Signing On

I'm back. Back from Christmas with my family in Phoenix, back from being too busy to write, back from being sad 90% of the time. I want to write. I want to be more alive. I have ideas for books and furniture and recipes and hats. I feel a weird hope that things might work out okay.

A couple things to catch up on...here are the bottles I painted for the beer I made. They were less on the creative, abstract side and more on the informative side. But the beer was quite stellar. Also, I think I'm going to buy a tiny little house in Newton, Kansas. It's on the Amtrak line so I could get on in Flagstaff and get off in Newton. They're so flipping cheap back there. Built in 1910, wood floors, nice woodwork. We'll see, but I'm seriously looking. I'll never move from Flagstaff, it ROCKS, but it would be cool to have a great place to write and go to when I need to have a change of scenery. I've got relatives back there. I grew up in Topeka. Okay, also, we're taking both my parents back there this summer and I'll be damned if I'm going to quit taking care of them now. They'll be in Hutchinson which is twelve miles from Newton so I'd be close. Plus, bonus, lightning bugs!!!! I'm a freak.

When my dad died four years ago, I cried for weeks. It wasn't like a sobbing, hysterical thing. It was more like my eyes just leaked continually. I owned a little wine shop back then and I'd wait on people and just cry and they seemed to be fine with it. We'd talk about it and I knew most of them anyway but I just couldn't seem to stop. Now, with my mom, I get sad but I feel calmer about it. I spent months crying in the elevator at The Peaks, the same leaky eye thing, after I'd go spend time with her but since she died, I feel a sense of relief. For her. When I was seventeen, she and my dad sat me down at the kitchen table and made me promise that if either of them were ever hooked up to machines...a vegetable is what they called it, that I needed to pull the plug. But there wasn't any plug to pull for my mom. I was helpless to do what she wanted.

I'm not sure what I believe about Heaven but if there is a place where we get to hang out with the people we knew before, I sure hope she's there with my dad, playing a little gin rummy and eating peanuts.

Catching Up

A few weeks ago a friend of mine made the comment, "It feels like you're out of town right now", and it DID feel that way. I think I'm heading back. The last of my family left today (bye Suz!) and it feels a bit lonely but I also need, and am ready, to get back into my life again.

The week was very surreal. My list of things to do included both *go to the mortuary* and *wrap presents*, and then, the day before my mom's memorial, my book came out. I'd been waiting for that to happen for months (years actually) and then when it did, It was tough conjuring up any excitement. But last night I sat down and looked through it and read the copyright date and the table of contents and saw that it really has an ISBN number and I realized that I have a published book. That felt good. If anyone would like a copy, there's a link on the right hand side of this blog for Two Dogs Press. There are some other wonderful books on there too so take a look.

Some other things from the last month that I have not blogged about but might have.....I brewed a good beer, and ESB, and bottled it. Pictures of the bottles to come later, this is the beer (the wort) boiling away. It's pretty darn good. Also, it snowed 20 inches here and is flipping cold (single digits at night). And also too, when I was at Sonic drive-in, the girl who delivers the food dropped a large slush into the window crack of my car. And I mean INTO. My window was open all the way and the slush cup fell apart as she was handing it over. So it went down into the door and now, when I open the window, it makes a sound like a very masculine cat having it's toenails removed with tweezers. I made the manager write a note regarding the slush incident and sign it so after the holidays, I'm going to deal with THAT.

My mom's memorial was beautiful. My brother and sister both spoke and told stories about her, and two of my friends read poems. I read this passage from The Prophet, which is my quote for the day....

On Joy and Sorrow
Kahlil Gibran

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits, alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

Warrior

My mom died Saturday, yesterday, morning at 8:13. I just finished writing her obituary. Both Thursday and Friday were really hard. She was struggling. I so wanted her to go the same way my father had - easily, in her sleep and peaceful. So Thursday and Friday were not what I expected. It was scary for me. Her face was so sunken and her body had become so small. Her breathing was labored and her movements were erratic. I did not take Jay up there. But I held her hand and was with her those days. I kept asking them to give her more meds. Frantic about it. By Friday night, she had stabilized and was breathing better. But I kept seeing her struggling. At first I was so saddened by it. Man, it was hard to think about. It was so hard to see. Then yesterday, after I sat with her, after hospice came and the man from the mortuary, after I walked the stretcher down to the van, after I said my very last goodbye to the body and was driving home alone, I realized that she had had her warrior face on. How silly of me to think she was going to go easy! She was fighting to stay in this world. My dad was so ready to go. He had told me so for a year before his death. So he closed his eyes in the hospital and left. But my mom, she wanted to stay. I realized how okay it all was. That she didn't want to go. I was proud of her, even in dying. I thought she was saying (this woman who I can only remember cussing ONE time when I was a child) "fuck you death" on her way out. I thought that that's how I'll be. Fighting to stay here. And I have so many memories of that wonderful mama smiling and looking so happy and content that I don't mind the memory of her warrior face. I want to hold that one close too. She was a warrior and I want to honor that in her. I was so frightened and afraid for her, and she was most likely afraid too...of the unknown and the moving on. But she fought a good fight. I'm going to miss her so.

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
--Dylan Thomas

Still here

I wasn't going to write again until my mom was gone. But I've had some hard days and writing seems to be one thing that ties me to the world still. She is wavering. I've been spending all my time with her, gladly, and seeing those little mommisms from time to time. A smile or the way she raises her eyebrows up or her mouth in a perfect little "oh" like she used to do a decade ago. So, I've been holding on to those. Yesterday, though, it was obvious that she's suffering. I wanted the "go to sleep and never wake up" kind of passing for her. Hospice thought she needed to be on heavy meds to be able to relax into the going and I'm the one that needed to okay that. So when I was up there yesterday, I saw the last of her mom mannerisms. I had to choose not to see those things again. Because the only real thing I wanted then was for her to not feel pain. It was really hard. But now she is sleeping, under, relaxing, and I know it was the right decision. It is a weird thing though because I keep having these irrational thoughts. I have a rational, detached mind that mulls over when do I go to the mortuary, and then I have this irrational, emotional side that thinks things like, if I had just fed her better two months ago she'd be fine. I know what the truths are; it's just difficult to believe them when the letting go is so darn sad for me.

One of the hospice caregivers gave me this little book called "Gone from my Sight". There was this one passage in it that was really good. In an earlier post, I talked about how I told my mom that I thought it was going to be like getting on a boat, with me here and dad at the other end. And then someone hands me this little book. Here is the passage from that book....

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says, "There, she is gone!"
"Gone Where?"
Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port. Her diminished size is in me, not her. And at that moment when someone at my side says, "There, she is gone!" there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout; "Here she comes!" And that is dying.
--Henry Van Dyke