, no matter how much you might want to. You have to remember that everyone looks at life through their own window, and that no one, not even the people who know you best, really know what you are going through. Nor can they, so you can't blame them either. Coping is extremely difficult but it is a very personal process.

Coping 101

There has been a significant slow-down in my writing lately, and the reason is the season. Christmas was my favorite time of year until my mom got sick. Everything having to do with Christmas now reminds me of her, but not in a positive, happy way, in the way that I am constantly flooded with images of her as a sick person, a suffering person, a dead person. I don't need to be reminded of the horrific times we had as a family watching her die. Unfortunately, Christmas still reminds me of the sickness and death. I am hoping that this will eventually wear off- each year it gets a little easier, but this is now the third Christmas since she died, and I am still getting used to it.

My next few writings will focus on coping- what to actually do with yourself, and some suggestions that I have for what people can do to survive when grief has taken over your happiness. Suggestion number one follows.

Write to them. Sit down, write a letter or two, or fill up an entire journal of letters or conversations to your mom or whoever you are missing. When my mom died I went for weeks feeling endlessly verbally constipated with all of the things that was so used to talking about with her. Even when she was sick and unable to speak, I chewed her ear off on the phone and in person about everything we used to talk about. After she was gone, there was a hole left in that part of my day when I used to talk to her. At first I tried to find a substitute for her- someone else in my life with whom I could banter endlessly about the food network or people's rediculous outfits. I tried talking to friends, family members, even helpless people in the grocery store. Somehow no matter who I talked to, nothing made me feel like there wasn't a giant hole in my life without my mother. What you need to do is try not to fill that hole, but to find a way over it. Go down in the hole and see what is there. Embrace the hole. I started writing to her. I got myself a nice empty journal and I started writing messages to her. I wrote whole letters, short quips, little hellos, and long diatribes about how much I hate Oprah. In the beginning you think you are a crazy person and that you might be a part of a Nicholas Sparks novel (that is NOT a good thing) but then you come to a place where you need to write, and it feels fulfilling when you have written. Sometimes, a lot of times actually, all I could write was "Where are you?" I wrote it over and over. She didn't answer.

One more thought on God before I move on...

There has been a bit of a lapse since my last entry because I have been thinking about this entry for a while and didn't really know how to say it so that it came out just right. I have now resigned myself to the idea that it probably won't be right at first, but someday when I make this all into a book, I will make it perfect.

I have one more thought on God and the presence or absence of a higher power in my life, and it is because of a special friend of mine. My dad has always said that you will only have four or five true friends in your lifetime if you are really lucky. I am really, really lucky, because I almost lost one of them but we found each other again, and I am not letting go now, or ever.

I met Molly when we were about 11- neither of us can really remember exactly when we went from being bitter rivals to best friends, but it must have been a smooth transition. Through our friendship we helped each other along through the ups and downs of middle school and high school, through finding and letting go of our first loves, and all of the other firsts that come and go in those years. She was more than just a friend to me, she was my family, my insides. She went on family vacations with us and my mom in particular had an extra special fondness for her. Molly is a constant fixture in the story of my life.

When we went away to college, a lot of things changed- we were living on different sides of the country, studying completely different subjects, hanging in completely different circles of friends. In the natural sway of the wind of life, we drifted apart. Both of us resisted this drifting and tried to hang on, but something forced us finally to take a "break" from each other. Our lives moved on in separate directions. It was like I woke up one morning and she just wasn't there. I was devastated. Unfortunately, what I regret most is that I didn't work hard enough- I didn't try to save us, I just glided along on the wind and allowed it to happen. My own immaturity got in the way of having my best friend with me when I graduated from college, planned my wedding, and worst of all, my wedding day. I thought we would never speak to each other again. We were different, our existence as an "us" was gone.

Not long after my wedding, both of us were in attendance at the wedding of one of our mutual best friends. My mother had been very concerned for those two years about the fact that Molly was not in my life anymore, and I remember her crying on the phone to me about it on numerous occasions. Days before the wedding she pleaded with me to patch things up, to try harder, to reach out in some way. I dug way down deep inside and I went up to Molly at the wedding and told her I missed her. We talked and hugged and it was like I had my old Molly back. It was like finding and old teddy bear that you thought had been given away ages ago, and all of the fond memories come flooding back and you are overwhelmed with a sense of nostalgia, happiness, and sadness all at once.

The repair of our friendship took a while, but it is now better than ever and I know that she will be a significant part of my life forever. What is it that makes two people who have drifted so far away from each other come back together, and then, to be closer than ever before? Why did my mother continually remind me of someone that I loved when she knew how much it hurt me that we weren't friends anymore?

Fast forward three years- my mother is diagnosed with a terminal illness. My mother, my guiding light in my life, the greatest source of guidance and calm in my life, taken away. My sense of balance and good in the world shattered. Here's where the idea of a possible God comes in for me. If there is a God, could he/it forsee that I was going to need Molly in my life, and know what was ahead for me? Did he know that I wouldn't be able to get through the loss of my mother without such a valuable person in my life? The way these events in my life were woven together in such a significant way leads me to feel that something somewhere must have been looking out for me. Furthermore, after my mother's death, three other extremely important friends from my past became closer than ever to me and each other- are the major events in your life that are involving different people all over the country inextricably linked in a completely random way? IS that really possible? I will talk more about those other three people in a later section about positive outcomes from negative events.

Charlotte and the Red Balloon

My cousin has a daughter named Charlotte, and she is the cutest thing ever. I know I probably describe all children as "the cutest thing ever," but she is really, really cute. My mom had a thing for her. I think Charlotte reminded my mom of me when I was a little kid, because we both had that wispy, barely-there blond hair, blue eyes, and a touch of sass. Charlotte is now about 6, she was born the year I was married (I remember this because she cried during the ceremony). When my mom died, I remember my Aunt Nancy telling me stories about the way she described death to Charlotte and her brother, Brooks. My Aunt Nancy is their grandmother, hence, my mother's sister and my aunt.

One afternoon not long after my mom died, my Aunt Nancy and Charlotte were walking outside somewhere and Charlotte was holding a red balloon. Charlotte spontaneously decided to release the balloon and "send it" to my mother as a message that she loved her. When my Aunt retold the story to me, I was really touched that a tiny child could care that much about someone she only saw a few times a year.

Last year, when I moved to the UK with my husband, I was walking through the market square in town and feeling especially lost without my mother. I stopped walking in midstream and looked up at the sky. I often find myself doing this, and then immediately questioning what exactly I was looking for in the sky, answers? A sign? My mom, waving down at me? Sometimes I make myself feel like a certified crazy person. As I looked up, I saw a red balloon float over the roof of a building. I immediately remembered Charlotte and her red balloon, and wondered if it might be a sign. I felt like my mom was with me that day.

Are these things signs of any kind, or do people tuck away memories of mundane things so that later their memory can be jogged into creating a false sense of security? Did I tell myself that the next time I saw a red balloon that it would be a sign from my mother, and then two years later remember that, or would a bird that flew over the roof of that building have made me feel the same way? Do people seek out these so-called "signs" to make themselves feel better, or are they truly put there for us to see?

Each person's manifestation of God, or a spirit of the person that they have lost, or whatever spiritual deficit that they have is different and special for each individual person. Maybe when God "speaks" to me, it is in the form of when I get a feeling that my mother is with me. Or maybe it is the other way around. Maybe when I feel really connected to someone who is far away that is what God is. The search continues, and I will keep looking for the signs.

The Mitten

On TV and in movies when people die, their loved ones always see "signs" that the person is with them, or hear voices, or have significant "feelings" that their deceased loved one is "in a good place." In the real world, I don't think this happens. Or at least I didn't right away after my mom died.

A few months after she died I was having a particularly rough morning on the way to work, thinking about my mom and wondering where she was, ondering life and people's purposes, etc. I just wanted one of those movie-esque signs that she was "out there" watching over me, walking with me each day. I parallel parked my car on the main street in Princeton for my daily visit to Starbucks before work. I got out of the car, stepped up onto the curb, and started walking down the sidewalk. Every morning as I walked the sidewalk into Starbucks, I looked into the shop windows as I walked. Princeton has really neat little shops with pretty old-fashioned windows. That morning, I spotted something red sitting in the snow on the windowsill of one of the shops. As I got closer and was able to discern what it was, I was overwhelmed with the sensation that my mother was with me, right then, at that moment. It was a tiny child-size mitten, made of red wool. It had been hand knitted for a child by a grandmother somewhere, and then it had been dropped in the snow by that child, probably cruising in a stroller while his or her mother window shopped. Some good samaritan had picked it up and placed it on the windowsill in the vain hope that the owner might come looking for it. A single mitten has no significance to the average person, but to me it was like a personal message from my mother. When I was little, one of my favorite stories that she read to me over and over was 'The Mystery of the Missing Red Mitten,' by Steven Kellogg. It was, as the title states, a cute children's story about a snowy day and a child that loses one red mitten. As I stood on the sidewalk staring at the tiny mitten, crying my eyes out, I came to the realization that I was going to survive the loss of my mother. Somehow, I would come through it and be okay. I can't explain how, but I just knew.

Was the mitten one of the "signs" that people see in movies, was it God, or was it completely insignificant and I made something out of nothing? It created a sense of peace in me for the first time in two years, so I don't think it matters what it was, or does it?

Continued

When I woke up on December 27, I called the airline to change my ticket home- we were scheduled to leave the next day. I thought that there was a possibility that my mom might die in the next few days and that I wanted to be there for it. While I was on the phone with the airline, my dad came running into the room and said that he didn't think she was breathing. I immediately hung up the phone and ran into their bedroom with my husband. My mom was lying in her bed, propped up with her breathing machine on. She looked the same as usual- as if she was sleeping. My dad switched her breathing machine off and put his ear to her chest to see if he could hear her breathing. He couldn't hear anything, and we couldn't find a pulse. We all sat next to the bed while my dad called the on-call nurse to have her come over. When he got the nurse on the phone all he was able to say was "I think she's gone." As I sat down next to my mom, I picked up her hand to hold it, and I looked at the underside of her forearm. Something that normal people don't know is that when someone dies, all of the blood that is no longer being pumped through their body gets pulled down by gravity and pools. When I saw her arm I knew that she was dead. Her arm looked like someone had painted a roadmap on the underside of it. As soon as my dad hung up with the nurse I called my brother, who lived ten minutes away. All I could do was cry on the phone when he picked up, but he knew, and he simply said "I'll be right there."

Hours later, after the mortician had already come to take my mother's body away, I was sitting in her room, staring out the window right over her bed. By then it was afternoon. The window that I was looking through had an incredible view of the Superstition Mountains. It faced East. As I was sitting there, all of a sudden, bright beams of sunlight streamed through the window and settled on her hospital bed. I was overwhelmed with an unebelievable sense of relief. I was instantly reminded that although it was the saddest day of my life, that my mother was no longer in pain. It was as if she, or God, or something was there in the room with me. The window faced East, and it was afternoon. Sunlight doesn't usually bend back upon itself and go over rooftops to stream in windows like that. I don't know what that was, but it certainly wasn't something that happens every day.

An Argument for God

Although I am a constant questioner of the existence of God, I also have many examples of experiences that I have had that might just make me lean towards the idea of God. Might. I think it is going to take more than one entry to explain them all, so I will attempt to go in chronological order.

In the few weeks preceding my mother's death, we had the world's most depressing Thanksgiving, followed by a depressing lead-up to the world's most depressing Christmas. The day after Christmas was the worst day since my mom had gotten sick. She had had a terrible day with her breathing machine, and her throat kept getting clogged with mucous and we had to suction her way more than the recommended amount in one day. From her perch on the couch she could see everyone milling about, trying our hardest to just make her comfortable, even though her pain was at a 10, and had been for weeks. She had a horrible (I mean, worse than you can even imagine) case of Thrush. If you don't know what Thrush is, you are lucky. She also had Shingles. On top of the disease that was killing her. The night of Dec. 26, my father and my husband took her into her bedroom to use the toilet, and when they did that they always had to take her off of the breathing machine. This was okay because the machine was an assistive machine, she didn't need it completely to breathe. When they were in the bathroom she collapsed and stopped breathing. So to recap, Thrush, Shingles, a pain level of 10, not breathing, dying of a terrible disease, unable to move any part of her body other than her eyelids on her own. The whole family watched the scene in slow motion horror. My husband and father picked her up and ran back to the living room to put her back on the machine. Luckily (luckily?) they made it in time. At that point all we could do was go to bed. When we had her settled in bed finally (the process took about an hour) we all sat around the hospital bed that had been installed in their bedroom and talked to her. She could hear us and understand, but couldn't even make eye contact in response. We all told her how much we loved her, and apologized profusely for how awful her situation was. I went to bed in a haze, going through phases of crying and disbelief that this had all happened.

I am not a person who prays. I don't even know if I believe in God, so praying is a bit silly in that case. That night, I asked God for a favor. I specifically remember saying "You may not even be there, but if you are, I need a big favor." I asked God to let her die. As soon as possible. I didn't think that anyone could stand to see her in so much pain anymore. I don't know what happened, but she died the next morning at about 5AM (nobody is really sure about the exact time).

Maybe God is listening.

Religiosity

One of my closest friends asked me to provide some insight into the non-religious nature of my project here. (Thanks for the direction, Lyn!) Religion is a tough topic to breach, because what someone believes is so dear to them that it is really difficult to challenge or question a person's beliefs without them feeling in some way insulted. I feel that if you believe (I mean really believe) in something, you should have to question it every once in a while, otherwise, you are simply being indoctrinated. So I like to ask people about their religious beliefs because I am curious about how I might come to have some of my own. This usually backfires.

Okay, here's an experiment- bear with me for a minute or two. For this minute, toss away all of your religious/spiritual beliefs and be a blank slate. If you were a person without a religious base (which the majority of people in the USA, believe it or not, are...) where would you find your beliefs about life, death, and what happens to a person's spirit when they die? If you had never been to Sunday School, Youth Group, and didn't go to Church, how would you come to understand the fundamentals of being human? I have been asked this question a multitude of times by my religious friends and family members. One person even suggested that I couldn't possibly understand life and death without God and Jesus to help me. Yes, Virginia, there is a way. All of my life (as short as it has been so far) I have questioned the existence of God. I guess you could say I am officially an Agnostic. Def: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable ; broadly : one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god. Being an Agnostic isn't easy, believe me. It would be really nice if I really believed in something that could have guided me through my mother's death. Really, it would have been quite handy. Unfortunately, I was left still questioning.

I read LOTS of books about this topic when my mom died. One of the books was "When Bad Things Happen to Good People." It was written by a Rabbi who lost his son tragically, and he himself was left questioning why a just God would do something to such a good person. I have hear a lot of people's thoughts about why good people, innocent children, etc. die. I have heard lots of opinions like "God needs them with him," and "God has a higher purpose for them." It would be great if I believed that. The book was interesting but left me with more questions.

I don't wake up every morning wondering where God is. I do, however, find that I wonder a lot where my mother is. She died- I saw the mortician take her body out of our house the day she died. I know that her body was cremated, and I was there when my father scattered her ashes over her blueberry bushes next to her grave overlooking the ocean in Maine. But WHERE is she now? For some people, she exists in a heaven somewhere. I don't know what that is, but I know that she exists in me, my brother, and my father. She most certainly exists in my four closest friends. Every life milestone that one of them goes through I can just see my mother shining through them and I can feel how proud she would be of the amazing women they have become. She is with me every day.

In my next post I will write about the several examples of experiences I have had since my mom died that lead me to believe that God might really exist...

Stephen Hawking and Christina

I work in a Starbucks, and every once in a while a famous or pseudo famous person walks in. I suppose they need their caffeine fix from time to time just like everyone else... One of our local celebrities is Stephen Hawking, and he comes into our store simply because we have the largest disbled toilet in the Market area, and it is most convenient for someone with a large motorized wheelchair. Stephen Hawking is an amazing scientist who has made some real significant advancements in our world, but every time I see him I am really saddened because he suffers from the same disease that my mother had. Why does one person get to live for so long (he has been living with the disease for 49 years) while my mom only had a year and a half? Furthermore, would I have wanted her to live any longer, suffering as she did? Why does it upset me so much to see this man that I don't even know?

Christina is a friend of mine from High School. I first met her in seventh grade when all of the town elementary schools poured into one tiny junior high school. We clicked immediately. She is someone that everyone likes because she is perpetually cheerful and enthusiastic about everything. Her family was a bit of a town phenomenon, because she had lots of siblings, and they were all runners. Her mom and dad were hard core runners, who ran every race in town and always won the men's and women's divisions. When Chris got old enough, she won them all too. Her family was close and running together made them just a bit closer. Chris and her mom had a very special mother-daughter relationship because, like me and my mom, they always got along. Kids don't always get along with their parents, and if they do, they are very lucky.
Chris and I were close friends all through high school, but when we went away to college in different states, we fell out of touch.

The year my mom died, I heard from a mutual friend that Chris had tragically lost her mother as well. Chris had a completely different situation to handle, being the oldest of several (I think there were five) younger siblings. Their mother was killed instantly in a head-on collision. They didn't have any time to say goodbye, or tie up loose ends. Their mother was gone in an instant. When I heard about their tragedy, I contacted Chris to ask if there was anything I could do, or offer any condolence. She seemed to be dealing with the whole situation in stride, and she said that she had had to take over the role of matriarch through the loss of her mother. The unusual moments of strength and grace that people have in times of tragedy are truly a gift. The way that she took over her family and led her brothers and sister through such a horrible tragedy is an amazingly powerful inspiration to other people in similar situations. Chris is someone that people can really look up to. I will write more about her in later writings.

Meet My Inspiration

That's her- my incredible mother- second from the right. This is my favorite family photo of all time.

Inspiration

I have met some really inspiring people in my life, but I always seem to find the most inspiration in the ones who have gone through a struggle and come out of it with a strong sensibility and a knack for making other people comfortable in hard times. While I was going through the loss of my mother, I was constantly thinking about the people I know who had lost a parent, and trying to gain something by reflecting on their strength. Throughout this blog I will refer to them and honor their amazing abilities for having grace after devastation.

I met Mike in the summer of 2002, when I was working as an administrator at a summer camp in New Jersey. He was instantly likable, and when we discovered that we had mutual friends, we then discovered that we many more things in common. Mike was very close to his very small family- his brother Hugh and his father. His mom died when he was in elementary school. For that whole summer while we were working together, I had nothing but awe for this person who was creative, happy, and immensely kind and caring to children. How did he get like that when he had had such a sad childhood? At that time, in my world, there was just no possibility of a normal person developing into a wonderful human being without a mother. I found myself constantly asking him about what his childhood was like without his mother, and, in his usual amazing way, he always said prophetic things like "I basked in the memories I had of her and the reflection of her in my brother and my father." People like Mike are amazing to me. I have already asked Mike to contribute his perspective to my book, so one day, when this project is complete, you can read his story in his own words.

Why are you doing this, the askers ask.

Why a book about grieving, isn't that kind of depressing? Yes, and no.

My experience with my mother's death was a bit different from the average death. She wasn't old enough to die from old age, she didn't die suddenly in a car accident or from a heart attack, and she didn't have a disease like Cancer, where even though a doctor tells you it's terminal, you still think that there might, somehow, be a chance. I knew she was going to die for the fourteen months from when she was diagnosed to the day she died. It was a certainty. I knew because there has never been a person who has survived her disease (other than Stephen Hawking, who they aren't even really sure he has that same disease). I had time to prepare myself, although the question is: how does one prepare for an emotional experience that they have neither been through before nor know anything about?

My first step in the preparation process was to go to my local Barnes and Noble and stand helplessly in the "Self-Help" section staring aimlessly at the books about grieving and loss. There are a lot of helpful books there, but the titles were so specialized that I found myself wondering how there were possibly enough people in the world to warrant the need for that book. There were books about divorce, children of divorce, people with fibromyalgia, books about changing your religion, changing your gender, and tons of books for people that have children that die. I ended up taking home a myriad of books that I thought might help, with titles like "When Bad Things Happen to Good People," and "Coping With the Death of a Loved One." Unfortunately, what I was seeking was just not in any of those books. What is "out there" is mostly advice to either see a psychiatrist, allow yourself to cry all the time, or my favorite, 'let go, and let God.' Those little tidbits of advice are great for people who are either very religious, are able to open up to complete strangers, or have time to devote to crying, but not for me. The fruitless search for a good book to guide me went on like that for fourteen months.

After my mom died and I had to surge through the grieving process and find my way through the immense sense of loss, I found myself thinking that I should write a book about it for other people like me, who needed help during the process but couldn't find it. My book is going to be a guide for people who need to know what to do, how to cope, and how to continue living while keeping the spirit of the lost person alive in your daily life. My book will not be about religion, crying, or seeing a shrink.

Because I Knew You

Someone's life is made or broken by the way that they are raised from a very young age. I have been formed into the person that I am by the way that my parents raised me and the morals and values that they instilled in me. My everyday life is held up by a framework of 'Mom and Dadisms.' The things I say, the way I react to situations and people, and the decisions I make are all a reflection of my set of standards, the majority of which came from my childhood upbringing. I see examples every day of people who are living examples of good and bad parenting. I am one of the lucky ones. I had two parents that loved each other with all of their souls and were honest, loving, and selfless people. In my mind, nobody was as much in love as my parents were. They taught me about what marriage should be, what love looks like, how a man should look at a woman to be able to tell her that he would live and die for her, and how to argue in a civilized way without hurting each other. Everything I ever wanted in a marriage was set as an example by my parents.
I've always had a very close relationship with both of my parents, and although my father served more as a guardian, provider, and overseer, my mother was more of my emotional supporter. My mother was not only my parent but also more importantly, my best friend. She was the most important force in my life for the first 26 years of it. When my mother died in December of 2005 it left a giant, unfillable hole in my life. I didn't know what to do, or how to continue on living in a world where she didn't exist. This blog is a jumping off point for a book that I am working on about how to grieve, pick up the pieces, and continue your life after you lose a parent. Here goes...