Newscoma

“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 went outside a few minutes ago, waiting on the word from one of our co-workers. Her father-in-law is very ill and we all know he won’t make it. She left quickly, the machines have been shut off.

It’s just a matter of time. He’s an older man and has seen more hospitals in recent months, as has his family, then anyone needs to see.

My thoughts are with them. Impending loss is always a difficult thing, because the outcome is known but the journey is still a mystery.

There is a small bench in front of the building where I work. As I sat there, I felt an overwhelming rush of sadness pour over me. I didn’t know if I could keep my emotions contained inside of me. I am full, and at times, it brims so high that it is hard not to just explode. To go on one of the backroads of Hoots and let the feelings just fly where no one can see or hear it.

It’s Mother’s Day this weekend. Year 11 without a day to celebrate. I’m older now, only ten years younger than my mother when she died. Time are different. I wonder how she would see this world a decade after her passing. I’m sure she would be amazed and pleased by much of it, and appalled by other things.

My oldest dog, Kirby, has made it longer than I thought but she is ailing. She won’t be long with us, but she’s a tough independent cuss. We got her one day before my oldest niece was born. She’s 13, a very long life for a miniature schnauzer.

She’s dying. I know this and, quite frankly, you can fight many things but this is not something I can stop. it’s inevitable.

I searched for her last night in the house, calling her name when she didn’t respond. She was hidden in a place I couldn’t reach and ultimately Mabel led me to her. She is having trouble with going to the bathroom and eating has become difficult. I tried to hold her last night, but she wanted no part of it. She laid down on her dog bed and went quietly to sleep.

I’m bruised today. Not literally, but in the sense of not knowing my own journey but realizing the impending loss of more than my dog, of my co-worker’s father-in-law, of my lost mother. My mind is not on politics or pop culture today. My mind has wandered, my body full, my soul pained by not having the answers.

The weight is heavy because I don’t know what to do this time.

I don’t have the answers.

I was told by my friend The Coroner about fifteen years ago that I blocked my feelings like a man and that’s what strengthened our friendship. I have no idea why those words stayed with me, but they have. I don’t necessarily agree. I just funnel the black in my system out like letting the air out of a balloon, but it’s caught up with me today. I’m only human. These things happen.

I’m also a true believer that feelings pass. They can change on a dime. I have learned that nearly 44 years on this planet.

This too shall pass.

There is loss in the air. I feel it and it will be o.k. but this path is a rocky one.

There is always a time around Mother’s Day that Homer and I hit what I tend to call “the angries.”

It comes out of nowhere and is always a surprise. One of us, either her or myself, will recognize that we are pissed off collectively because there is no mother here.

And on another note, something you may not know, is Homer was born on Mother’s Day. This year, her birthday is Monday but youngest niece Bear’s is tomorrow.

I may be wrong but I think Mother’s Day is especially hard for Homer. More so because they had that bond of Homer being the Mother’s Day Blessing for my mother. Thinking about it makes me choke up a little bit. It was what my mother always said about my little sis and it was more than true.

We find ourselves on edge, reacting far more emotionally than we usually do. For those of you who haven’t lost your mom, it’s hard to describe how things creep up on you. Recently, I ate my Mom’s recommendation for comfort food.

I was tired, drowning under an increased workpile, feeling like I’m never going to get it all together, not enough time, trying to decide if I’m going to move forward in a blogging project I’m working on, alternating between fear and an in depth mania to sustain a schedule that I know will be difficult to keep at such a breakneck speed, and I needed to unwind and not feel anything for awhile.

I made my comfort food that she always made me when I was a kid and I was hit with a wave of grief that I cannot explain. I felt if I was drowning in my own soul missing her more than I could ever explain. There is no medication you can take for loss, no quick fix, if you will.

Ten years ago February, my mother died after a hard fight with cancer. Ten years ago Monday, Homer turned 30. Ten years ago, we could barely remember to breath. Ten years ago, we lost our best friend.

I am not alone but I find that only other people who have lost their mothers understand the black hole that we stare in during Mother’s Day. We have to find within ourselves that place where we can focus on the beauty of our relationships with our moms that molded us.

But some of us hit the angries. And when we get there, it’s always startling. It’s most surprising because we think we are over it.

You never get over it.

Never.