Newscoma

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

As many of you know, the southwest corner of Tennessee has been our home this week. Squirrelly and I would like to thank the Memphis crowd for being our family during this time. Thanks for the friendship, the fellowship and the encouragement.

We are headed back to Hoots this  morning. Bags are currently being packed, dishes washed and although the reasons for our long stay were tragic with the loss of Lauren, we found so much good in people and new depths of friendship, companionship and love.

Last night, before we headed home, Steve, Smac, Austin,Dabney, Glen, Lee, Meg, Rick and Katie decided that we wanted a do over. The funeral was in the morning which was absolutely beautiful at Saint Anne’s with a eulogy by Kindly Uncle Tim that was so devastatingly exquisite that it was intimately painful and joyous at the same time, friends held gatherings and celebrated life amongst sorrow and by the end of the night, we decided to do New Year’s Eve over again. It was called New Year’s Eve Redux.

So, in our world, today is New Year’s Day.

Listening to The West Coast Turnaround, we rang in midnight again for 2010 2.0. Pesky Fly did a countdown from 8 (he felt a new number might be appropriate) and we threw our glasses in the air hoping for peace once again. It was a moment of healing and rejuvenation. And I really want to hear the David Allan Coe how to become a star in Country Music song again, Pesky. That song made me very happy.

As we headed back to our temporary digs, Squirrelly and I talked of the special bond that all of these people hold together and with us. As this has been so much of our world this week, I will probably talk of these things again.

Until then, we bid Memphis adieu. Thank you and farewell, you big lug of a city. We dig you so much.

“It’s so curious: one can resist tears and ‘behave’ very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer… and everything collapses.” –Colette

I’m going to talk about what I want to right now. Look at this picture of an aardvark if you want to walk away because I’m going to talk about death, loss and the holidays.

There is navel gazing in blogging. So I get my turn today because I can.

I miss my mom.

She died 11-years ago and I damn well miss her. It’s the holidays and this is always a messy time for me. I found myself profoundly sad last night about Thanksgiving and the entire Christmas season. Now, no worries, this happens for a lot of people and I believe it’s best to talk/write about it. I think significant events like the holidays bring up certain memories for people who have suffered a loss. Although time heals many things, there are reminders and triggers that bring up that loss, that invisible, gaping hole which nothing can fill.

My mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer one week before Christmas in 1996. We knew something was wrong before we “conned” her into going to the doctor because she hated doctors horribly. By the time we got her there, the tests were pretty conclusive and the doctor told me in the hallway that it was bad.

She lived for 14 more months after that and every day we watched her slowly fade away. The worst part is that she knew she was fading away as well and that is something I wouldn’t want my worst enemy to experience or to see. It’s a little bit like hell on earth watching someone die a little piece at a time.

Fast forward 11 years to now. Traditions have changed in my family. My dad remarried, my sister has two daughters who are enmeshed in their own lives which are filled with school, sports and friends where the holidays send her to visit her husband’s folks away from Hoots and my extended family, although large, never really spent holiday times together. So the smells and tastes of Thanksgiving have changed and I’ve been fortunate enough to have a place to hang my hat on Turkey Day. I do, however, get nostalgic and sentimental though, missing those years of family bonding.

Her turkey and dressing, experimenting with different foods, the fact that my dad doesn’t really like turkey (he’s having Japanese this year for his Thanksgiving dinner which I think is fabulous) or how that we would literally starve on the Wednesday before the big day because my mother always forgot to get any additional things to eat (this was a running joke in my family.)

The year her dog, Girl, ate our dinner. The time we had a huge cactus as a Christmas tree and put little red balls on it to celebrate. The year she planted a Christmas tree in the yard and named it Rufus (I get my weirdness honestly). Staff Christmas dinners at my dad’s old company where we would all dress us and have a great time. My mother laughing at me when I would make dressing sandwiches (carbariffic). How she always burned the rolls (every, single Thanksgiving and Christmas.) How my father wanted (and still does) to go to Wal-Mart if it’s a holiday. The movies we went to on Thanksgiving. How my mother never really recovered from her own mother’s death from breast cancer and where she felt these same things during Christmas, which my grandmother loved more than anything. How she could never smell Chanel No 5 without seeing the bottle that my grandfather gave my grandmother every year without crying. I feel the same way when I smell a hint of Youth Dew, which only my mother could wear successfully (it makes me sneeze when other people wear it these days.)

How she wasn’t afraid to give us a hug and tell us we were her everything. And, you know, she meant it.

I remember the joyful things. And I miss them. I have made new traditions but I still become a nostalgic ball of mush thinking about my mother.

I dreamed last night that I was given the task to deliver a speech to a group of people. It was my job to inspire them. I stood in a black suit wearing a red power tie, my hair coiffed to perfection and make-up laboriously applied, waiting on the sidelines of a small stage while waiting for my introduction.

It came and the voice droned on for what seemed like hours, I heard laughter and serious tones I didn’t recognize talking about me. Accomplishments, history of what I had been doing in my life and what was expected of me in my future.

Deep within me, I suddenly felt like a fraud. A lost girl who did not know her way and I found myself standing down, moving from one foot to another, not knowing what to say. I became agitated.

The introduction went on and one about the reasons why I was supposed to give the speech. As I listened, I started backing up, kicking my high heels to the side because I felt if I was drowning. I glanced at the audience, my audience, and realized they had no facial features although I could hear them laughing and applauding.

I choked.

So in my dream I ran. No one pursued me, and as dreams are wont to do, it felt I was running in an abandoned theater, with stage lights covered in spiderwebs littering the way of my path and a cheery set design with a ladybug on it set in the corner of one room I encountered. I suddenly found myself in a dark corridor and leaned against a wall bleeding with sweat. I realized that the concrete blocks were taking deep breaths with me and I wasn’t too concerned about it although I had run hard enough to leave me winded.

I looked to my side and there was a young man, maybe in this mid-twenties. He was wickedly handsome with dark hair and golden eyes that hinted of some amusement. I wasn’t afraid of him, but I also wasn’t very welcoming as I felt my body and my mind close up. I did not know this person, yet he seemed to know me.

“You ran,” he said simply, gazing at me and speaking with a tone that meant he wasn’t asking a question but rather making a statement, which left me vulnerable and feeling small.

I just looked at him and he handed me a cigarette which I took without hesitation, and then he lit it with an ancient Zippo. As he slammed the lighter closed, the sound reverberated and echoed in quiet darkness, which resembled dusk on a winter’s night.

The sound was deafening.

“Thank you,” I responded, taking a deep drag and waving the lit point in the comforting darkness, lighting of the hallway as it made small bursts of light in circular designs that I found mesmorizing.

“It’s okay, you know.”

I didn’t feel like it was but I still remained silent. I was filled with sorrow and failure of where I had been and where I was going.

“Do you dance?” he asked quietly.

I shook my head. No, I do not dance and I did not want to dance with this young man, as I could smell him, so sweet and wicked and filled with danger and possibility. I do not trust myself in these situations. I felt clumsy and useless and another emotion I could not describe, but one that felt like it was cutting me in half.

“Tonight,” he smiled, “you will dance with me as we wait for them to find you.” He took my hand and placed his other around my shoulder. I tried to scramble away halfheartedly but he held me tightly, and for a moment, I was afraid, not of him, but of myself. I realized he was taller than I, and when he enveloped me in his arms, I suddenly felt like everything might be okay, and I sorted hated that it took another person to give to me what I could not give to myself.

I relented. It was a dream after all.

We swayed and I, for once, followed as another lead.

“Grief?” he whispered with such understand, this time asking a question, engaging me to respond.

I found my voice, “I think it is.”

We moved together and I heard voices in the distance. I looked toward the coming noise although I could not see anything yet the sound was filled with concern and excitement.

He tucked his hand under my chin and looked deep in my eyes, and then put his arms around me.

“You are going to be fine,” he said in a low voice next to my ear. No more than a whisper and in that moment, I knew he was right.

The urgent sounds were closer now and he looked at me one last time, kissed me on the forehead, and then he was gone. It was not a surprise to me that I was suddenly alone.

I turned to the voices, pulled at the unfamiliar suit and straightened my tie. I could still smell him and took one more deep breath, taking him in.

I placed a smile on my face and headed toward the crowd.

Then I woke up.

Photo Credit

For my mom at Christmas because her spirit lives on…

And so does Mr. Coltrane’s, Billie’s and Miles’.

Mom, this one is for you!

[youtube=[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNHtvu-4cDw&rel=1]

Birdland on 53
The street sounded like a symphony
We got John Coltrane and a love supreme
Miles says she’s got to be
An angel

Lady Day got diamond eyes
She sees the truth behind the lies
Angel

Yeah, represent the ones you love at Christmas, even if they aren’t here.

This one is for my mom.

Ivy, in one of the most beautiful and honest posts I’ve read in a long time, talks about her grandmother who died a couple of months ago and how her life is moving forward.

It’s a reminder of how bitterness can poison your heart and take other people’s hearts with you. It’s a reminder of how when your spouse cheats, you need to either cut them loose or forgive them with your whole heart, because living with the bitterness is Not. A. Good. Thing.

Why did this speak to me? Because I understand. My mother died and I also put her up on a pedestal. Time healed some things, gave clarity to the pain and the loss and I can remember clearly the day in 1999, months after I stood in a hospital room and saw her take her last breath when I realized that my mother, whose name was Jacqueline, was human. That she made mistakes. That although I did a bit of the hero worship that I had forgotten that she was just as flawed as I sometimes can be.

And as for bitterness, she’s right. After a very long year, in the past month, I’ve had to put some bitterness behind me, much of it given to me on a silver platter but also a great deal of it that I brought on myself. Realizations are hard things to go through. Even when you know you participated in your own pain.

Ivy, great post and a huge reminder to us all that although we grieve when we lose those people that we love and those things that didn’t work out the way that we thought it might, it’s up to us to deal with the bitterness and to embrace our own humanity, as that is all we have.

BALTIMORE, Maryland (AP) — A grieving father won a nearly $11 million verdict Wednesday against a fundamentalist Kansas church that pickets military funerals in the belief that the war in Iraq is a punishment for the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality.

I’ve dealt with these folks personally. And good that they have to pay but it will still never be enough.

The church and three of its leaders — the Rev. Fred Phelps and his two daughters, Shirley Phelps-Roper and Rebecca Phelps-Davis, 46 — were found liable for invasion of privacy and intent to inflict emotional distress.

This will be caught up in litigation for awhile. I’m sure the Phelps will appeal, but still, a jury made this decision.

And, the Phelps are all about suing folks so now they know what it feels like.

Karma is a bitch.