The elevator and the candle

I made it through Christmas just fine. But sometime in the days afterward, a funk snuck up on me. The best visual to describe the emotional sinkhole I've gone into would be a mine shaft elevator. Somehow I descended from serenity and calm happiness into a sorrow so deep that the strongest urge I feel is to just shut down and shut out everything, even the light. I'm finding myself leaning back on an old remedy: Find one thing every day to be happy with, and somehow that day will go by OK. It doesn't have to be a big thing. It can be the print a leaf leaves on the sidewalk after a rain. It can be something silly and charming, like the the word "tacky," which is such a singularly human construct that the word always makes me appreciate my species. It can be seeing my fiance cheer at a football game or my cat stretch in front of the fire, or getting a friend's writing to look over, or watching a dog run zany circles in the park across the street. I wait for these things, and they get me by. I know from times before when I played this game that it works. These little talismans light my way to each new sunrise until steady cheer dawns in me again. The trick is to avoid wondering when that will be. I've got a story due in 17 days, so that ought to keep me occupied.

Holiday catch-up

It's been a while since I last posted, and that's because I was insanely busy with Christmas preparations. It's the first time I've ever not gone to my hometown for Christmas. Notice my use of the term "my hometown" rather than "home." Now, for the first time, I feel like my home is here, in San Francisco. It was a good decision to stay here for Christmas. But it meant that I had to have everything ready and into the mail by last Monday. Gifts for everyone I was giving gifts to; chocolates for everyone I was mailing or handing them to; cards sent. In the past I could just wait til the last minute with just about everything except cards, then put it all into the car the night before and drive it all to Santa Barbara. Not this time. I put together 18 calendars in iPhoto, made a tutu for one of my nieces, made 20 pounds of chocolates (truffles, caramels, barks). I was a good holiday citizen and got all my cards into the mail early.

It was my first Christmas away from my hometown and with my new family--my fiance--and while I've had some sad moments thinking about what can never be again, it was a good, self-supporting decision to stay up here rather than go to Santa Barbara to be where everything would remind me of loss rather than the joy of Christmas. But not being there at this time of year was so new to me that I wasn't quite sure of how to go about it. So I thought we could begin by figuring out what some of our holiday traditions would be. I requested we see a choral performance, since choir music means Christmas to me. So on 12/23, we went to see Chanticleer at St. Ignatius here in the city. It was the most exquisite a cappella singing I've ever heard. And the church was a stunner, too. It was so beautiful it nearly made me want to go Catholic (I'm still safely Greek Orthodox). We were so blown away by the whole experience that we decided to make Chanticleer's Christmas concert one of our permanent holiday traditions. We may add a nutcracker next year. In fact, next year we may just get each other Christmas concert tickets for gifts instead of the "under-the-tree" kind.

Last on the holiday catch-up list to write about is a dinner we put together tonight for 10 of our friends. We made crostini for appetizers and served that with sherries. Then came the main course: turkey with cornbread and roasted vegetable stuffing; mushroom gravy; lemon-roasted green beans; cranberries with port and cinnamon; bread and butter; pinot noir for the wine. Dessert was a chocolate panna cotta cake that came out wonderfully, paired with various ports and sauternes. The calorie load was staggering. Our guests were charming and fun. One of them brought the board game Taboo and we played a round, then chatted and drank more dessert wine until around midnight. The carnage in the kitchen was so complete--every dish out and every wine and cordial glass used--that we had to snap some photos. I'll post 'em later. Now I've got to head over to my wedding blog and catch up there. Then it's time for bed, at last.

My first Christmas tree ever

Believe it or not, I've never had my own Christmas tree. I always went home to Santa Barbara for Christmas; usually to help decorate the tree that went up shortly after Thanksgiving, and then again for the Christmas holiday itself. This is the first year those ornaments from my and my siblings' childhoods won't be unpacked from their boxes out in the garage. They'll stay there through the cold nights until one day next year we'll divide them. Meanwhile, my first-ever Christmas tree stands, lit and fragrant, in our living room in San Francisco. We bought it for $37 at a tree lot outside the Grocery Outlet in Redwood City. It's a six-foot fir tree. The cat loves to play underneath it. Thanksgiving was profoundly depressing for me. But the idea of Christmas, here with my fiance, with our own tree and our own new traditions, makes me feel peaceful. There'll be no sibling politics to deal with. No driving, except maybe to the store for any stray dinner ingredients. No house-where-parents-aren't. We'll go hear Chanticleer on December 23, open some bubbly on Christmas Eve, and make dinner for a few friends on Christmas Day. When I think of Christmases past, I feel so sad. But it's Christmas Now, and I can feel happy about that.

The bad, the ugly, and the good

The only good things about the Thanksgiving weekend trek that (1) I was with Bob, and (2) we got to visit with relatives. Oh, and (3) we took a trip to March Field Air Museum, a place where I feel strangely at home. We drove 1,100 miles, from San Francisco to Nuevo, then Indio, then Santa Barbara, and back to San Francisco. We were exhausted and cold-ridden when we returned. I'm sneezing as I type and contemplating which cold med will decongest me enough so I'll be able to sleep tonight. Whine, whine. On the good side of things, my Christmas present (early) is a bazillion more sessions with the trainer. Woo! Another sizable bit of good fortune is that I received a story written by my dear friend and mentor, and I can't wait to tuck into it.

Discouraging

I heard the other week that one category of submissions that always makes publishers cringe is loss-and-grief manuscripts. Word is they're almost always pitched into the toss or sendback pile. This is not encouraging news, since I'd planned to compile my journal entries and emails into a journal-style book about my mom's death. On top of this, I face spoken and unspoken criticism from writers I know who think laboring over fiction is somehow more legitimate than the writing project I plan. Of course, I'm beginning my work. But as I go, I'm struggling to not feel like just another hack.

Personal environment

I have two visits to go with my personal trainer. The effects of all my iron pushing started showing up a few weeks ago and continue incrementally. I have better muscle definition and I'm starting to lose a little body fat. It's a huge relief to be in shape again, and now I know how to use the free weight section of the gym, which used to intimidate me. Now I shoulder past the big, sweaty men and take my place at the cable machine or on the weight bench and go through my sets. It feels good. I'm sleeping more. Writing more. And have a generally cheerier outlook. Marred, currently, by the fact that an idiot skipper ran his container ship up against a Bay Bridge support and spilled a crapload of fuel oil into our bay. The sludge has encircled Alcatraz, coated untold thousands of birds, and is washing up on various beaches. Nightmare.

May His Memory Be Eternal

My friend R.D.'s father died on Monday. I just learned about it tonight, a few moments ago, which doesn't bother me in and of itself. I understand the chaos that happens and the weird time warp one enters when a loved one dies. But I wish I could have been there sooner for my friend. He's exhausted, naturally, and grieving. I'm bitter that lung cancer has claimed another victim. My mom would have adored Mr. D, who was a wonderful jazz musician. I'll call my friend tomorrow and see how he's doing.

How Am I? "Miserable, darling, as usual!"

I'm constructing a Cruella de Vil outfit for Halloween. Here's how it's working out:
- From home I'm using a long slinky black skirt and a sleek black tank.
- From TJ Maxx I bought a pair of red pointy flats.
- From House of Humor, a local costume shop, I bought a cigarette holder, a pair of elbow-length red gloves, a white wavy wig, and some black spray-on hair color. I'll spray half the wig black.
- From JoAnn fabrics, I bought four yards of white fake fur and four yards of dalmation-print lining fabric, four packets of red bias tape, four large black buttons, four large snaps for under the buttons (I don't want to bother with making bottonholes in fake-fur fabric), and 2 smaller red fabric buttons.

I drafted a pattern for a wide-collared white "fur" cape that'll be lined with the spotted material. All seams will be bound with red tape, to go with the red gloves and shoes. I'll do dramatic brows and red lipstick. I wish I had the movie so I could study the character, but I'll have fun regardless.

Back to the cape: I spent a good deal of time measuring and drafting, then cut out the pattern pieces. Tomorrow I'll cut and begin pinning and sewing. I figure Monday evening will be devoted to doing the trimming (sewing buttonholes on the inside tabs that'll make the cape close into "sleeves" when needed). I'll buy red lipstick on Tuesday, then be all ready for Wednesday's big Halloween party at work.

This is the first creative project I've been really interested in since my mom died. For some reason, the wedding planning interests me deeply, but not consumingly so. But a good Halloween costume...now there's a craft worth obsessing over at least a little.

Sad news from the east

My paternal uncle, the father of my dear cousins out in Boston, is gravely hurt and has been in the hospital for the past week. He was supposed to have surgery this morning, but at 6 a.m. today, his family got a call that their dad was back in the ICU, on a respirator, and they'd best all get down there as soon as possible. We'd all been praying daily for his recovery, and what a crushing setback we've gotten instead. Again, I'm left wondering (childishly, I'm sure) about the usefulness of prayer in doing anything besides making people feel like they're doing something at the time they're praying. Of course, I continue to pray, and in faith, but there's this weird little stream of thought going at the same time that says "pray all you want; it won't matter. What's going to happen is what's going to happen, and your prayers will have nothing to do with it." Maybe that's why a lot of people say we should pray for God's will to happen, and for ourselves to accept it with strength and with grace. I just want my uncle to pull through, so my aunt can have her husband and my cousins can have their dad for a few years longer.

My priest would not approve. Nevertheless...

Thanks to my cousin Wednesday42.

You are The Empress

Beauty, happiness, pleasure, success, luxury, dissipation.

The Empress is associated with Venus, the feminine planet, so it represents,
beauty, charm, pleasure, luxury, and delight. You may be good at home
decorating, art or anything to do with making things beautiful.

The Empress is a creator, be it creation of life, of romance, of art or business. While the Magician is the primal spark, the idea made real, and the High Priestess is the one who gives the idea a form, the Empress is the womb where it gestates and grows till it is ready to be born. This is why her symbol is Venus, goddess of beautiful things as well as love. Even so, the Empress is more Demeter, goddess of abundance, then sensual Venus. She is the giver of Earthly gifts, yet at the same time, she can, in anger withhold, as Demeter did when her daughter, Persephone, was kidnapped. In fury and grief, she kept the Earth barren till her child was returned to her.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

*honk*....*snrfl*...$&#@!!

Sick again. I had a few days to enjoy being over the flu and then a cold virus jumped me. Damn. I hate being congested; hate it with a white-hot hate. I don't get to go to the gym. I had to cancel two fun weekend events I'd really been looking forward to. *Sigh*. And I just IM'd with a friend whose dad's lung cancer, I found out this very moment, has spread to his liver and brain. Which makes me feel like an utter loser for complaining about a cold. Errggghgh.

Gave me fever

I came home on Wednesday feeling tired, strung-out really, and with my back tingling in that special way that means I'm probably coming down with something. But I went to 24 Hour Fitness to meet my trainer anyway, because (1) I'm bad-ass, and (2) I thought maybe a workout would kick-start my immune system. I was wrong on the latter count. As I warmed up, I was feeling pretty OK. Almost normal. But then Mr. Evil (my nickname for Mark, my trainer, who I really like) came along and started putting me through my paces. It's a given that at the end of each workout with him, I feel like an overcooked strand of linquini. But on Wednesday night, I thought I was going to either faint or hurl. I'm kind of stubborn when it comes to taking everything that guy can dish out, so I just kept my head down and did my reps on each exercise until my muscles trembled and threatened to fail. Normally I sweat like a dock worker when I exercise, but this night I noticed that no matter how hard I pushed, I didn't perspire. Finally, Mark looked at me and said "We'd better stop. You look kind of green." I crept home and took a long bath, and two hours later found out I was running a temparature. I ached all over and my eyeballs felt like hot marbles. My heart rate was 111 per minute, and it stayed there for hours. Flu bug anyone? Arghgh...I laid off of work for a day, napping and gabbing with friends on the phone. Old pal Ron called me up from Bozeman. He asked if I was feeling sorry for myself, and when I said "no," he said "Oh yeah--it's us guys who feel sorry four ourselves when we get sick. Women just start throwing kleenex all over the house." Ron cracks me up every time we talk. I drank juice and watched bad TV and scanned the 'net for weird news and slept more and let my fiance pamper me a little and I felt better by Friday morning. Whew! Just in time for the weekend.

Silence of the homecomer

I got a check in the mail yesterday. Which, I suppose, is better than having to put a check into the mail. This is a cash disbursement of one-fifth of my late mother's stock holdings. So. Money in the mail. Money I have to start a checking account for. Money I'd rather not have. But I'll bank it, and I'll use some of it, and invest the rest, and I'll work up some gratitude, eventually.

The last few weeks weren't easy. I found myself so deep under the water of grief that my best defense from it was to just try and hold my breath and live my everyday life. But that's about all I could muster. And so whenever most people asked me how I was doing, I'd say "fine" and leave it at that. But "fine" had been redefined. It no longer meant carefree. It simply meant I was still here; I was maintaining. The hunky scientist fiance and I have been watching recorded episodes of Ken Burns's "The War," and after seeing the images and hearing the veterans' stories, I began to understand why so many of them came back and never said much about what they'd experienced. What could those young men say to their relieved mothers, to the wives they'd grown up alongside in those loamy farming towns, to explain the shattering their lives had undergone in the bloody mud of far-off places with names like "Peleliu"? No words could begin to adequately explain, except to others who'd experienced a similar thing, and then no words would be needed.

i've never occupied a world where words have lost their power. But it didn't matter, as motivation for wordworking was in short supply. But I've come back above the surface and am back to writing, to the imperfect striving that at times brings me closer to grace. And I'm back to wedding planning. We moved our wedding date up by three months (no, I'm not pregnant), to late February, so there's a lot to do.

Come again no more

I spent a few days back in my hometown last week, celebrating my brother's 50th birthday and hanging out with family and friends. And though the visit was full of cheer and good times, it was difficult for me to go over to my parents' house (now ours). For starters, without our mom around to remind him of his chores, my brother has let the yard to go hell. The hedges have grown scrubby and skyward and weeds are pushing the bricks in the back walkway apart.

When my mom and dad first bought that house, we lived crowded into an apartment on the same street. The day they got the keys, mom and dad took us kids across the street and we waded into thigh-high weeds and started pulling them out, exposing good damp earth that would one day hold a lawn and flower beds. The place doesn't look as bad as it did that day, but it has never come closer to reminding me of then. That sight, as well as having to go through the garage storage in search of important papers, left me restless and angry, sad and weary. And today, I've been close to tears a number of times. I bought a used CD of appalachian music while I was there. It's called Appalachian Journey and features Yo Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Mark O'Connor, with guest artists James Taylor and Alison Krauss. Track 3 is perfect for my sentiment today:

Hard Times Come Again No More
(by Stephen C. Foster)
Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears,
While we all swap sorrow with the poor;
There's a song that will linger forever in our ears;
Oh hard times come again no more.

Tis the song, the sigh of the weary,
Hard times, hard times, come again no more
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door;
Oh hard times come again no more.

While we seek mirth and beauty and music light and gay,
There are frail forms fainting by the door;
Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say
Oh hard times come again no more.

Tis a sigh that is wafted across the troubled wave,
Tis a wail that is heard upon the shore
Tis a dirge that is murmured around the lowly grave
Oh hard times come again no more.

Tis the song, the sigh of the weary,
Hard times, hard times, come again no more
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door;
Oh hard times come again no more.

Draft submitted

I finished Draft 2 of the short story I finished over Labor Day weekend, and sent it off to the fiction group for dissection and review. It was the longest stretch I've spent writing in oh, I don't remember how much time. And it was painless. There were no itchy urges to mop, dust, straighten, hem, pluck errant eyebrows, or to do anything other than write, snack, write, browse for facts, and write. Whew.

Trapping myself into writing, with you the unwitting accomplice

I'm going to spend most of my Labor Day weekend writing. I have a short story to turn in before the next time my writer's group meets, mid-month, and I'm way behind. Gah! I'm feeling panicky. So on Saturday I'll work at my church's Greek festival from 11 til 3, come home and write, have a little dinner and resume writing. Then Sunday and Monday will pretty much be all about writing, with breaks to snack and run to the loo, plus two workouts of about an hour and a half each. I have to keep up the momentum on that. I'll report on Monday night or Tuesday about how much I accomplished. There. Now I have to write because otherwise I'm going to have to announce that I didn't. Which would never do.

Sore and exhausted

Tonight I completed the eighth out of 20 sessions with a personal trainer I go to at 24 Hour Fitness. By "completed," I mean I can still walk. The evil monster known as Mark led me through an hour and a half's worth of exercises that were so challenging that my T-shirt was soaked from shoulders to waist. I so wish I were one of those women who glow rather than sweat, but it's never been the case. Sweat actually drips off me when I work out, and my hair sticks to my head like moss on a stone. Oh, so alluring. Anyway, right now I'm so tired I can barely write. And my muscles are protesting in that special way that tells me tomorrow I'm going to be eating aspirin as though it were candy corn. The good part in all this is that I'm getting fit. Another benefit is that I'm sleeping regularly and deeply. The bad part is that my ass is still the size of a bus. I remember a time when the results of exercise didn't take quite this long to show up. Grumble grumble bitch bitch grouse and growl.

In and out of the woods

I've been in the thick of grieving lately: quickly confused, easily upset, unexpectedly depressed, given to morbid mind-wanderings. And just when I wake up expecting to feel the same way I did the day before, behold a different mood. So some days are fine, others are excruciating. It's exhausting. I've taken up beading to keep my mind occupied. I'm trying to write, with limited success. A dear friend and mentor just sent me his manuscript to read, and doing that may give me a much-needed inspirational boost. Meanwhile, wedding planning continues apace. If you're interested in such things, you can read about it at my other blog.

Horribly Remiss

I've let this journal go for a while. Rather than blame myself (so distasteful), I'll blame a demanding workload, the need to make a birthday present for my friend The Wench, and wedding planning. This is not to say that I've been distracted. I've just been lazy about posting. I've been having a terrible time writing, also. This is likely because of the fact that (a) I have not assigned myself a set writing schedule, and (b) writing involves emotion and I've had enough of emotional processing for a while. It tires me out quickly. Still, those are just excuses. I have a story to turn in to my writing group, and so tomorrow I will write. Mid-day I plan to visit my nearly-99-year-old buddy at a retirement home a little south of where I live. This year has not been kind to her; she's complained of losing more vision, more balance, more bladder control, and her hands are getting shakier. That makes table manners a bit of a challenge. My friend is proud, so it's tough for her to "join the merry throng" in the dining room. She was reared in Britain, my friend, and so she says things like "join the merry throng." Betty calls herself "a pusher." That means she struggles on, despite her hardships. In the very first week we met, about five years ago, she taught me the words she lives by. I recently learned they come from a poem by Edmund Vance Cooke:

"Oh, a trouble's a ton, or a trouble's an ounce
Or a trouble is what you make it.
And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts,
But only how did you take it?
You're beaten to earth? Well, well, what's that?
Come up with a smiling face.
It's nothing against you to fall down flat,
But to lie there--that's disgrace."

Lately Betty has been determined to get outside the assisted-living place and go do her shopping. This takes a lot of grit on her part, as getting around (even with her walker) is a very slow process. I'll take her to Walgreens so she can buy "biscuits" (cookies) to go with her afternoon tea, and any sundries she may need. And then we'll have lunch, and after a little while I'll come back here and fall again to my writing. In the evening, the Hunky Scientist and I will make some wild mushroom lasagne. It'll be a satisfying Saturday.

Another blog!

I decided to blog about wedding preparations and the insane weirdness of the wedding industry. You'll find the link to that blog, called 1+1, below right in my links listing.

A light for the pathway through

Yesterday I went to see a peer counselor at a place called Kara, located in Palo Alto. It's a non-profit whose focus is on supporting those who grieve. I'd been harboring a grim reluctance to go to this appointment. But afterward, I felt a measure of peace. The counselor Kara paired me with is a woman in her 50s who turned out to be a deeply empathetic listener. I told her about the flashbacks I have of my mom, movies that play in my head of scenes from when she was so gravely ill. I told her about how I try to ignore them, or push them away--and how doing so creates conflict because having a memory of my mom (even a distressing one) is better than not having anything of her at all. She asked me to tell her what it was like to care for my mom, and I didn't know where to begin. "Ask me some questions," I said. She did and in answering her, I found a way to start.

I told her about the 18-20 hour days, the days when every minute was taken up with medical appointments; meal planning and preparation; medicine fetching or dosing or planning; linen changing; laundry; sibling politics; housekeeping; working when my mom was sleeping; trying in the midst of it all to stay connected with my sweetheart and sometimes failing that. About praying to a God I didn't believe could even hear me and praying the next night anyway. I told her about the inexorable diminution of my mother; the terrible intimacy of knowing better than my siblings what my dying parent needed to soothe her pain or anxiety or breathlessness; the exhausting disorienting daily battery of new symptoms and new measures to keep those symptoms at bay; the tiny rejuvenating oases of normalcy that love and friendship brought; the terror and helplessness of being an untrained nurse in the home of a desperately sick person whom I loved and who was never going to get better. As I talked, I felt a familiar tug. It was part of my psyche taking the injured part of me by the hand and quietly saying "Come on. Let's go where it's safer." I know that place. It's a realm just a hair's breadth from now, a place just slightly removed from the actual present, a safe buffer away from the immediate; a damper of pain. But I resisted that old call and I stayed right there in the present and I told and I felt what I was going to feel. It was exhausting all over again and it left me dizzy. I had to sit in the car for a while afterward and let the color seep back into the landscape of my life. I'm supposed to meet with this counselor again this coming Monday, and the Monday after that, and every Monday to come until there comes a day when I realize I won't need to meet with her again. A part of me looks forward to this. The rest of me does not.

Independence Day

It's a little after 9 p.m. and instead of standing outside watching fireworks, I'm sitting at the dining room table eating frozen cherries and surfing the net. I was looking forward to 4th of July, until it got here. It's always been my favorite holiday. I love fireworks displays and small-town Independence Day parades with their cheesy floats and marching baton twirlers and banner carriers and convertibles full of waving vets. But it's always also been a family holiday for me some of my happiest memories of home involve being at the fireworks shows with my mom and dad. When I was little, they always got boxes of Cracker Jack for me and my siblings. I ate the popcorn and gave the peanuts to whoever wanted them. We noted over the years that the prizes inside got cheaper and smaller until they were made only of paper. When we were older, we'd take turns driving the family down somewhere near the beach and we'd walk the last several blocks with our blankets. Sometimes we got close enough to feel the soft tickle of ash falling from the starburst explosions. After I left home, I nearly always went back for this holiday. Now, I no longer have a choice. Everyone's doing their own thing: Frank decided he would stay in; Lisa and David said they'd catch the show in their little town; John's grumbling about traffic and lack of parking and undercover cops and no room at his favorite bar; Christine and her family are staying at their home. Their kids are too little to appreciate a fireworks display and so the parents are saving themselves the drive. And I remain here with my fiance, having decided I can't bear the idea of crowds and traffic, the bustle of other peoples' families out on this summer night with somewhere to go and somewhere to get back to. Outside, the finale is happening and the local peanut gallery adds its little chorus of screamers and fizzlers and plain old loud bangers. In the middle distance police sirens call, and out over the water huge burts of light crack into bloom. The overlapping booming reverberates amid the towers of this city and echoes down the memories that lie in the chambers of my heart.

Orphan in a bridal boutique

Today I went for the first time to try on wedding dresses. With me went two friends from church. We went to a small, cramped little store located in a small, mid-Peninsula town and started combing the racks (my instructions: No sequins, no strapless dresses, no overblown use of lace or beads. Simpler is better"). We dragged 15 dresses from the rack and into a dressing room, and I started trying them on. Or, rather, the girls took turns putting me into them. I haven't been dressed by someone else since I was a toddler. But it's nearly impossible to get into a wedding dress by one's self. I quickly discovered that both boat necklines and basque waists make me look as wide as a barn, and that halter necklines and empire waists transform me into someone who has a much nicer figure than mine. I also discovered that ivory looks better on me than stark white, but silvery white is also very complimentary. As I expected, I found that I felt silly in dresses with long trains (I kept saying "I could have this taken off and make a nice little jacket out of it!") And I found that nearly every time I came out of the dressing room there was another bride-to-be there, turning to see her dress from all angles in the mirrors. She looked to be about 24, and her mother was with her, straightening out hemlines, pulling bodice lacings tight, offering opinions. No matter how many girlfriends you have along with you, and no matter how much fun you're having, when you're 10 to 20 years older than most of a boutique's clientele and your mother isn't with you, shopping for a wedding gown takes on a bittersweet, lonely aspect. Still, I came out of there with two gorgeous, elegant, understated gowns in mind. I'm going to go back on a Tuesday when the owner is there and see what kind of savings I can negotiate with her. I don't plan to spend any more for my wedding gown than I would for any other nice evening dress. I'm not naive; I'm determined. If she won't cut me the deal I'm looking for, I'll just go somewhere else until I get what I want for the price I'm willing to pay. My mother would be proud.

Like the tide

When the hunky scientist and I went to Hawaii last November, there was a tsunami warning midway through our trip. It ruined a day of boogie boarding for us, but we did get a chance to see a remarkable thing: As we sat at a table near the shore, we could watch the sea retreat far past its normal low-tide mark, then come washing back to over-fill the cove. Yesterday I learned grief can be like that. During the night before I felt all emotion ebbing away, sinking into the crevices of my mind and heart and leaving me curiously disquieted and gray. The next morning, it came flooding back in a tide of sadness that seemed to cover everything. Fortunately, the next retreat was to a normal emotional level, and here it remains. For the moment.

Uh oh. A deadline.

I went to my first writer's group meeting last night. At the end, I volunteered to offer up something for the next meeting. This fills me with amusement and dread. Amusement because I have no works of fiction to present. Dread because I have to work something up quickly. But it's not as though my life has been lacking in material. I'd better get busy.
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I've been singing again, and that reminds me of my mother. I sing songs she liked, standards like "Cry Me A River" and "The Very Thought of You," and numbers that just make me think of her and our old life, like "This Old Porch" by Lyle Lovette and "Still Crazy After All These Years" by Simon and Garfunkle. I sing songs my father played for me when I was a child, and I sing songs my parents never sang, songs from my madrigal days. I sing with my singer's spirit of a voice that nobody will ever know about because I was too shy a teenager to take it on the road. I sing a memory of my mother and my father, sing a portrait of us, and my singing builds melodies as bright and strong, fragile and brief as the lives we all spend here together.

Completely different news

The hunky scientist proposed marriage to me on Sunday, and I said yes, of course. He's been getting hunkier lately, thanks to increased bike riding and weight lifting, and I figured if I didn't say yes that some other broad would grab him. The only bummer in the thing is that now I have this gorgeous, sparkly symbol of attachment and he's still running around out there lookin' all buff, tan, and single. Maybe I'll invent the first man's engagement ring. It'll be a thick platinum band that's engraved on the outside with the words "Too late, ladies!" All joking aside, I'm thrilled; my heart is content. And I'm happy, too, that neither of us wants a big, showy wedding. We just want to be married and have a nice time with our friends and family.
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Next week I'm going to attend a writer's group for the first time. Should be interesting and fun. I'll report back.
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On the grief front, I'm sleeping better this week, though work is kicking my butt and stressing me out (that's why I haven't posted in a little while).

Sorting through 70 years

Our home is on the market. It's been cleaned, painted and manicured. One-third of the furniture is still in the rooms, placed just so for staging. And nearly all my mother's framed watercolors are on the walls. Everything else, the contents of two people's 70 years, along with the flotsam of five children's lives, was stashed out in the garage in the rush to get the house ready for the summer market. Our mission this week was to go through everything in the garage and disperse it or label it for sale. It's a large garage. And it had never (seriously. NEVER.) been cleaned out before, and now nearly the entire contents of the house were out there, too.

Everyone told me this was going to be a difficult week. "It'll be so emotional," they said. And it has. But not in the way everyone expected. The main emotion I felt during the whole week was "How could anyone accumulate so much useless STUFF?" Every No. 2 pencil in the county of Santa Barbara seems to have made its way to my mother and father's house, where (it seems) they were certain to find safe harbor. Baskets, too, found shelter at our little East Side home. If you've mailed anything to my parents, chances are good that the box and its packing material were saved for eventual re-use but are, as of this week, reposing in the recycling bin. And in the back of the garage, every can of paint, turpentine, spackel, and cleaning fluid my dad had ever used (partially or fully) sat waiting for us on their shelves under at least a quarter inch of accumulated dust. They're now stacked in a mighty, rusty drift beside the back fence, awaiting transport to the hazmat waste site.

On the bright side, my mother also kept every calendar she ever used. I'll go through those and read the chronicles of her days before I consign them to the recycler. She kept every card, letter, and note we ever wrote her; books we composed in 3rd grade (one grabby title penned by my cousin, then about 8: "The Mouse Who Was Tired of Living in a Hole"); pictures we crayoned or painted. She kept diaries. She saved vital records. She rescued personal memorabilia from my father, whose preference was to erase the evidence of his existence behind himself as he moved forward through his life.

And so we've had surprises as we've opened dusty boxes. There have been many "awwwww" moments, but no tears. All this week I have also kept up working for my day job, which has kept me going until midnight every night and up early every morning to make up for the afternoon hours spent in the garage. Call me stubborn, but I just can't take vacation time to do this work. I'll need real vacation time later. And later I'll linger over the things I have asked to take home, like the red fleece throw I found. I don't really love that throw, but my mother did and I found when I put it next to my cheek that it still smelled like her perfume. When I inhaled, it felt like my mother was standing next to me. Later, when that scent has faded, will I keep that throw? I can't say. But from what I keep I'll compose scrap books. Later, I'll deliver slides to be converted to photo files and photos to be duplicated and mailed. I'll turn in old cassette tapes of my mother's singing to be made into CDs to share with her friends and our family. All those things wait to be done. But tonight I just want to decompress. This week it's been just a long and often gritty slog, punctuated by screaming nieces and sibling politics, and I can't wait to go home.

That weird girl at the gym

I was in the gym yesterday, jogging on the treadmill and wondering when my body was going to relax so I could stop feeling like The Thing, who shakes the ground with every running stride. I was listening to my favorite music on my headphones, probably way too loud for my health, when I started crying. Right there in the aerobic room. Because it occurred to me that I could have played music for my mom as she lay dying in the early morning hours. I read that the last sense to leave is hearing. She loved music. I could have made her last hours a little easier. These are the kinds of thoughts that ambush me when I'm having an otherwise sensible day. I didn't stop running, because the sight of a woman in the gym, standing there on the treadmill crying, would be just way too weird. So I kept running and thinking. Few of us know anything about how to help someone who's dying. We just struggle to do the best we can. If we've called in Hospice, their volunteers seem to us to be pillars of knowledge. I wish I'd volunteered with Hospice while my mom was healthy, because I would have been a much better caregiver in later years if I had. But it never occurred to me to do that. Why would I want to be around dying people? Bad excuse: we are all people who are going to die. And Hospice trains its volunteers. I guess the point is that like Israeli citizens and the army, everyone should do a stint as a Hospice volunteer. Because then we'd be a better-armed nation of citizens.

Baking as therapy

Today is the hunky scientist's birthday. I have robbed the pram; he is eight years younger than I am. So I had no pity the other morning when he looked in the bathroom mirror and commented that he was starting to show his age. I love birthdays. He got his main birthday present a month or so ago (a watch). But I couldn't resist getting some comedy club tickets for tonight. Also, it's understood that I'll bake him whatever kind of birthday cake he wants. To say my boyfriend loves cake would be to call Niagara Falls a brook. My boyfriend adores cake with a passion that is endearing. When he eats cake, icing gets on his face. So I was looking forward to baking something multilayered with filling and a glaze or fluffy icing. But this year, he pointed out a recipe for cherry ricotta strudel in Bon Appetit and said "You can me me that" with hopeful, shiny eyes. Cakes I can do. Strudel I never have. Turns out strudel is a complex project. I started out last night with the dough--it's made with oil rather than butter and has to be refrigerated at least a day. And two pounds of large-curd ricotta cheese had to be drained overnight too, then squeezed out in a kitchen towel this morning.

After breakfast (pancakes with peanut butter and maple syrup for THS; I topped mine with fruit) I pitted 3 pounds of cherries and then set them soaking in a syrup of sugar, lemon juice and cointreau. Then I mixed the ricotta with butter and sugar, eggs and grated citrus peel. After that the recipe called for browning bread crumbs in a skillet with butter and mixing those with a bit more sugar. Finally, it was time to put the whole thing together. Strudel dough is made from oil so you can roll it very thin and stretch the heck out of it. A dough made from only 1.5 cups of flower rolls out to the size of a large kitchen towel! I stretched it until it was very thin, then brushed it with butter, topped that with the bread crumbs, made a log out of the ricotta filling along one side, then put the drained cherries on top of that. When I rolled it up, it looked like a huge banana slug. Now it's in the oven baking and the house smells like a birthday. As I type, I'm watching kids and dogs play in the park across the street. My heart is light.

Talk, write, exercise

Grief can make a person's mind do very strange things. For me, the last few days have been an exercise in keeping it together. I forget nearly everything if I don't write it down. I've resorted to entering calendar items in my phone on the spot if I tell someone I'll meet them or promise anyone anything. If I don't calendar it right away, I forget it. I send myself emails reminding myself to look at my calendar, to be sure I've met deliverables on certain projects at work, water the plants, call my brother, make my boyfriend a dessert for his birthday. I adore celebrating birthdays and ordinarily I'd never forget something like that. But I'm terrified I will. I feel as though I have brain damage. I'm still only getting 3 to 4 hours of sleep a night. I'm trying not to use Ambien and will ask my doctor about a non-addictive sleep aid. Meanwhile I've decided to follow the advice of a friend and start exercising daily in an effort to exhaust myself naturally. I had a visit with my company's very competent EAP guy today and after he listened a while he reminded me that it's early days in my grief process and that it might be helpful to cultivate some patience. "It's only been a month," he said. I looked at him for a minute, counting back and confirming. 32 days. It's really only been a month. I can't sleep, but I keep waiting to wake up. "It feels like it's been forever," I replied. He made me an appointment for short-term counseling with a psych and referred me to a Hospice grief support group. Then he gave me a prescription: "Talk, talk, talk. Write, write, write. And exercise."

Adrift in the night

When I was a very young child, my father spun vinyl and called the tunes at a radio station in Santa Barbara. Every day I'd walk home from first grade, come into the living room, and sit facing our big old stereo console. At 3 p.m. sharp, Dad would play me a Simon & Garfunkel song. He liked to play me "Cloudy" or "April Come She Will." The radio station that almost always plays in my mind has been turning that one lately:

April come she will
when streams are ripe and swelled with rain
May she will stay
resting in my arms again
June she'll change her tune
in restless walks she'll prowl the night
July she will fly
and give no warning to her flight...

My mind prowls the nights these days. It won't shut off and sleep rarely comes without medicinal aid. The two people whose DNA combined to make mine are gone and I am left with piles of memories and knee-jerk urges to lift the phone and call them. Small wonder part of me wishes I were where they are, if just for an hour or so, so we could talk. So I could see for myself them there together, happy, to confirm my imagination. But there will be no flying for me. I am at home here among the living, with my friends and my love and whatever my future will bring, as at home here as they are, there where they are.

Significant Sunday

It's my 45th Mother's Day, my first without a mother. The hunky scientist is off on his weekly mountain bike ride and I would go to church, but everyone will be there with their mothers. Every member who has a mom within driving distance brings them to our church on Mother's Day, whether or not they are only C&E (Christmas and Easter) attendees otherwise. After the liturgy, instead of the usual coffee hour, there's a big Mother's Day luncheon. I'm not feeling sorry for myself (OK, yes I am); I'm just more protective of my feelings than to subject myself to a whole churchload of people celebrating their living moms.

Today, we're having a sports-nut pal over to eat pizza and watch the Warriors trounce Utah (with any luck). I've been dealing with a little problem I hope all this activity will sweep away for a while: no matter what I am doing or thinking, for long periods there is an image in my mind of my mother, sick in bed, struggling for breath, or of her face just after she'd died. I struggle to counteract this image with one of her alive, healthy, and happy, but that just ends up another layer of thought over the one that won't go away. Today is a day to celebrate our mothers. I don't want to think of her sick or dead. Not at all. I want to think of her on all the Mothers Days I can remember--enduring the awful burnt or underdone (sometimes both) pancakes and scorched coffee we made for her when we were in grade school, proudly displaying all the flowers we picked for her or later bought, displaying our cards on the mantel over the dining room fireplace. I have 44 Mothers Days to remember with joy and I'm determined to do that. So happy Mother's Day to my mom. Happy Mother's Day to us all.

Blinders off

I've had a strange urge these last few days to undergo "a rigid search," as character Alex put it in the book and movie "Everything is Illuminated." Grief has a way of putting soft and sentimental shades over my eyes, preventing me from seeing things as I did in the past. I have a strong sense of duty to examine my memories of my mother and me, and remember everything--not just the good things, but every aspect of my relationship with her--so I can retain a whole and true image of her and her impact on my life. And so, slowly, I've begun turning pebbles over and scrutinizing what lies beneath them. I did this literally as a child, when all the world was a museum. After a rain, I'd go out and roll logs back and tip up wide stones. Underneath I'd find pearly clusters of amphibian eggs, gorgeous purple and yellow salamanders, whip-thin newts frozen for seconds before flight to other, as-yet-unturned sanctuaries. Other times I'd discover spiders' nests, dry and safe from the wet world around their stony havens, and the sight of those twitch-legged creatures would make the soles of my feet feel jumpy. I'd put the rocks or logs gently but swiftly back down and continue on my search for comelier wildlife. Now, I think it's time to look at the spiders as well as the salamanders, to see what I can learn from both their worlds.

Grief 2.0

Because I don't like writing things twice, here's an excerpt of an email I sent my mother's sister, who'd written to ask how I was doing:

"I'm OK. Pretty down, actually, and so (I've noticed) is Frank. We sprinkled Mom's and Dad's ashes out in the channel this morning from a catameran called Double Dolphin. I sang part of the Greek Orthodox memorial prayer, and John said a really moving poem he wrote. Before we left, Frank and I picked flower petals from the garden, and we all threw handfuls of them onto the swell as we let the ashes go. It made a really beautiful sight on the water--a yellow and pink and purple and blue floating trail."

I spent the rest of the day in a horrible funk. But I worked for a while, and then I went and got my aunt from her hotel and we went down to a beachside restaurant and drank wine and watched the tide come in and the sun go down and weary families come in from the sand. My aunt said I haven't begun grieving. She has her opinions. I didn't bother to correct her; I didn't have the energy. I know I did so much crying while my mom was declining that I have few tears left now. I suspect most people who meet me on the street can't discern that anything is wrong.

But while I'm not visibly grieving, I'm finding I'm easily stressed, I'm sensitive to noise or too much stimulus of any kind. I feel as though the bones of my spirit have been cored free of marrow and I'm waiting for an infusion of new emotions. In the meantime, I may go through my days looking and acting as though nothing is wrong, or as though I'm mildly stressed or fatigued, or, at the worst, short-tempered. I may engage in deep-thought discussion, I may go to museums and admire views and laugh at jokes and have dinner with friends. But inside I'm carrying a deep hollowness, and the scary thing is that I don't know when it will fill back in. Maybe the filling-in is accomplished day by day, with each new experience. Or perhaps one day I'll wake up and the empty space will be gone. Part of me is afraid to show this part of me; that if I walk through life visibly wounded I'll somehow end up left all alone. But I have a hunch that part of healing is letting my loved ones in, and so I take up my courage and write.

This morning as the sun rose I took the plastic box that held the bag of my mother's ashes, as well as the empty bag, out to the garden. Fine, light dust clung to the insides of these things, and so I couldn't just discard them. I set them down on the brick pathway my mom and brother once worked hard to set in, turned on the pale-green hose and rinsed each article three times in the cool stream, emptying the water and dust into the big citrus tree pots and over the bright orange nasturtiums and pale pink alstromeria. Only then could I consider the box and the bags as just those things, things that had served their purpose and could be thrown away.

Away with the current and the tide

Tomorrow at 10, we'll depart the Santa Barbara marina on a boat called Condor and chug 20 minutes out into the channel. There we will scatter my mother's ashes and let the wind and current take them. I picked up the ashes today. They are in a plastic box that could be mistaken for a container for better-quality shoes. They are very heavy. Frank asked that we collect flower petals from each part of our front and back yard, and scatter them with the ashes. He said that would be "most appropriate." So I'll wake him up tomorrow around 8, and we'll go out before the dew has dried and fill some bags with fragrant rose and lavender. My Aunt Rose, my dad's sister and a good friend of my mother's, asked if we could say a prayer. She's Greek Orthodox, so I know she means the memorial prayer that the priest sings at a person's funeral and at certain anniversaries of their death. It's the only prayer she'd know and it's touching that she's want it said, even though my mother was not Orthodox. I'm not a priest, but I know how to sing the haunting and beautiful memorial. It begins: Evlogitos, ei Kyrie, didaxon me ta dikaiomata sou. I'll say an abbreviated version, because I am the only Greek Orthodox in my immediate family, and my brothers and sisters would probably get impatient with the full-length version.

Even though I'm fairly recently baptized in the Orthodox faith (5 years ago or so now), I find it very difficult that I will not be able to have a 40-day memorial for my mother in the church. I'll have to sing it myself, somewhere privately, in front of a candle to remember her by. Yet even as I write these words, I find them strange. I was non-religious for most of my life (and my mom was for all of her life), and now here I am troubled that I cannot ask my priest to sing my mother's memorial.

Life is a strange and beautiful thing.

Aftermath

I was able to officiate my mom's memorial without losing my composure altogether. In fact, I was cool as a stream until I stepped in front of the assembled. But the moment I started talking, I felt my throat start to close up, and I needed a kleenex. After a few deep breaths, though, I was able to continue. Her jazz vocalist friend Sandy sang one of Mom's favorite tunes, "Do Nothing 'Til You Hear From Me." My younger brother gave a eulogy filled with vivid memories of our childhood with Mom and of her more recent life. He got a few tearful chuckles out of everyone and then more tears. Then we asked another longtime family friend to come up and play. Al, a jazz pianest, sat at our dinner table many times while I was growing up, and he accompanied my mom on countless occasions both at gigs of hers and when she sat in where he was playing. He gave a soulful rendition of "Over the Rainbow." And our city's poet laureate, who became another of my mom's close friends when they met at a widows and widowers support group, spoke eloquently on behalf of them.

For the record, the memorial was open-casket as it had been for my dad. The body did not look like my mom. At my dad's funeral, his body looked like he was just taking a nap. But for this occasion the mortitian gave my mom's face an expression and color that made it look like it was a cousin of hers in that casket. So after the initial glance, I didn't look again. Her body was cremated today. We'll receive her ashes tomorrow and on Thursday we'll take a boat out into the channel and scatter them, along with my dad's and some handfuls of rose petals and lavender, into the swift-moving current. I'm not feeling much about that, for some reason. I'm not feeling much about anything, except a strong longing for about a year off. Everyone tells me that after a while the grieving will start, or that at the holidays I'll be hit with waves of sadness. I don't know.

Now there is paperwork to do. Now there are closets to go through, bills to keep paying, investment decisions to make, so many practical things to take care of. We'll start the first weekend in June, so I have a month back in the Bay Area with my sweetheart. I'm looking forward to that.

Friday morning

I'm up late again, assembling playlists for the memorial that's happening day after tomorrow... I guess really it's happening tomorrow, since it's early Friday and not late Thursday. Anway...I've been importing my mom's CDs into my iTunes library and creating two playlists--one for the memorial and one for the reception. This whole week has been a whirl of activity. I've had no time to feel anything, except in the morning when I wake up. I remember my mother saying that there were times during her illness when she'd wake up feeling great. She'd lay there in the magic of early morning, thinking normal morning thoughts: "What shall I do with my day?" and feel a thrill that all was well. She'd get up and turn on the heater, get the paper and start the coffee, feed the cats and then feel all her energy drain right out of her. She'd have to go back to bed before her day had rightfully begun. It demoralized her so.

My mornings this week have had a similar timbre: I awaken in my old room, in my old neighborhood, thinking old early-day thoughts about drinking coffee and reading the paper with my mom. And then of course I remember I can't do that and a melancholy fog steals across the landscape of my spirit. And so I get up and check the list of things to do that day. Yesterday I approved the proof of the program for the memorial, then came home and started scrubbing every room of the house. This place is neater and cleaner even than when my mom was healthy, because then she was too busy living to keep a spotless house. It was neat and clean, but coupons and cut-out articles, old wooden clothes pins, water bottle tops, paper clips and twist ties tended to gather in corners and cubbyholes, and dust collected thick and soft in the dimples of the cane baskets hanging on the walls. As my sister and brother worked to lever weeds from between the pavers out in the yard and tame the hedges, I cleared every corner inside, gathered most of the baskets from the walls and hung my mother's paintings instead, scrubbed the kitchen and bathrooms, washed down the appliances, put out new rugs in the bathrooms and guest towels on the counters, whisked cobwebs from every tall corner. Our dear old house, with its cracked plaster walls and ripple-glass double-hung windows, is ready for my mother's friends.

Rambling when I should be sleeping

My older brother and I went to buy him a suit today. Frank, who has some variant of autism, is nearly 50. He focuses on European progressive rock, Beatles music, and old episodes of Twilight Zone, Emergency, and Gilligans Island. But in the last months of mom's life, he'd kept his earphones off and his TV at low volume. Since her death, he's been playing only tastefully subdued Beatles music, no prog rock. Frank doesn't have much of a sense of style. The last time he wore anything resembling a suit was at my dad's funeral seven years ago. When he pulled that old cashmere jacket out of his packed and dusty closet and held it up in the light, it looked like roadkill hanging from a fence. I told him we'd be going downtown, and he grimaced but was game.

At Men's Wearhouse, Frank looked over the suit jackets and whistled even at the sale price tags. "164 DOLLARS?!" he said in a loud whisper. "I'M NOT MADE OF MONEY!" "It's OK, Frank," I said. "These are really great-quality suits. We'll find out something cool." He had on his best Led Zeppelin T-shirt, some stained navy chinos and black sketchers. A salesperson bustled up, tape measure over his shoulder, and whisked Frank into a dark gray pinstripe that looked fantastic on him. Frank turned toward the mirror, leaned in and glowered, and practiced his best James Cagney. "You'll never get me, see?" When he tried on the pants, they bagged under his prodigious belly. But the salesman hiked them up to where they were supposed to fit, declared them to be proper except for the need for cuffs and suspenders, and proceeded to lay out shirts and ties for us to choose from. While Frank was making his selection, the salesman picked out some great shoes that fit Frank perfectly. I hate to flack, but I love that store. Then with Frank in front of a mirror, the salesman got out his ruler and chalk, marked up the jacket and slacks, picked out some suspenders, and away we went to the cash register. We'll pick up the altered garments on Friday.

Frank proudly paid for the jacket and slacks, declaring "I'm NOT keeping THIS suit in my CLOSET. I'm going to keep it in a much nicer place." As I paid for the shoes, shirt, tie, suspenders and alterations (it turned out to be an even split), Frank asked the salesman if he could wash his new duds in the washing machine. The salesman patiently explained the rules of suit cleaning, handed Frank the handle bag, and away we went. He treated me to lunch to mark the occasion.
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My family's friends have been lifelines these last several days. They bring by food now and again, or invite me over, offer to come help clean the house. Quiet lines of support, thrown accurately into the waves. It's different from when my dad died suddenly. Then, almost instantly, there was a neverending stream of flowers, cards, casseroles for his widow. But now there is no widow, only exhausted children, and friends who know that when the phone goes unanswered here, sometimes it's not because nobody's home, but because we just can't bear to pick it up. So they patiently try again, or they just come over with their broad shoulders and their kind eyes and they pick our spirits up and set us aright.
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I've wondered time and again why my mother had to die the way she did, why she wasn't granted a healthy life and a swift and painless demise. I think about my father's death--the night of Feb. 9, 2000, when the phone rang and the horrific news from the other end felled my life--and I compare it with the five-month onslaught my mother's dying was. I got used to her dying in increments, as she got used to incremental upticks in her morphine doses. At the end, she could tolerate a dose of morphine that might have killed her had she taken it six months before. And at the end, her death brought us relief rather than shock--relief that she was no longer suffering, and relief that we could get a night's sleep at last. I don't believe this was a gift; what arrogance that would be. I can't believe it was just a matter fate; how then could I have faith? My task, it appears, is to simply accept and to stop seeking a reason for the way things happened. But at night, when I'm trying to get to sleep, the question keeps recurring: Why? How did she deserve this? What god would allow this? All gods, it seems, as countless good people from all walks and all faiths die in misery each moment of every day, each time I breathe in, and every time you exhale.

My mom's obit

I was going to post the link to my mother's obituary, but don't trust the local newspaper to keep the link active for very long. So, here it is for those I didn't already email it to. I wrote it in New York Times formal style, though our local paper will run pretty much anything you give them. I also found out that now obituaries are no longer treated as news, but as ads. You pay by the word and by how many days you want the obit to run. Four days' worth was going to cost us nearly $1,000, so we did things the old-fashioned way and only ran it one day. That experience was eye-opening and made me feel kind of old, for some reason. But then, I've been feeling old for about three months now. I need a prolonged stay somewhere warm and secluded, so I can shed this shell of exhaustion and strain, and emerge revitalized.

Good news: I feel like writing again, so at some point in the next little while, this blog will go back to being a natter about writing, the benefits and downsides of writing groups, the devious things we do to avoid writing, and so on, in addition to including the usual menu of grief ramblings. Oh joy! Oh yeah, I logged on to post my mom's obit. Here 'tis:

Karys, Jevine

Jevine Karys, painter, jazz vocalist, restaurateur, mother of five and beloved friend, died Friday, April 20, at her home in Santa Barbara after a brief second battle with lung cancer. She was 70.

Throughout the last years of her life, Mrs. Karys was a prolific water color painter whose landscape and still life works adorn many homes in California and in Massachusetts. She drew her inspiration from historic scenes, whimsical groupings and floral displays, but also painted images of peoples’ homes upon request.

Born Carla Jevine Tidwell on March 8, 1937, Mrs. Karys was the daughter of Olive Naomi and Carl Clinton Tidwell. Jevine’s younger sister, Tina, was her lifelong friend. Jevine graduated La Jolla High School in 1955, married Howard B. Heath, and welcomed daughter Lisa and son Franklin. The Heaths were divorced, after which Jevine met and married her lifelong love Christopher J. Karys. They had three more children, April, John, and Christine.

During her teens and twenties, Mrs. Karys developed an enduring love of jazz, singing and dancing to the greats of the time. In her 30s and 40s, Mrs. Karys was a vocalist with jazz ensembles in Santa Barbara, and sat in with her dear musician friends’ performances from time to time throughout the rest of her life.

The Karyses reared their five children with love, discipline, respect and creativity. Mrs. Karys’ experiences cooking for her large family came into play later in her life, when she opened and ran Jevine’s Deli in three successive locations with family members helping to develop the menu and run the business. Later, she joined her husband in real estate, retiring upon his death in February of 2000. Mrs. Karys’ love of travel took her to Oregon, Washington, New Mexico, Massachusetts, Canada, Greece, France, Mexico, and lastly to Italy, where she journeyed just before her final diagnosis of cancer.

Mrs. Karys is survived by her sister Chris (Tina) Smith of Rifle, CO; daughter and son-in-law Lisa and David Karys-Schiff of Lompoc, CA; sons Frank and John Karys of Santa Barbara; daughter April Karys of San Francisco; daughter and son-in-law Christine and Jeremiah Sobenes of Oak View, CA and their children Chelsea Wilson and Emma and Eva Sobenes; niece Cristal Martinez and her husband Ric Lantz of Madison, WI; and nephew Eric Smith of Rifle, CO.

A memorial celebration of Mrs. Karys’ life will take place at 1 p.m. Saturday, April 28, at Welch Ryce Haider funeral chapel, 15 E. Sola St., Santa Barbara. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be sent to Hospice Care & Visiting Nurse of Santa Barbara, 222 E. Canon Perdido St.

Nowhere to be at peace

My boyfriend the hunky scientist has to go back to work for the week, so he left this morning. It's terribly lonely here without him, but he'll be back next weekend for the memorial. I'll be the emcee, so this week is going to be busy. I need to write my mom's obituary tonight--that's something I've been soundly trained in (journalism degree), so I have no qualms about it. I need to find something to wear. We need to pick out flowers, get music together, design and write the program, find and schedule a boat for scattering our parents' ashes, figure out how to have a private reception after the memorial (our house and our budget aren't big enough to invite everyone who attends the memorial over for a gnosh), and so many other things. What I really feel like doing is nothing. I don't want to speak to anyone; I don't want to do anything at all. It's a strange desire, this wanting to be more still than still, to empty my mind and feel nothing, to simply dissolve for a while and rest deep and tranquil, let the world's bustle spin around and without me.

The last hours

Here's what happened: My mom had been struggling to breathe, despite our dosing her with morphine and ativan. When we asked if she was uncomfortable she nodded, so we called for a Hospice nurse. He came late in the day, looked her over, and checked her vital signs. He told us her blood pressure was normal, but her lungs sounded pretty bad. He called in a prescription for liquid ativan and said we should give her that every 4 hours, doubled her dose of morphine and said we should give her that every 2 hours, and prescribed a scopalomine patch to help dry up the liquid gathering in her throat and lungs. Mom was barely conscious. She could tell we were there when we tended to her, but she couldn't respond to us very well. She was moaning on each exhalation, and her breathing was rattly and labored. She could only move her arms, and that with effort. The RN said she had only a week left at most--meaning she could go at any time. Mom loved life and had hung on through so many other rough patches that my sister, boyfriend and I figured she'd probably take it to the limit. We set our emotional watches for a few days hence and waited for the Hospice pharmacy to deliver the new meds. Throughout the rest of the day my sister and I kept our mother medicated and clean, turned her from time to time to ease her breathing, stroked her arms and kissed her forehead each time we went in to take care of her.

I had night watch. I was exhausted and knew I wouldn't be able to stay awake for the new medication schedule, so I decided to try to sleep for two-hour intervals. After giving Mom her 11:30 morphine dose I set separate alarms for 1:30 and 3:30, planning to piggyback them throughout the night and early morning until 7:30. I figured after that I'd be able to stay up. But I tossed and turned until 1:25, finally rose before the first alarm and went to check on her. She was still breathing loudly, but she was more relaxed. She was sleeping deeply. I droppered the prescribed doses of liquid medicine under her tongue, kissed her forehead, whispered that I loved her and that she was a wonderful mother, and said I'd see her in the morning. I listened to her gurgling breath for a few moments. Then I went back to bed and prayed, "Please take my mother now. I know I've been asking You to take her soon, but please, please, take her now." I hoped my father was near. After about an hour, I dropped into a dream. I was sitting on a beach that was clouded with mist and smoke. I sat among a group of people I didn't know. We all sat in a circle in chairs on the sand, with the haze all around us and unseen waves crashing behind my chair, and we had thick, hooded, woolen robes on. When it came my turn to speak, something woke me. It was my 3:30 alarm. It took a moment to clear my head, and the hunky scientist touched my shoulder to make sure I was awake and drowsily said, "Your mommy needs you to take care of her." I rolled out from under the covers and padded through the living room where my sister slept on the couch, through the dining room past the chugging oxygen machine, and through my mother's bedroom doorway. I looked down at her, and saw she was sleeping peacefully; the loud gurgling had stopped. I looked more closely, and saw that what had also ceased was her breathing. She'd taken very long pauses between breaths before, so I held my own breath and waited. She didn't inhale. I let my breath out and kept my eyes on her chest. It didn't rise. Relief and pain, happiness, gratitude and more pain flooded through me, and I sat down in the chair beside her bed and looked at her quiet, peaceful face. Her eyes were closed. Her mouth was slightly open. She wasn't struggling anymore. I still couldn't believe it fully, so I reached for her wrist to check for her pulse. Her arm and hands were very warm. Where before her pulse beat regular and strong, there was stillness. She was gone. I'd never touched someone who'd died, but I felt nothing now except tenderness. I slipped her hand back under the sheet and smoothed it above her, and sat for a few moments more. Then I stood and looked down at her, bent to take the oxygen tubing away from her face, then kissed her forehead one last time. I closed my eyes and thanked God for taking my mother away from her torture room of a body, touched the picture of my father that sits on my mother's nightstand still, and went to wake the others.

Aweigh and away

This morning at 3 we stood along the shore, holding our handkerchiefs aloft and waving, waving white goodbyes. My mom stood at the rail of her ship, breeze gentle in her hair, her eyes bright for the horizon.

Carla Jevine Karys
3/8/37 - 4/20/2007

Distractions

I don't know anyone who's going to have a baby anytime soon. Nor do I know anyone who has a newborn. I'm not pregnant. And yet, I have been knitting cute little cotton caps, infant-sized. I made a yellow one with a green tie, a green one with a yellow tie (gave that one away), and am halfway through a blue one--haven't figured out what color tie it will get. Then I'll make a multicolored one with the leftovers from the skeins.

An unrelated weird thing: Yesterday when our Hospice home health aide showed up, she said "Nice rabbit," in her cute Ukrainian accent. "Rabbit?" we said "Nadia, are you OK?" We looked outside, and sure enough there was a black-and-white rabbit in the driveway, wiggling his nose. I spent a half hour chasing him, stalking him, trying to lure him with a carrot, but he eluded me. Finally, after trying in vain to get him to come out from under my car, I gave up and left the carrot, went inside and nearly forgot about him. Late in the afternoon, he came back--no doubt to see if the magic car would dispense more fresh produce. I got another large carrot, held it out for him, and nabbed him when he got close enough for a chomp. We kept him overnight in a cat carrier, filled him up with spinach, carrot, banana, and compressed pellets of alfalfa, and watched him do cute little bunny things. Now he's on his way to BUNS, a rabbit rescue place out in Goleta. Rabbits are captivating. If we didn't already have one cat and two parrots, I'd have lobbied the hunky scientist to take him home and make him a house bunny.

Mom is having a hard time today. She's not really aware, and she's breathing very heavily (kind of moaning on each exhale) despite doses of morphine and ativan. We're taking turns sitting with her.

Morning thoughts

As of yesterday, my mom can no longer leave her bed. She can't sit up on her own. She rarely drinks more than a sip of water or protein shake, and her body is using its own tissue for energy. It's decommissioning itself. I've always known we are just inhabitants of our bodies; it's just what we are driving now. But I've never been shown this concept so clearly.

Over these past weeks, I've been looking at slides and photos of my mom as a baby, a girl, a teenager, and as a new mom in her 20s. I wish I could know what she was like then. I know she was different than she was in the years I've known her--we all change so much over the time we're alive. And so I wonder: What was my mom like as a little girl? In what ways was she cute? Obnoxious? Was she girly or a tomboy? And what was she like as a teenager? Was she sullen or vibrant? What did my father see when he first beheld her across a crowded restaurant--what spark? How did she talk, and what were her favorite places to go? What brand of makeup did she wear, where did she hide her diaries? Where are those diaries now?

My older sister tells me she remembers far back into her childhood, back when Mom was still married to my sister's father and they all lived in Salinas. He didn't contribute his money to the household, so to keep her two youngsters' diets healthy Mom used to park her car by the roadside late at night, on her way home after she'd finished her work shift, and steal vegetables from the fields. Later, when she could afford to buy everything in grocery stores, she'd get what was on sale. It took her until I as in my 30s to be able to consistently buy what she wanted, rather than what was discounted. It wasn't that she was poor; it's just that she finally relaxed.

My sister's theory about why my mom is lingering is that she finally gets some time to just do nothing. She doesn't seem to have unfinished business with anyone, nor we with her. But now she doesn't have to worry about how she'll feed her children, how she'll keep a marriage together, make the mortgage, deal with teenagers, keep a business running, get her roof patched, car fixed, cats vaccinated, carpets cleaned, paintings framed. I don't know about my sister's theory--this is a helluva way to get some down time. I think my mom would much rather have gotten another trip to San Miguel or Italy. Who knows: Maybe she's there right now in her thoughts. What I'm sure of is that she's ready to be away. And so we help her prepare for her journey, and we wait, handkerchiefs ready, to wave her away from the shore.

Waning light

It's late afternoon, and Mom has been awake only once today. She wasn't really responsive during that time; she seemed to be somewhere else entirely. But she did manage a slight smile when I told her she was pretty, so I know she hears what we have to say. Our hospice volunteer came over for two hours, as she does each Tuesday and Thursday. She did some reiki for mom, then just sat quiety with her, drank tea, and read while I ran some errands. When I got back, she told me that Mom's energy is very low, but that she is very peaceful and comfortable. She said that mom's muscles are flaccid because she's entered ketosis. The cancer and Mom's body are using muscle for fuel. The volunteer, a gentle young herbalist, said that Mom may have one more lucid period, or because she'd already had that time with us, she may not, and that she could keep on like this for a few days or as long as a month. I don't see how she could last a month at this rate. She's only had three eyedroppers full of water today. And yet she seems at peace, which is a blessing for her and also for me.

Mind games and solutions

My mom has been asleep all day. She hasn't wanted to move, drink much water, nor eat anything. I've given her pain and constipation medicines by straw, by mixing them with chocolate Ensure shake. As I've worked today in her office, I've had the baby monitor on, listening to her breathe and keeping a sharp ear for telltale signs that she's awake. She has not been. This all seems so unreal at times. My mind circles around a core series of questions: Shouldn't I try to get her to eat something? Drink something? Am I coldhearted to just sit here working while she's in there heading toward her end? What can I do?

The answers are: No, I shouldn't get her to eat something if she doesn't want anything to eat. People who are dying naturally refuse nutrition. Now is not the time for fueling the body, but for fueling the spirit for transition. The spirit does not require calories. No, I should not keep pestering her to drink water. People who are dying actually do not process water very well. Dehydration actually produces endorphins which make pain management easier. Pestering her into drinking water will actually cause her discomfort. No, I am not coldhearted for sitting here while she lays dying. I'm leaving her at peace, which she's asked for. She's tired of being pestered all the time--being turned, medicated, cleaned, changed, questioned, bothered. Letting her sleep is a kindness. What I can do is to take deep breaths and accept. What I can do is try and get a nap, so when she does awaken and need me, I can be there for her. What I can do is remember my love and find my center when anxiety, frustration, fatigue and despair come wraithing round me.

A vase of persimmon-colored tulips sits on my mother's bureau in her room. We placed it, pennies in the water to keep the flowers' stems from bending, before her lace-curtained window so the delicate orange cups would catch the afternoon sun. They glow now, in full bloom there on the scarred, dark wood. Tomorrow their petals will begin to fall; we'll gather them to scatter outside in the garden; and soon the memory of their singular color and vim will be all that we carry with us.

Back in my hometown

I came back to Santa Barbara two nights ago, just in time to witness another step in my mother's descent. She was sleeping heavily when I arrived and didn't awaken until around 11 that night, when she needed to use the bathroom. When my older sister and I tried to lift her, she was a ragdoll. Her muscles were so weak that she couldn't hold any percentage of her own weight. We hadn't set up the bedside commode, so it was a difficult few steps to the bathroom and then back again. Lesson learned. She's only getting up once every 18 to 24 hours now, but she gets restless now and again and needs help sitting up and staying up once we get her there. I just sit in back of her and put my arms around her. And she needs more morphine, which means she's a lot less lucid. But she did have two visitors this morning with whom she was able to talk briefly: a longtime family friend, L, whose arrival sparked the first smile I've seen from my mom in a long while; and P, mom's favorite friend from the bereavement group she joined 8 years ago after my father died. P is the newly named poet laureate of our city. She brought a beautifully written card and a book of poetry (not her own). All Mom's close friends are showing up now. They all know they need to see her now, while they can, and say what's in their hearts.

I'm glad to have had the weekend to get used to Mom's new care needs. She may be in bed more, but this means we have to move her more. Her muscles are completely flaccid, so moving her takes a lot of work, and usually it takes two people. My sister recognizes this, and has decided to stay with me--although she wants me to ask the Hospice people how to move Mom on and off the commode more easily by myself while also managing her pull-up protective briefs. It's near-impossible. I'm pretty sure the nurse or health aide will recommend we just make the switch to full-on adult diapers, which of course we're not looking forward to. I hope my sister stays with me. I don't feel up to facing this alone right now.

Growth within the void

My brother spent most of his life at odds with my mom. The dynamic began when he was a very young boy, became entrenched, and shaped both their lives. These last few months have been a growth time for him as he's come to terms with losing her as a pillar to orbit, a source of nurturing, and a habitual target for resentment. Sometimes a stone must be removed for seeds beneath it to receive light and germinate. The leaving in this case was my mother's maternal ability, and my physical presence as a caregiver. My brother had been relying on both and when they contracted, a space was left in which a nobler person could unfold. Tzimtzum, and there began a world. We spoke this morning and his voice sounded ragged.

"Yeah," he said, "she's resting all comfy now. I figured out her meds and we have it to where she only needs morphine drops every once a day or so. It's great." He was proud of himself, full-hearted that he'd learned to check every 15 minutes or half hour to make sure she hadn't brushed her oxygen line aside; that he'd learned to hold a basin for her so she could brush her teeth in bed; that he could help her to the bathroom and back, that it could be embarassing, but it was OK. Before, when it came to personal care, my brother said he couldn't do it. "I just can't," he said emphatically. "You will," I responded, "When you realize it's only you, and it's got to be done." "No," he replied. "I can't." I told him that in that case, it was up to him to find someone who could. But now, "I can't" has been replaced by "Look what I did for her; look what I know; she's OK and I have everything taken care of." When I call, even just to say hello, he lists the care he's given, the ways he's handled guests and calls, what Mom has eaten, how she feels.

"We got her up and into her wheelchair, and she wanted to sit out and look at the side yard," he reported this morning. My mother's peaceful, shaded side yard is afroth with fern beds pierced by spears of orchids. "She sat there for a while, talking softly to someone we couldn't see, and then she said, 'OK, I have to go now.' I asked her where she had to go, and she said 'to the hospital.' So I got her back inside and put her to bed." There was a pause. "This is breaking my heart. I'm going to need to see a counselor soon." I told him I'd already sought one up here, and reminded him of Hospice counseling services. We talked about knowing we're doing the right thing, the most difficult though uplifting thing. "It's the best, most loving thing we can do for her," he said. "It's the best and the hardest thing we've ever done."

I see my sisters growing in similar ways, reaching deeper and becoming greater than they thought themselves capable of. Before, we were soft metal forms, shaped but not hardened. Now, forged, these days with our mother are honing us. Our mother is retreating and in her leaving she reveals to us a different place for our hearts to dwell. The steel we're becoming will be our strength as we move forward, together, on this new ground.

Waiting for a ride

My sister and brother have stepped up to the plate admirably with my mother. They care for her tenderly--my brother has even lost his squeamishness about taking her to the toilet. He jokes with her that they are dancing, rather than lurching together across the room, and when she steadies herself on furniture or doorframes, he admonishes her for doing the leading. My sister spent the night with mom the other evening, holding hands with her through the still hours. Every now and again, they'd wake up at the same time and say hello. At 3 a.m., my mom wanted to get up, and afterwards as she sat on the bed to rest, my sister asked if she wanted to lie back down. "No," Mom said. "I'm ready to go." "Go where?" My sister asked. "To the Big Guy in the sky," Mom replied. "As much as I love you kids, this is just too hard. Do you know anyone who can come and give me a ride?" Lisa sat down with her and gave her a long hug.

It's a relief, in a way, to know my mom is OK about going. I wouldn't want her to be afraid or resistant, because that'd just make it more difficult and more than anything I want her passage to be peaceful.

A better day

Sleep: soother of most things. I feel a good deal better after another solid night of shut-eye AND a phone chat with my mom. She was lucid again this morning; enough so to get up and tell my sister, "I really need a cup of coffee." When I called, she was sipping java; my aunt (who's visiting this week) was making her a bowl of strawberries and milk; and my sister was practically jumping up and down with happiness. She handed the phone to Mom and we talked about everyday things: what I'm doing this weekend, whether her sister's dad was out of the hospital yet, how the morning was going, the possible whereabouts of a silver ring she's misplaced. We ended with our usual I love you's, and I felt like my morning had been limned with gold.

Today, along with my work duties, I must attend to my bill-paying. Most of it I accomplish through automatic payments. But there are a few that I still take care of manually, and they've gone by the wayside. Time to eliminate those stressors.

The hunky scientist and I are going out for an extravagant meal tonight at a restaurant he heard about. Appetizer through dessert, it's going to be a heck of a bill. But we haven't had that kind of a date in a long time, and we're due.

Gray dawn

I learned when I was a little girl that it's bad enough when something falls on your leg, but what's worse is when someone lifts it off. Circulation is restored, and that's when the real pain begins.

Last night the hunky scientist and I ate wonderful vegetable curry from our favorite little local hole-in-the-wall and drank champagne and partially caught up on Battlestar Gallactica, my guilty geeky only semi-secret TV delight. I'd had a haircut in the afternoon, picked up two new sets of glasses that had come in (note: glasses that I actually am looking forward to wearing in public. A wonder.), come home and played with our little gray parrot. It's so good to be here doing normal homey things with the man I love. I slept deeply from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., no ear open toward a monitor; no waking up multiple times to help anyone with anything. Despite two and a half cups of coffee, I am exhausted. I have a full day of meetings to attend and all I want to do is lie on the couch and doze with our cat. I miss my mom. I miss our old life. I miss being able to go home just to visit both my parents, and I'm still struggling a little against the idea that soon I will have no parent at all. It makes me think of a blue balloon let loose from its anchoring hand. I feel immobilized and shattered and I wonder if my pieces will all fit back together OK.

The giftof a day

We put Mom on a new pain relief system last night since she was having trouble swallowing pills. At 9 p.m., I pressed a Fentinyl patch onto the skin of her waist and held it tight to make sure it would stick. It's a 50 milligram patch--very strong--and I'd been advised to watch her closely for the first night, to be sure her breathing didn't slow to dangerously spaced intervals. I stayed up until 1, then went to bed. The patch had put Mom into a deep, relaxed sleep, and her breathing rhythm was regular and normal. I expected she'd sleep through the night and awaken in the hallucinotic stupor in which she'd spent most of the last week.

This morning at 4, I awoke to a sound from the baby monitor; my mom, coughing rough and deep from her chest. I got up and padded to her room, opened the door and peeked in. She was awake, and recognized me. I asked how she was doing. "I'm fine," she said. "How are you? Did I cough too much?" I assured her she hadn't, that I was just coming to make sure she was comfortable. She fidgeted with the blankets and stared, glassy-eyed, across the room, trying to move her legs. "I have to go to the doctor. But I have to go to the bathroom first. Hurry; we're late." I moved to help her up, but she resisted. "Honey, you're in my way. I can't fool around--I have a doctor's appointment." I decided to enter her world. "Which one, Mom? Dr. Gillon? Dr. Sweeney?" "Gillon," she answered. "Ahhhh," I said, then paused. "I checked the calendar. Your appointment isn't until tomorrow." She stopped trying so hard to move me out of the way. "Oh. Well, I still have to pee," she insisted. I groaned inwardly, desperate to dive back into sleep. The next half hour was taken up with the bathroom shenanigans I described in a previous post. Once I had her back to bed, and in fresh clothing, I turned to pick up some fallen kleenex beside Mom's bed.

"What's wrong with me?" She asked. I walked the tissue over to her wastebasket. "Oh Mom, you've been so sick," I said, thinking a short answer best since she wasn't her reasonable self. "I know," she said, "But what's wrong with me?" Something in her tone stopped me. It was clear, assured. Familiar. I turned around and saw that my mother had come back. I went and sat beside her and took her hand. "Oh Mom. Remember, you have cancer. That's why you've been so weak and so tired."

Understanding swept over her, and she began to weep. I've never seen my mother openly cry. Now and again while I was growing up, she'd hold her hand over her eyes momentarily, or I'd see a tear track down her cheek. But sobbing? Never. And never about her illness either. No matter how grave it got, she always had a feeling she'd beat it. But this morning at 4:30 a.m., she heard again and with open ears what her oncologist had told her. She knew and she accepted and she sobbed, mourning for her life. I cried along with her, rocking her in my arms. I told her I was sorry it was so hard, but that we were there for her. That we'd miss her terribly, but that we'd be OK, and that she would be OK, too. "Oh honey, I love you so much," she said, sagging against my side. We sat this way for a while, until she began to tremble from the effort of sitting up. I helped her lie back against her pillows. "It looks like you're getting sleepy, Mom." Fresh tears: "I don't want to go to sleep." I realized what she meant. "Mom, you have a little while yet to go. If you go to sleep now, it will be just sleep. You'll be OK. Do you want me to lay beside you?" I saw her relax as she said that would be nice. So I went back to my room and got my blankets, spread them on the bed beside her, then crawled in and lay on my side with my arm over her, daubing her tears with a kleenex. She told me she was thinking about her life, that she was trying to remember which was the last painting she'd made. My mom's paintings hang in homes all over Santa Barbara County. Neither of us could remember which was the last one she'd painted.

I've often thought that it's a good thing that we never know while we're doing something that it's the last time we'll ever do it. We never know if it's the last jog, the last trip to our favorite Vietnamese takeout place, the last kiss we'll ever share with our mate. And that's a blessing. The last time I walked with my mother outside, we just enjoyed the sunshine and the people we stopped and talked with. We lived so fully in each moment of that beachside outting. If we'd known it would be our last, the time would have been marred by the pall. Whatever that last painting was, my mother lived in the flow of each brush stroke.

As I lay there with my mother, both of us trying to keep our eyes open, I wondered if when I woke up in the morning she'd be back to being a zombie woman. But at 7:30, she woke up and the veil was still aside: There lay my mom, lucid again, and in no pain. My brother arrived and was beside himself with joy. "Mom! You're back!" She chuckled. "How long was I gone?" We filled her in. She asked how long she has to live, whether we'd talked about her memorial. She agreed with everything we'd thought up (which wasn't much to that point). She asked for and received a hot mug of coffee with milk. "Are you still seeing Dad?" My brother asked. "No, not out of the corner of my eye like I was before," she said. "I did see him while I was gone, though. And he was angry that I wasn't where he wanted me to be. He said it was taking a lot longer than he thought it would." We shared a wry round of laughter over that one. It was time for me to go. I'd packed the night before, while Mom was still in her zombie state. Now, with her in our world again, it tore my heart to leave. A week seems like forever if you're not sure your loved one will be lucid when you return. But my brother and sister need their time with her, too, and I need some time to regenerate. And so I left. During the five-hour drive home, my brother called twice to tell me Mom was still her old self. As for me, I called our Hospice RN. He said that it looked like her hallucinations and stupor were caused more by sensitivity to the oxycontin than by the cancer invading her brain, and that now that we've banished oxy from her med list in favor of fentinyl, there's a good chance my mom will remain clear-headed. I won't cling to that hope, though it's tempting. I'm learning to greet each day free of expectation, then negotiate each pitfall or savor each gift in its time.

The angel of dope

Tonight I came home from a peaceful dinner with my older sister and my brother-in-law just in time to give Mom her 12th-hour pain med dose. My brother knew what time she was due for it, but hadn't given it to her (he'd also dodged giving her the liquid laxative she needs for pain-med-induced severe constipation). So I woke Mom, elevated the head of her bed, told her we had some medicine for her to keep her back from hurting, gave her the pill and then tried giving her the usual sip of water. She refused to sip and started chewing instead. No amount of coaxing or ordering could get her to sip water either from the bottle or through a straw; she just kept chewing and grimacing because of the bitterness. Great: 40 milligrams of oxycontin straight into her system. My brother wigged. He kept insisting I call Hospice to find out what happens when you chew up a 12-hour time-release pain med. Finally I glared at him and said "Fine. _I_ will call Hospice." I get so flipping tired of my siblings tossing back to me the heavy caregiving weight. He got the picture and punched the number. A nurse called back after a while and he talked with her, then conveyed the following:
- My mom will be really high for a few hours.
- Her breathing may be slowed way down, but probably won't be stopped.
- The med will wear off faster than normal, in 6 or so hours rather than 12.
- At that point, she can be dosed with 5-mg oxycodones til her pain is managed.
- Probably starting tomorrow we'll have to start her on liquid pain relief.
- This will mean an even sleepier Mom (read: She'll sleep 98% of the time rather than 90%)

My options are these:
1. I can attempt to sleep in my usual room, with one ear cocked all night toward the baby monitor. Probable outcome: no sleep and restlessness.
2. I can attempt to sleep in my snoring mom's room, in the queen bed next to her hospital bed. Probable outcome: no sleep and high frustration.
3. I can forget about attempting to sleep, stay up and watch bad sci fi, and check on my mom every hour and a half or so to be sure she's still breathing. At 3 a.m. I can check her pain level and at some point between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. try to get some oxycodones into her (good luck, sucker, because she'll probably chew those as well). Probable outcome: no sleep but the satisfying buzz that comes from high volumes of bad sci fi.

It's not going to be a great night. I'm not happy about the likelihood that my mom will henceforth be taking liquid pain meds, which are morphine-based and have all whole new bunch of side effects for her and us to deal with (not the least of which is, as I mentioned, the All Sleep All the Time show). I wonder if perhaps I should have tried to wake her up a bit more before I gave her those pills tonight, if maybe then she would have known to swallow them rather than chewing them up. Damn. She's extremely sedated now, sleeping so deeply that her breath is growling in her chest. I wonder if the briefest of meaningful exchanges I had with her today were the last we were destined to share.

I forget when I stopped praying for my mom's recovery and started praying that her doctors would be able to manage her disease. I don't recall when I segued from that to praying for her comfort. But I do know that two nights ago I started praying for God to take my mother swiftly, because this way out was always her nightmare.

I wrote about being tired of my sibs dodging the medicine ball of caregiving rather than taking it up in equal measure when I'm here. The only way to get them to step up to the plate is by leaving. The Hospice RN said this morning that my mom has a few weeks of life left, and so I've decided to go home for a week or so starting day after tomorrow. My brother and sister know our mom needs 24-hour care. And they know what that care entails. I need to let them deal with it for the next little while, let them shoulder the escalating care level, let them be here when my mom needs diapering, let them deal with it all, all the time, and face it fully. I hope I'm not making a mistake, as I so want to be with her when she dies. But I desperately need a break. I'm depleted. I need to sleep full, long and deep for a long while, so much so that I almost envy my more overdosed mom.

The dying get no privacy

My boyfriend the hunky scientist was here for the weekend, and it made a huge difference to my peace of mind. With my sister sick all of last week, I'd had no support here and I was depressed and supremely overtired. My sister felt better enough on Friday to come down for the day so THS and I could go do normal things for a little while. Also, she cooked a really good dinner.
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A Hospice RN was here on Friday morning and saw how we were having to sit in back of Mom to prop her up in her bed whenever she wanted a drink of water. We'd just started having to do that, so we weren't really thinking about it much. She said "You should think about getting a hospital bed. I can order it right away." I was sentimental about Mom dying in her own bed for about 30 seconds, and then said OK. That afternoon a delivery truck showed up and a hospital bed was moved in next to Mom's bed in less than an hour. It has an air mattress on top of the regular mattress, and the air mattress inflates and deflates in different sections continually to keep Mom from getting pressure sores. Handy that.
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Mom's brain function is really suffering from the cancer invading her head and from the 90 milligrams of oxycontin she's getting every 24 hours. She's starting to make less and less sense (about 5% of what she says is actually related to what we say to her), and the gatekeeper is taking a holiday. This morning she told me I was full of shit. I took it in good humor. I just went to wake her and give her a swig of water, and she said "Oh hi! I'm on the phone with my sister." I apologized for interrupting and told her I'd be right back then.

One area Mom still had some independence in until recently was her bathroom habits. She still wanted to walk the few steps to the bathroom just off her bedroom and she wanted privacy in there (of course). So we'd been helping her walk there, getting her situated, and then leaving and closing the door. She'd always just done her thing and then come right back out. But starting Friday that changed. She started forgetting how long she'd been in there. We did our usual thing, but then after 15 long minutes I walked up to the door and said said her name. "What!" She replied. "Are you OK?" "Yes--I'll just be a few minutes." 20 more minutes went by, followed by another inquiry and another rebuff ("April, stop bothering me. Go use the other bathroom!"). Of course, my boyfriend had just arrived so he got to witness this new care wrinkle unfolding in real time. I let 20 more minutes go by. "Mom?" "WHAT?!?" "Mom, you've been in there an hour." "I have NOT! Now just go away and leave me alone." That was it. I apologized, then opened the door, swooped in and got her up and out of there. I did not rate high in her esteem at that point. Every bathroom break since then has been the same routine, only now we give her 15 minutes tops, particularly if it happens to be 3 a.m.. If it's daytime and we're feeling indulgent or want to finish a chore, she gets 20 minutes. Heck--she's just sitting there. With side rails. She's too weak to do the standing up it would take to fall over. But after that, we sally forth and endure her anger. It never lasts long.