Category: BBBB (Page 1 of 3)

In these crazy times I think about going over to my mother’s for lunch, and how she would fume about 45 and what a mess he was making of everything, how he couldn’t stop being an asshole for five damn minutes. That’s my wording, not hers, but the sentiment was there.

I remember sitting at The Cheesecake Factory with her, after negotiating her wheelchair to the table and getting everything in place. And in the middle of lunch, she said very matter-of-factly, “What we need to do is get some ricin.”

And we laughed about how exactly an elderly infirm woman in a wheelchair was going to take advantage of that ricin she had somehow acquired. Then I looked up and announced to the invisible microphones surrounding us that I DID NOT CONDONE ANY VIOLENCE AGAINST THE PRESIDENT.

I miss her so damn much. It’s been eight months, and it feels like I miss her more now than when she died. I guess maybe that’s normal. I don’t know. But something that was just kind of theoretical feels all too real now. It hurts.

When he finally does leave the White House, under whatever circumstances, I will make a toast to her. She deserves it.

I think everyone has certain people and things that connect them to the world. Anchors. My mother was one of those people for me – probably the most important one. Strange how that happens; I’m a grown man and I have my own life, such as it is. But she was this unblinking constant, always there, whether I wanted her to be or not.  I kid, because we had an amazing relationship. We shared a sense of humor that I think was unique to the two of us. And if it was even possible we grew closer in the last year, filling in the gaps for each other.

And now she’s just gone. There are times, like tonight, that I look around and I don’t recognize the world. I can’t make sense of it. That anchor is pulled up and won’t ever be put back again. It’s disorienting. Everything sort of looks the same, sort of feels the same, but it’s not. I don’t understand a universe where I will never speak to her again.

I know I will figure things out, eventually. Just not tonight.

My friend and former colleague Carin Bringelson and I had lunch on Sunday. And she was patiently listening to me talk about some of the things that had happened since my mother died two months ago. And I referred to that period as “whatever you call this.”

“I call it grief,” she said.

Yes, well, right. Grief.

But “grief” is such a limited term for something so pervasive, so all-encompassing. It holds a funhouse mirror up to everything, from the most mundane to the most consequential. It makes me feel totally numb at some times, completely cut off, while at other times it makes me cry watching a video of a bullied kid on Facebook. I look down at my keys, which used to be a giant mass that would jangle in my pocket like a janitor’s – now they don’t. Her name is everywhere: on an old bill, on a card she sent me in that spiky handwriting of hers, on my Netflix login screen for god’s sake. I get in my car, which was hers, and look at the Beanie Baby she kept on the dashboard for some reason. I think maybe it was rare or valuable at one time; I don’t remember.

I’m not depressed, exactly. But there is a blanket over everything. Tasks take a bit longer, thoughts are a bit jumbled at times. I’m tired a lot. I think that’s all normal, especially combined with winter blowing in.

And then there’s Christmas. My father died just before Christmas 1995, and since then the holiday has been…problematic. We just can’t seem to catch a break. One year my mother fell down the basement stairs right before Christmas; it was a miracle she didn’t break anything or suffer a head injury. Her lung surgery to remove a tumor, which took her five months to recover from instead of the one month the doctors expected, was in early December 2014. That Christmas was literally harrowing.

But my mother, like my grandmother, loved Christmas. So I did my best to make an effort. One year, I suggested that my mother and I just get each other one gift. She agreed, solemnly, and then proceeded to create a giant tower of gifts for me tied together with a single ribbon. Sneaky. 🙂

She was famous, again like my grandmother, for giving not-so-great gifts, despite all her best intentions. One year, she gave me an air popcorn popper and a plastic-sealed book of black and white photography, which when opened revealed lots of images of naked people entwined in extremely unlikely sexual positions. (She knew I liked photography, and the image on the cover was innocuous.)

This year, well. Yeah. Pretty different. And sometimes this terrible ache is a physical thing that makes me catch my breath.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that right now, “grief” is indistinguishable from “my life.” It’s not all terrible; not by a long shot. We had so many fun times, so many laughs. And she touched many more people’s lives than she would ever realize. I know it will move and change and morph. I just have to hold on. She once gave me a refrigerator magnet with a quote from Winston Churchill:

“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

Good advice, Winston. Good advice.

Saw that Season 2 of “The Crown” is up now on Netflix. And my first thought was, “Mom really wanted to see that.” She watched a fair amount of Netflix once she got into the apartment because she finally had decent internet access, having lived out where God lost his shoe for so many years. And she loved the first season of “The Crown.” She was a teenager when Elizabeth became Queen, so she lived through all the events depicted. And she loved the pomp and pageantry and frankly, the manners of the period. She asked me many times when the next season would air, and I looked forward so much to watching it with her.

Really missing my mother tonight. Haven’t really talked to her for two months, which is by far the longest I’ve gone without talking to her in my entire life. I understand intellectually that she is gone. But it seems unbelievable that this person that I have had beside me for 52 years is just – poof! – not there. Her apartment is cleared out, her possessions are scattered to the winds, and most bizarre of all, her ashes are sitting in a wooden box on my dining room table. When I think about it it seems absolutely crazy.

Went to drop off the keys to my mother’s now empty apartment at the rental office this afternoon. That sucked.

When my father died, social media wasn’t even a glimmer in anyone’s eye; the internet barely existed at all. And so as a form of therapy I’ve been writing a fair amount around here about how things went and how I’ve been feeling. And then it feels self-indulgent, and I want to apologize to you all for that. And then I feel like just writing the apology comes off as a fishing expedition. Which doesn’t mean that I don’t get that little hit of dopamine when one of you makes a nice comment on a post I’ve written. And then I feel guilty about that. All of that also sucks.

Still waiting for the good part.

I never know what’s going to trigger my emotions these days. Tonight I was watching one of the best Star Trek: Next Generation episodes, “The Offspring.” Data creates another android that he considers his child. In the end, the child, Lal, has a massive malfunction and dies. This perhaps understandably made me very emotional. And at the end, simply and beautifully, Lal says to Data something I would like to say to my own mother.

“Thank you for my life.”

Spent the afternoon cleaning out my mother’s apartment with my brothers, who are in town for this task. We got a lot done, but it was intense and draining. Shout out to my wonderful niece Anne who took endless loads of clothes and personal effects to the Agrace Hospice thrift store. I am so grateful for my amazing family as we help each other through this difficult process.

Have a family member you love who you haven’t spoken to in a while? Give them a call this weekend. It will be worth it.

Pop culture is really kicking my ass right now. My friend Paul and I recently saw “Victoria and Abdul,” which while I knew was about an elderly Queen Victoria, I did *not* know that a large portion of the end of the movie takes place at the dying Victoria’s bedside.

Then there was “The Meyerowitz Stories” on Netflix, where Dustin Hoffman’s character spends a chunk of the movie in a medically-induced coma, and the family speaks to grief counselors about what to say to their ostensibly dying father.

I had always been able to make my mother feel better. Even before she became ill, when we would have lunch together on Saturdays, I could tell that whatever was going on, she would be happier after our time together.

This only intensified once she started needing daily and then nearly constant care. Many days were so difficult for her – every step, every time getting in and out of a chair, was a struggle. Sometimes – not often – she would admit to me how hard it was just getting through the day.