Breathless

We were parked haphazardly in a gravel driveway. 

If I rolled down the windows and listened hard enough I could hear the faint notes coming from Mrs. Duncan's piano studio. My oldest son was playing.

The Nissan quest transformed into a rocket. StinkBug pushing buttons, adjusting dials and barking out orders. We were just about to land on the moon when my cell phone rang. 

Seeing the number and bracing myself.

It would not be good news.

They don't call at 5:30 on a Thursday night to talk.

Taking a deep breath and stepping out of my van. Trying to to say a casual hello despite a huge lump in my throat.

Cars whizzing by on the two lane highway behind me. StinkBug pounding on the window yelling for me to get back in the rocket. We hadn't landed yet. I wasn't wearing my space suit.

He tried to sound casual. To downplay the situation. That's what my parents do. It's what they have always done.

She'd had a cold for a few days and he finally convinced her to go to the walk in clinic. My mom is nothing if not stubborn.

It hadn't been easy to get her there. She couldn't breathe without her oxygen so he loaded up her tank.  I can picture Mom trying to give detailed instructions on how he should do it. 

Even though she couldn't breathe on her own she had to control something. 

Dad putting it down in the hallway just as he got to the garage door.  Probably once more before loading it into the back passenger seat of their blue Ford Escape. 

I'd helped load it when they were here in August. They'd driven more than fourteen hundred miles to our new home. He couldn't believe how effortless I made it look. I had joked that I'd been lifting weights and I was thirty years younger than he. Truth is, it was heavy but a seventy-two year old man shouldn't have to carry his wife's oxygen tank.

I didn't bother to ask why they didn't call an ambulance. They don't do that kind of thing. They wouldn't want to be a burden.

When my parents arrived at the clinic they were told to go directly to the ER. The hospital would be expecting them. 

**This post was originally published in February 2013. Today is my mom's seventy-forth birthday. She died on January 20, 2014 after nearly a month of hospice care. I find her absence deafening and my grief paralyzing. I wanted desperately to write something for today but I am just trying to survive it.

And Then I Woke up

I woke up completely disoriented today. My mind was fuzzy and my body achy. I had a Mom dream in the wee hours of the morning. That is what my brother and I started calling those dreams after Mom died. At first we would call or text each other to talk about each one. But as the months passed we stopped for no real reason.

It's odd but I don't remember dreaming about her when she was alive... except for the VERY last time. But then again, I didn't sleep when she was alive.

This dream was incredibly vivid, as are all Mom dreams. I smell it, feel it and often wake up with tears streaming down my face or a soggy pillow.

This time I was at my parents house and getting ready to go out with two friends.  One of them was very clearly my BFFFFFFFF. We have been to hell and back together more times than I want to remember. In my dream, I was looking in the bathroom mirror putting the finishing touches on my hair as my friends stood in the hallway talking to me. We talked of wine, where to eat, and rehashed memories of our younger days.

It was definitely in my parents living room. Mom was sitting on their couch...the blue one we had bought for their twenty fifth wedding anniversary...which was twenty years ago. My parents are frugal people.

The dark blue couch was pushed up against the far wall as it tends to be at Christmas time when they rearrange to make room for the tree. She had a very small dark haired baby boy in her lap. I don't know who it was as we didn't call him by name. It was eerie how he looked exactly like my youngest son with his jet black hair and long eyelashes. 

Mom looked healthy... better than healthy physically. She looked as if she had just come home from church as she was wearing a skirt.It seems she wasn't  healthy though..at least not mentally so. 

In my dream I walked into the living room because of the loud voices and found my older son standing over her. They were arguing. She was poking the baby over and over. Not hard. The baby was barely fussing but she kept doing it over and over. It was as if she didn't know it was wrong to do.

I scooped him up and walked back to the hallway and announced to my friends,  "I can't go. I have to stay here. I need to be here."

And then I woke up.

As Mom was dying in January, one of her big concerns was that she would get loopy and be incoherent. She did not want that. She did not want to be a burden. 

She was never a burden. It was a privilege to care for her during her last month on this earth even if it was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life.

What Might Have Been

Dear JB,

I can't celebrate my oldest son's birthday without thinking of you because it is yours as well. Or was yours-though you left us a week before you turned eighteen. 

You would have been twenty-nine this year and I can't help but imagine how differently life would have been had you not been ripped away. 

I imagine you would be married by now with a sweet wife, and a few children. I like to picture a little girl with your amazing black curls and shockingly beautiful blue eyes. You would have a career... not just a job. You were always a smart kid. You would have gone to college. You would move away from home-but not too far from your roots... close enough that you could go back and help your parents. You were always respectful and responsible.

Hannah, your oldest sister... well her life would have turned out differently too. She wouldn't have felt the pressure to help parent your baby sister, to be the "husband" that your dad could no longer be. He was so lost by your loss. She did finish college but she never moved on. 

She never got to leave. She never experienced freedom. I'd like to think she would have found a teaching job...maybe moved around a little bit... had some life experiences... traveled. Instead Hannah waits tables in a small town where she is trapped by her responsibility to Aunt Kay and Sadie.

By some miracle your sister Maddie made it out. But maybe too far out. She went to college and has a job. But from what I'm told she left and never looked back. By all appearances she was the least scarred by your death which means she may be in the most pain. Maybe she wouldn't have cut all ties if you were still around.

I don't even know your youngest sister and she didn't really get to know you. She was only three when you died. I wonder if they even talk about you? If she gets to hear stories about you and look through pictures of you. Their pain was so deep, so raw and they shut down. 

She would be 14 now. If you hadn't died, she would have grown up with a family. She would have had two parents and a house full of older siblings to tease her and teach her and protect her. Instead she grew up in a hollow house of pain and sadness. She grew up in isolation and a cloak of fear. She doesn't know her aunts and uncles who live a few miles away or her cousin who teaches at the local school. She doesn't go to school. I'm told she barely speaks.

I don't pretend to understand what went on in your parents' marriage. I just know they never EVER recovered from your death. It broke them beyond repair. I'd like to think that if you hadn't died they would still be together-living in their white house on top of the hill with its peeling paint and collection of old cars and trucks. Your dad was always fixing something up.

I'd like to think your dad would still be alive if you were. He would have taken care of his mind and his body. It would have spared my mom and her sisters the pain of burying another brother. Instead Uncle Lewis died alone in his car two springtimes ago.

When you were ripped away so many lives were ripped apart. 

I wish things had happened differently but they didn't. I will always cherish the memories of you, my sweet, smart, hard working young cousin who was taken way too soon.


Love,
Robbie

She Should Be Here

I am scooping salsa out of the jar with a fork when the tears start rolling down my cheeks. I taste the saltiness on my lips. I am crying about Christmas. Sobbing, really. It will be our first one without Mom. Though it is only August my worry eats away at me..from the inside out. I have not been "home" in the seven months since Mom died. It just is not possible to travel thirteen hundred and thirty-three miles now. My vacation and sick time were all used up during her last Christmas here on this earth. FMLA allowed me to be there during her last days, hours and minutes. 

I do not know if I can walk through their door again--knowing she won't be there offering me a cold coke before my suitcase touches the ground. In the days following her death it was comforting to be there. To see the chair where she took her last breath and was finally free from pain. To wrap myself in the soft blankets that had warmed me during the many nights when I sat beside her watching endless Law & Order episodes as we waited to offer her the next round of meds. The roll of half eaten Rolos on the tv tray that held necessities. I do not remember her ever eating Rolos before. She use to dole out M & Ms to the grandkids. She ate many a Snickers bar but one time during that last month she asked for Rolos. She rarely asked for anything during her lifetime and as she was dying we were desperate to fullfill any request. 

Dad is here now-spending ten days with us. He is building desks, shooting hoops with the boys and helping us settle in to our new home. It is a joyous time but devastastingly heartbreaking too. I keep thinking she should be here. Wishing like hell these last eight months were a a nightmare I could wake up from. She should be here to see her long-legged only granddaughter head off to middle school, to talk NBA basketball and World Cup Soccer with her oldest grandson, to put together legos with her brown-eyed, brown haired grandson.

Is missing her always going to hurt this much?

Shock

It has been two weeks since I FINALLY bit the bullet and upgraded to a smart phone and I am still trying to figure out how to use it. Seconds before a friend and kids arrived this morning to go walking I got a FaceBook notification. It took several slides of my finger to open the damn thing up only to discover it was a post to a friends wall by someone I did not even know. It had a strange quality about it...'I'll miss you and I'll miss your daily updates about your girls, your family and your life."

I felt the gaping hole of unknown tragedy.

"Did something happen to Lisa?" I frantically texted my sister 1254 miles away. 

I had known her twenty years and in a six degrees of separation scenario my sister started working with Lisa barely a year ago.

I know something is horribly wrong I tell my friend as we start walking in my new neighborhood trying to keep up with our bicycle riding kids.

My phone rings and I know without looking that it's my sister. She is at Urgent Care with her son.

"I just found out" she says.

"Our boss tried to call me earlier. We know she died. We know she had a heart attack. That's all we know."

Her birthday was sixteen days after mine. Lisa was 43. Her baby is suppose to start kindergarten this week. Instead she will be going to her mother's funeral.

Get You Thru

I had to fight back tears at the hair salon today. 

Nancy asked about my mom, about how I was doing. 

The last time I sat in her chair I talked excitedly about our Christmas plans. How the kids and I we were flying out the following day. How my parents would be shocked to see that I chopped off more than eight inches of my hair. How we would have two weeks with my family. How we hadn't been able to fly back the previous Christmas because of money and jobs and time. I told her the way my kids clung to the hope that we might suddenly buy last minute tickets to Oklahoma or that my parents would load up in Dad's navy blue Ford Escape and show up on our doorstep. She knew it all.

People tell a lot to their hairdresser.

I was relieved when a mutual friend shared the news with Nancy. I sometimes forget that there are people who don't know my mom died. 

They don't know I accompanied her to a doctor's appointment two days after our plane landed. They don't know the nurse manager who walked in, took her vitals and returned with the on-call doctor. They didn't hear the doctor walk in and say "Joan, you look like hell." They didn't hear Mom say she was ready to be admitted to Hospice. 

Some people don't know that Mom turned to me and said, "Well, you better call your father and your sister." That I sent my sister the news in a text, which she read in the midst of my nephew's class Christmas parties. They didn't hear me call my Dad and tell him while my hand rested on Mom's back. They don't know I managed to hold it together until he said, "Ok, I'll call your brother." They  didn't see me burst into tears or see the Nurse Manager, who I'd only just met wrap her arms around me as I sobbed into her shoulder.

They didn't see my mom inching her walker towards the elevator, calling out to the staff to enjoy their Christmas.

They didn't hear her doctor say, "We're going to try to get you thru Christmas."

Survival

I don't know if you even noticed but I haven't been writing. 

At least not here. The writing in my head? Well that is on a constant loop.

Honestly I didn't realize how long it had been until I hit the "new post" button three seconds ago.

I'm just trying to survive. Some minutes, some hours it even seems manageable. And then I look at a photo or find the last Christmas card she wrote to me and I spiral. 

I've perfected the art of the gut-wrenching, soul-sucking, crying my eyes out silently while laying in the bottom bunk next to my sweet seven year old boy.

I had to rush out of an old fashioned soda fountain and candy store a few weeks ago. My daughter was eating a banana split. Mom loved banana splits.

Never Ready

Fifteen days ago I was sitting in a funeral home planning my mother's funeral. I wasn't there alone. My sister, brother and dad sat on chairs on the opposite side of a gigantic dark wood desk. Mom had already planned some of the details. Her final wish was to be cremated yet she wanted an open casket for the grandkids. Mom wanted them to have closure. To be able to say goodbye. She wanted Amazing Grace to be played by a bagpiper.

His name is Hayden. He's the one asking us questions, showing us books of floral funeral sprays.Sliding a navy blue notebook across the dark, shiny desk and telling us to pick a memorial card. We cannot decide among the choices we are presented, so we ask "is there anything else? are these all you have?" He nods his head. We narrow it down to three and end up deciding on the soaring white dove.

I answered the front door at my parents house yesterday when Hayden arrived. He was wearing a dark suit, introduced himself and he was sorry for our loss. He was followed by another guy, a co-worker whose name I never caught or maybe I just don't remember. He looked like a ten year old playing dress up in his gray suit. He didn't seem to know what to do with his hands. 

I walked with them into the living room. 

"Her body is in here" I said, pointing as she lay in the brown leather recliner where she took her last breaths. Her body covered by the red, white and blue Coca Cola polar bear fleece blanket that was her constant companion these last thirty-one days. 

I pulled up some chairs and we gathered in a semi circle in the living room. He said some things I don't remember and we arranged to meet at his office the next day. He left some pamphlets and asked if we were ready.

As I held open the front door while they rolled my mother out to the waiting hearse I thought,  I'll never be ready for her to go.

Dark Skies

It was October 1979 and my Aunt Sharon had cancer. I didn't really know what cancer was but I knew it made her very, very sick. Aunt Sharon was married to my mom's oldest brother. She had a dining room with a tablecloth and a china cabinet where we ate sometimes. Freshly baked cakes always appeared when we visited. She wore skirts every day and her blonde hair was always just so. She never raised here voice even when there was a house full of loud cousins.

She was in and out of a hospital 769 miles away. She couldn't take care of her children. Mom said she was very tired. She couldn't cook dinner or fold laundry. She couldn't do the things moms do. Her boys were in high school. Her daughter was in third grade- a year younger than me. 

Mom bought an airplane ticket to New York. In all of my nine years, I'd never known my mom to fly on an airplane. She took my little brother out of kindergarten and called in favors from friends and neighbors. We piled into our white station wagon and drove them to the Cincinnati airport. I don't remember how long she was gone or what we did while she was there.

It was still dark outside when the black wall phone started ringing and my bedroom wall vibrated. I heard Dad's hushed voice. My sister and I were already crying when he came in to tell us. Even now we recognize those heartbreaking bad news phone calls before we pick up the phone.

I packed the dark blue vinyl suitcase my Gran had gotten me for Christmas the year before. It was my favorite color. I wonder if she knew then I would need it to travel to her daughter in law's funeral?

It was dark and cloudy when Dad drove us to school. He walked with us through the empty halls. Mrs. Jeter handed gave me a folder full of work I'd be missing and gave me an extra long hug. We weren't sure yet when we'd be back.

I cried and cried and cried as Dad drove along I-75 North. It was dark and rainy. They sky was crying too.

I puked all over myself and the backseat somewhere in Ohio or maybe it was Pennsylvania. Dad pulled over to the side of the road  and cleaned me up the best he could.

We rolled down the windows and I rode in the front seat the rest of the way. Squashed between my sister and my dad.

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Ripped Away

June 14, 2001 -California

I was on top of the world...bursting at the seams..literally and figuritively.

One and a half days of work until my maternity leave started.

I wanted a few days to put the finishing touches on the Curious George nursery.

Some time to enjoy being a husband and wife before we became a daddy and mommy.

I was doing meaningful work I loved with fantastic, supportive co-workers.

They were my family since my own lived thousands of miles away.

Pregnant with my first child.

We didn't know what we were having. We didn't want to find out.

We loved the excitement and anticipation of the unknown.

The element of surprise.

"What are you having?" they would ask.

"A baby! We are having a baby!" I'd say grinning.


June 13, 2001-New York

He was almost 18.

Black hair and the most amazingly beautiful blue eyes.

Sweet, funny, respectful, the only boy among three sisters.

He was going places. So much talent. So much potential.

I remember the day he was born. I was twelve. I was obsessed with babies.

It had been a difficult birth and he stayed in the hospital for what seemed like a very long time.

Other images come in fragments.

At 2, sitting in my lap playing peek-a-boo with a giggle that drew a crowd and a grin that melted hearts.

A Christmas picture with his black hair coiling like a slinky sitting with his blonde sister on Santa's lap.

The cousins posing in front of the faded swing set, him perched upon my would be hip, smiling at the camera.

At 14, all dressed up for my sister's wedding.

Talking excitedly about the train trip that brought them from New York to the midwest. His first time to travel out of state.

At 16, shyly sharing a scrapbook from his travel abroad with a United Nations youth program when Big Yankee took a detour on our honeymoon to visit family.

June 14, 2001 California

We were standing around in cubicle city, debating where to lunch.

The piercing shrill of my government issued phone.

Big Yankee asking my lunch plans.

Was I coming home?

No, I wasn't planning on it.

I wanted to savor the last two days with my work friends.

 He really wanted to see me. He wanted me home.

He needed to see me before he went down the hill for work.

He was relentless.

My friends and I decided he must have a surprise for me and our baby.

Walking into the front door, the air felt heavy.

Standing in the tiled family room he turned to me and said,

"Your mom called. Your cousin JB..........."

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