22
It is January and the sky is a vibrant blue today. Not something we often see here in Oregon in the dead of winter. There is a cold wind blowing the clouds and rain away, rain that would remind me of that day 22 years ago when I said goodbye.
I don’t want to always feel sad on this day, and yet I do. I feel sad that as I watch my girl play he’s not there to chase her around the house or terrify her with stories of bugs and wild animals, as he used to do with my cousin and me when we were small. I call my mother and wish that he was there to join in the yelling of I love yous and I miss yous into the phone line across the distance.
I guess what I miss now isn’t so much for me anymore, as it is for what could have been and what should have been for her. Sad for him that he never got to witness the impish delight in which she goes through life, finding laughter and smiles in the smallest of things.
He would have loved that she likes to help in the kitchen.
I’m left to only imagine in my mind’s eye the two of them together. I can see her standing on a stool, next to him, as I once did. Stirring something in a pot. I see her under a blanket, being read a story, clutching an old teddy bear that once belonged to me.
I see my past and my present collide so fiercely when I look at her. I see his ears. Ever so slightly pointy and elfin. I see his eyes, which are also my eyes, peering back at me under impossibly long lashes. I imagine how his face would light up when she would come over to play. There would be tea parties and games of hide and go seek.
I know he’s watching over us and smiling somewhere. I feel it, I believe it.
Tomorrow I’ll sit down with pictures and my girl and we’ll talk about him and how much I loved him, and how much she would love him too. I”m the keeper of the memories, now, of the past and all it contains. I’ll try to bring him to life as much as I can, for her. And for him.
One Year Later
I moved my last post back to the draft folder. I was hesitant to publish it at all, even privately, and bare myself so completely as to the struggle of emotions.
Those of you who read and as usual, supported me, thank you. Your words mean so much and I feel each one of them as a warm embrace.
The sheer act of writing has brought about some form of catharsis. The emotions have shifted to something different, less intense and not quite as crushing.
Life and the act of living it never ceases to ebb and flow. The waters rush in and bring forth a wave of the unexpected and just as suddenly recede and take with them part of me.
***
I so rarely have time to write in this space now. I thought after the divorce, it would be the opposite.
Work has gotten busier.
Now only having Ava for half the time, I find myself tethered much less to the online world when I’m with her. It’s our time, and it’s precious time. I don’t want her to look back in 20 years and remember me as always on the computer or always checking my phone.
I took a chance and started doing something I enjoy – food blogging. I don’t know where it will lead, if anywhere. But I’m having fun doing it, most of the time, although it does seem to take up time that I used to spend here, writing.
I’ve been working on learning how to use the fancy camera I bought for myself a couple years ago. I would love to be able to take photographs that are frame-worthy, instead of “Oh, dear, I think we’ll just delete that one”.
They say that 40 is when a people really start to know themselves. I’ll be 39 in less than a month, and as I approach that number, I see that there is definitely some truth to that. I think it’s also an age in which we are more easily able to identify the disingenuous in others as well. I see things, and people so much more clearly now than before. Sometimes it comes as a great surprise to know that in which you have counted on was not in fact, what you ever thought it was. Or maybe you did, but you convinced yourself otherwise. It gets harder to lie to one’s self as you age, I think. It’s harder for you brain to play along.
I find I’m much better able to pick my battles. I find myself backing away from things more often, knowing I would be fighting a losing battle.
I rediscovered the pleasure of sleeping alone. At first it was strange, after sharing a bed for 12 years. But after the oddness wore off, I found how much I love it. I can stay up late watching tv in bed, or reading a book. I can toss and turn and not worry that I’ll wake anyone. I don’t have to worry that my body pillow and I are taking up too much room. There is no snoring to keep me awake.
Of course, I enjoy cuddling with Ava on our “sleepover nights”, which happen once a week. It’s nice to be able to reach out and have her hold on to my hand as she sleeps. I’ll savor that for as long as she will let me, for I know the day is coming when even a hug from me will seem “uncool”.
I enjoy a girls’ night out with a friend now and then. Something that I never used to do, but I find now to be immensely fun.
I got on a plane last year for the first time in several years. It was terrifying and thrilling and I can’t wait to do it again.
I discovered the kind of friends that all women should have: honest and steadfast. The kind that will tell you when you’re being a jackass, hold you up when you’re falling down, and find places to bury the bodies. The kind of friends that will be around in 50 years when we’re all hard of hearing and are yelling at each other over the breakfast table at I-Hop.
When you’re alone, especially after a life changing event, it’s almost impossible not to do a lot of navel gazing and introspection. I’m not perfect and a lot of my failures and flaws led me right to where I am today.
I’m getting better and discerning what truly makes me happy and what was just filler for when I wasn’t. Maybe that’s the secret of life.
When Words Are Too Much Work
Some days it’s a struggle to even reply to an email, much less start one. Some days I look at the text message on my phone and wonder how long I can ignore it.
It’s not that I don’t want to talk. It’s that using my words is too hard some days. If you’ve never experienced it, you’re unlikely to understand it.
It’s not a cataclysmic event propelling me into a place of quiet. It can be old memories flooding back, creeping into corners I thought had been cleared out.
Small things, little things. Mundane life, death, grief, panic, contentment. The jumble, the tumble of emotions that any given day can wash on shore.
The death of a friend, who left behind a daughter close in age to the 17 year old me who buried her father. The things that never quite get packed up at put away, no matter how many locks you turn and how many walls you build.
The upcoming holidays, which will be different from all previous ones. In some good ways, in some ways that could be better. The uncertainty of how it will feel.
Darker days, shorter days. Cold and cloudy. It fits my mood.
I want to retreat into my shell, except, I don’t. I take breaks, and know that I”m lucky enough to have three best friends who understand, and let me hide for a bit. But never for too long. They always coax me back out into the sunlight.
They get it. They get me. And I need to thank them publicly for that. For supporting me. For picking me up when I fall down. For lying down with me when I couldn’t get up.
For understanding when words are too much work.
Marilou
When I saw it sitting on the shelf, my hand reached out for it automatically, almost as if that appendage had a mind of its own.
It reminded me of her, that bar of Ivory soap. The scent that would linger on pillows and bedsheets and my shoulder after a hug. The scent that enveloped her skin, bare, as she leaned over a basin while I rinsed her hair, her gnarled hands reaching up every so often to check my progress. “Nope, I still feel some, right here”.
She lived with us, practically, for so much of my childhood. I remember at first, it was only visits, back when she could still drive a car on her own. I remember her big blue suitcase, and matching overnight case, full of curlers and make up and lotions. Then as her disease took so much of her independence, the stays were more frequent. They lasted longer and there were fewer days in between.
There were the surgeries. Hands. Wrists. Knees. Feet. Each one performed in expectation of some kind of miracle, but in reality left her twisted and more broken than before. She lived on her own longer than many people in her condition would have, or even should have. She took Darvocet daily, those oblong orange pills…I can still see them. I handed her so many of them, shaking them out of that brown pharmacy bottle. A few hours relief from the pain, if she was lucky, on a good day.
I would watch her cry into her pillow when she thought no one was looking. She never let anyone see how much pain she was in, really. She was not a complainer. She never railed at the doctors who accelerated her decline into complete disability. She never once whined about how her children visited rarely, and pretty much seemed to consider her a burden.
I remember reaching out to her for comfort in the middle of the night when my dad was in surgery and mother was by his side.
Late nights, silly stories, funny faces and even goofier voices. She had them all. She had the patience my mother lacked. I remember my mother refusing to let me help wash dishes because I didn’t do them “correctly”. I went to my aunt in tears, and as usual she comforted me and distracted me with something. I over heard her later talking to my mother, explaining to her how much it meant for me to be a part of something, and if I wasn’t rinsing the dishes to her satisfaction, perhaps she could sneak back in later when I wasn’t looking and rinse them again. It didn’t work, but I loved her for sticking up for me.
She loved pineapple ice cream and soap operas. She alone is responsible for me knowing who Roman, Marlena, and Stefano are. So many summer afternoons, spent eating lunch by her bed as we watched the latest installment. Was Stefano really dead this time?
She loved ceramics. I have a tiny little ceramic slice of cheese. It has a little mouse face peeking out the front of it, and a tiny little mouse bottom, complete with tail, poking out of the back. It has my initials on it, and the date. 1987. If there were a fire? Other than my daughter, it is one of two things I would make sure got out.
Like my father, who was her brother, she had a love of cooking and recipes and cookbooks. She contributed many recipes to the cookbook that her church put out every year. I am fortunate enough to have inherited one of those books. It is dog eared and I get a combination of teary eyed and warm hearted every time I open it up and see her name underneath a recipe.
Through her I learned of a lot of my father’s childhood escapades (she was 5 years his senior) and a lot of family history. Some good, some horrible. Through her eyes, I saw my grandfather, who I never really knew. He died when I was just shy of 3. I learned of the gentle, kind man he was, who must have a saint’s patience, considering all he put up with. I learned of my grandmother’s way of parenting, which was to beat first, ask questions later, if at all.
When my father died, I think a lot of her did as well. She was never the same afterward. She was confined to a nursing home by that point, and was so deeply unhappy. She was so brave for so many years, but that bravery faltered and she tried to take her own life. She was unsuccessful. Her spirit was broken however, and I don’t think I ever saw her smile again.
Some months later she developed pneumonia. She was transferred to the ICU of the local hospital. She never went back to the nursing home. Instead she slipped away from us on New Year’s day. The story surrounding that I really don’t have the right to tell. The reasons why people were and weren’t around that day, and what they were doing as life left her body.
Once again, I stood in a cemetery and said goodbye to someone I loved so deeply, on a cold, January day. Maybe that’s why I hate the cold and the rain so much. They remind me of such loss.
I was sad for so many reasons that day. I was sad that I hadn’t done more. That I hadn’t stepped up and taken more control and responsibility for her and not let her go to that home in the first place. Had she been happy, I truly believe she would not have died that day.
She kicked ass as much as she could on that asshole of rheumatoid arthritis. In the end it wasn’t that disease that beat her.
But I don’t want her story to end that way. I don’t want to have you only remember the way she died. I want you to know the way she lived. She lived fully. She loved with all her heart. She was as much a mother to me as my own was, and in many ways more so.
Her voice, and it’s patient, calm tone is one that I carry in my head as I am dealing with my own daughter and her eleven millionth meltdown of the day.
When she’s older I will tell her all about her great aunt Marilou and how much she would have loved my sweet girl.
And how all of those emotions and love were brought forth today by a bar of Ivory soap.
On Changes
There is a moment each morning when I awake, before my eyes open, that I don’t remember.
Then I peer out at my surroundings and through the fog my brain registers the difference.
The walls are different now, the bed seems taller, but it’s just that the ceiling is much closer than before.
My feet hit a cold, hardwood floor, instead of carpet. It’s a slightly longer walk to the bathroom.
There is quiet. Even in the early morning, when the sounds of soft toddler slumber are floating in the air over the monitor, there is so much quiet. Only soft call of a dove in a nearby tree or the random passing of a car on the street disturbs the quiet.
It’s all so new.
I wouldn’t go back to the old. Not for any amount of money or fame, or whatever it is people wish for when they see a shooting star.
My days are generally happy ones. Sometimes punctuated with some residual anger or worry, but on the whole, happy. My life is my own again. I get to enjoy my daughter without interruption when she’s with me. I have time to enjoy things that are important to me when she’s not.
I can, and do, give her all of me when she’s present. She has my undivided attention. When she’s away, I turn that attention to myself, doing the things that make me happy. Painting. Cooking. Photography. Reading.
Rediscovering who I am and what I want to be.
I fully enjoy having a place that is mine and not ours.
There is so much pain and heartache in the past, but the end of the road also brings choices of direction to travel. Instead of trying to race to the end of the next road, I’m slowing down and enjoying the scenery on the path that I currently reside.
These are moments to remember. Moments to reflect and grow. To put the mistakes of the past behind me, and focus on being a good mom and a good friend. And most of all, good to myself, in ways I never knew I needed to be before.
It’s a good life, this new one.
But just for that one moment, I don’t remember.
Backwards Forwards
Ava likes to play a little game with her Grandma. She runs forward then lurches backward. It’s a teaching moment, to learn what backwards and forward mean. It makes her smile and giggle in the process, which of course, is the best way to learn.
Every single day, people ask me how I am doing. Am I ok? Most days, I can honestly tell you, yes, I am. I am ok. Don’t get me wrong. I have moments, hours, sometimes, days where I falter. I get scared. I worry about the future. I have times when I wonder, maybe we should give it another shot, if only…
But there is no going backward. He does not want it, and in truth, neither do I. When I’m honest with myself, I see now how unhappy I was. How I was desperately searching for something to fill the emptiness I felt. I made some bad choices in how to fill that space. Choices I regret, and are in large part the reason I am at this fork in my road.
I’ve been told “I don’t know how you can act like nothing happened.” I”m not acting like nothing happened. What I am choosing to do is to move forward. Forward into a new life. Moving forward doesn’t mean that I don’t feel anything about what happened in the past. It doesn’t mean that I don’t care about any hurt I caused, or hurt I have.
Moving forward means I have to figure out what lessons to take away from it. I see where I went wrong, and more importantly, WHY. The why here is everything. Now I know how to recognize unhappiness in myself. I’ve been given the tools to see that, and so, with those tools, I move forward, knowing I am much better equipped emotionally to handle life and everything that comes along with it.
To stay, mired in sadness and loss…is going backward. To stay mired in that means I cannot make progress and be a better person. I don’t want to go back to the unhappy, lonely person I used to be. I want to live a life full of love and laughter. A life of good friends and family.
And so, I choose to move forward.
Memories on a Map
The highway dips under a train track. For as long as I can remember the sensation of that sudden downward movement made my stomach flip every time we drove that way. The low bridge sign always made my minds eye envision a truck getting wedged under the bridge. Up the road there are raised strips on the pavement to let you know you are getting close to a 4 way stop sign. In summer it was always shady, thanks to oak trees and pine trees filtering the light.
Then there is the hill that runs through the center of town. It is where I once got stuck during a winter storm when the imbecile I was behind decided to stop halfway up. It is also the hill that houses the hospital my father died in. The same hospital that my mother worked in. The one that cared for me when I had to have a gall bladder removed.
There is the windy, hilly street that led to our neighborhood. On weekends teenagers, with their freedom from the realization of mortality would speed along, sometimes while drinking. The evidence of their jaunts was strewn across the ditches and yards; bottles and cans, and sometimes car parts.
The two lane state highway that wound through a forest. Driving it every single day, once up, once back. Once, diverting onto a logging road, all mud and grime. Pounding, sideways rain, all thanks to an asshole of a storm named Andrew.
Another two lane road. Houses scattered farther and farther apart as the town becomes smaller in the mirror. Passing by the church I found comfort in. Next the funeral home where I last saw my father.
A country road. Pavement at first, turning to gravel. Up and down small rises. One last turn, left. Home.
**I, for some reason, was on Google Maps today looking at the town I grew up in. Those streets are more than names on a map. They are my past. My memories.
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