Unpacking

Pretend your parents are dead.

No, but seriously.

Or any loved one, really.

Pretend they are dead, but talk to them. Go through boxes and photos and journals with them. Ask your questions.

The last time I saw my mother was two years ago this week. I went to visit her in Indiana for a pre-Christmas celebration. We went to the symphony holiday show, something we had done most every year of my childhood. We bought the same cookies in the same lobby. A tradition that endured, and there is something poetic and almost foreseen about us going to the show together one last time, for her last Christmas. I know that I'll probably think about her death every July 1st for the rest of my life, but I wonder if every year I'll remember that it's been 3 years, 5 years, 10 years, 25 years, since I last saw my mother. What parts of grief endure?

Wanting to feel close to her this week, perhaps, I thought I would start going through some of the boxes P and I took from her house earlier this year. I didn't get very far, but I did find a journal she had written during the trip on which she met my father. I scanned it for mention of him specifically, but along the way found reference to friends that had been on the trip, a priest that had been along, cities where they had stopped. I had so many questions about who these people were, what she had thought of my dad the first time she saw him... and I won't get any answers. And I wished that I had stumbled upon this when my mom was alive. I wish we could have talked more about this trip. I wish I could ask her the names of people in photos found in the box.

But then, no matter how much of this I had been allowed, there would always be photos unaddressed, memories unresolved, and an argument to be made that I needed more time. So I am trying to be content with what I do have, knowing that I would have never hit a maximum fill line, requiring no more of her.

I could have asked her questions forever.

On Eagles Wings

For some reason, once in a while, I will get old church hymns stuck in my head. These were family favorites, the ones my father sang most robustly during Mass, the ones my mother chose most often as a church organist and choir director. There wasn't much need for her to practice, especially these old favorites, but if she had to sing rather than just play, she'd practice. And I have many memories of her at the piano downstairs, making music, that I could hear clearly through my bedroom door.

One of the most missed aspects of religion (and, really, perhaps the only one I truly miss) is tradition. Tradition is comfort. It is a collective memory that says you are not alone. Or, even if you are, that it was not always so, and that thousands or millions of other people know the same prayers you do, the same hymns. That you could walk into any Catholic church and follow along, the contents of the Mass unchanged. Though P grew up in an Italian/Czech family in Pennsylvania and I in an Irish family in Indiana, it is like we have some shared memories, or notions, from childhood. I jokingly say that I had wanted to find a formerly Catholic, currently atheist man. I found one, much by accident. So as this man who had not met many of my friends or family sat next to me during my mothers funeral, he sang along, he knew when to sit, kneel, and stand. He squeezed my hand when the priest uttered words he knew I would find offensive and worthy of an eye roll.

This week, we are two atheists with a seven and a half foot Christmas tree, garland and stockings on the mantle, and a manger scene. We've done every Christmas since we've been together. We both like the lights and sparkle, the ornaments with a story, the excuse to dote on one another with gifts. Each year I mentally refine a bit more how we will handle Christmas when we are parents, raising atheist children. Each year I become a little sad, remembering the god father who gave me that manger scene, gone eleven years now; the father who helped me build a stable for it, gone nineteen years now; the mother who gave me most of these decorations, gone not even two years. And when I think about how I will tell my children that some families believe in the myth of Jesus, that it gives their lives order and meaning, that they celebrate this story at this time, we take this time to celebrate love and family. We take the days off work to visit loved ones or to help people in our community. We take the long cold nights as opportunities to drink hot chocolate and read together, to eat a little less healthy than the rest of the year because sometimes, it's okay to splurge. We take the time to celebrate another year that we've had together.

While my children may enter a Catholic church as I would a mosque, respectful and unsure, they will know tradition, and they will know community. They will perhaps even know the old hymns that penetrating the floor boards of my childhood bedroom, as, like a nonsense meditation chant, the songs will sometimes come to me as a focus for my brain that is trying to drift away; an anchor about which I do not have to think but merely drop and feel safe against the waves.

I hope they have less waves than I did as a child. I hope they always feel safe.

A little friend

The symptoms of my emotional breakdowns look like a bad flu that suddenly becomes a screaming match that is entirely one-sided. For days I sulk, I wallow, I even start aching and coughing, actually. And then one thing sets me off and I start yelling, a lot, or crying, or both, and screaming into pillows like a banshee muted behind several closed doors. These episodes have likely caused my husband and other loved ones to wish for several closed (and locked, and heavily guarded) doors between us.

The days following the death of D were in keeping with my model. I actually felt ill. The novice I was several years ago would have thought I was actually fighting a virus, but the seasoned me knew that it was grief. I had just done research on it not that long ago, in that lull between my mom's death and D dying. I learned that the body sometimes does not know how to handle shocks to the emotional system, and sometimes the physical is affected. For days I woke up each morning unrested, feeling like something was sitting on my chest, feeling like my neck and shoulder muscles were on fire, feeling like putty moved through my sinus system. But I pushed through: there was the important meeting at work that I really ought to attend, the memorial service to plan, the memorial service to attend, the dog to be walked, the breakfast my growling stomach needed. Something usually pushed me out of bed.

But the disease held firmly finally, unshakeable, too heavy, one day. Shackling me to the bed as I tried earnestly to get up. As I weighed the pros and cons in my head, as I tried to care what the HR department or my clients would say, I reached for my cell phone to check the time. I was hoping to learn that I had ten more minutes to decide. But what I learned was so much sweeter.

One of my oldest friends was a new mama.

His name, the name of this new human, was followed by the date and time of his arrival. I was told he was doing well. I was told my friend was doing well.

And I got up.

It may have been just the morning before his birth that I had dropped the shampoo bottle on my toe and retaliated by picking up the bottle and bashing it against the wall of the shower, in actual anger. But the morning I knew that some little person was having his first morning, ever, I showered with a smile. I bounced around the house through my morning routine and called my friend's mom on my way to work to giggle and congratulate. Just ten days out from Ds death, my co-workers were still a bit somber around me, still asking with those eyes you only get for divorce or death, "How are you today?" So when I skipped into the office that day shouting "GUESS WHAT!" I think a few assumed the worst. But soon they were showing me the best baby toys on Amazon, and we were talking about our favorite children's books.

When M told me she was pregnant, I was sure her little one would be my buddy. I hoped that though we lived in different states, the kid would think I was cool, and maybe we'd have some "thing"--we'd go to the same ice cream place whenever I came to town, or I'd give them a cool nickname.

He seems to like me alright. Granted, he's 7 months old so his preferences are not very discerning at this juncture. I don't know what he will end up thinking of me, or if he'll relish the thought of having a "thing" we share, but I know that each time I see him, whether in person or in a photo text message, I think about that morning after his birth. I think about being too despondent to cry anymore, I think about wondering how I was going to get through losing two parental figures in less than a year. And then, with one piece of information, a smile. Some news to share that was good. A reason to travel that did not call for a black dress and sensible shoes. No speech to give, no thank you cards to write, no faking of grace when a distant relative says the wrong thing. No pitying eyes. So for now, that is our thing. Our thing is something he won't be able to remember, but I hope one day I can tell him that his first morning was my first morning of coming back around to myself.

I hesitated writing this for a while, because I kept thinking, "This baby and this birth are not about me. Why do you always have to make everything about you?" But I think I realized that the beauty of it all was that, for the first time in a long time, it wasn't about me. It wasn't about who I'd lost or how I was coping or how long it had been since my last panic attack or the last crying jag. It was about someone else, and about life rather than death. It was about everyone other than myself. And suddenly, my world again became bigger than my grief.

Thankful

It's Thanksgiving Day, and the streets are empty of people. The usual hustle of my neighborhood is only a trickle of couples carrying bottles of wine and casserole dishes to turkey dinners; the nearly constant gusts of laundry steam coming from basement windows are replaced by wafting poultry. The most crowded buses are only ferrying ghosts. The city is quiet. It is still.

My adopted father is coming over for dinner tonight, and it is our first Thanksgiving without his partner, my other adopted father, D. It is my second Thanksgiving without my mom. It is the 20th Thanksgiving without my birth father. It is the third Thanksgiving without my ex's family. And so on and so on.

I am not sad about this, though. Thanksgiving has never left me feeling very sentimental.

But my city does.

This city has been my home for seven and a half years now. And though I've lost family, friends, jobs, as I've evolved and changed, my city is here. And it is vibrant and the same. My feet hit a certain rhythm on these sidewalks that they carry nowhere else. Fallen leaves are rained on and then crushed underfoot and leaf-shaped stains look like intentional stencils. But they are not so conjured. They are real. My city is real. And so am I, in it.

Last night my mother-in-law was talking about a fancy wedding. She said she had heard that the couple wasn't really in love, and it was about the show of the thing. "How could you marry someone you aren't in love with?" asked my brother-in-law. Everyone else nodded in agreement.

"I did," I said.

That's awkward. But it's part of my history and, subsequently, part of who I am. Part of the person they have come to love. So I said, "I did. I did that." And it got awkward. But I told them I had really married his family, it was his family I had loved. They sort of seemed to understand that, at least intellectually.

I can so clearly see the dining table, usually so casual, fancy for Thanksgiving. I can see the tiny kitchen buzzing with activity, all of us buzzing with alcohol, Gordon Lightfoot or Tom Petty or James Taylor the soundtrack to it all. Dogs whining for food. Three people sharing one chair, giggling.

Maybe I do get sentimental. But unlike missing my mother, which is crippling, today I find myself wanting to bundle up against the chill off Lake Michigan and take my dog for a walk around my absurdly quiet and absurdly beautiful city.

Shift

My mom would have been really proud of me this weekend.

This may be the first time I have thought that and been happy, instead of having it make me sad.

Electing

There is a really wonderful collection of suffrage-era advertisements right now over at Collectors Weekly. Comprised mainly of post cards, the collection is truly astounding.

I never knew a time when I could not vote. Obviously. I'm not over 92 years old. At the age of 26, I haven't been able to vote too terribly long. This year marked only my third presidential election. I am so happy that I was old enough to vote in 2008. Living in Chicago the day Barack Obama was elected president was momentous. It was a palpable joy. It felt like it mattered. Something was changing. Something was going on.

I just made the cut-off to vote for Kerry in 2004. I wasn't a huge fan of Kerry. And I was just starting to understand politics at the time. All I knew was that Bush seemed unintelligent. He seemed to want a theocracy. He seemed war-hungry. He didn't support gay rights. While Kerry didn't show overt support to my LGBT friends, no one was at the time. But a lack of outright slander of my friends would have to do for progressive politics.

In 2008, Barack Obama stood in Grant Park, on the lakeshore of my home city, and addressed his supporters. And that's when he said it: "gay and straight Americans."

...

Wow.

I cried. And though he was slow to act on policy, Obama did repeal DADT. He rescinded the Mexico City Policy just two days after taking office. He eventually came out publicly in support of gay marriage. He signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. He supports Planned Parenthood. When Hilary lost the nomination, he thanked her for making way for his daughters to achieve.

And while some of his talking points may just seem like so much lip service to frustrated activists, I think that lip service is important, too. While generally defined as being mere empty words, when the words are those that others are too afraid to speak, speaking them in activism. When the president of your country makes a video for the It Gets Better Project, before he even enacts any policies to back up his rhetoric, he has made an impact. When the president addresses "non-believers" in his inaugural address, those of us who do not believe choke, recalling President George Bush Sr. denying our citizenry.

My mother voted Republican her whole life, except twice. For Kennedy, and then for Obama. She had gay friends. She had gay family. She had a daughter who depended on Planned Parenthood for healthcare during a difficult time. It's difficult for people to change. I admired her ability to do so.

My mom won't be voting in this election. This thought falls under the strange "Grief Brain" that forms after a significant loss. Seemingly innocuous things seem laden with meaning. "This is the first election for president in which my mom will not vote," isn't like the anniversary of her death, her birthday, or Mother's Day. But this week I'm remembering a woman who unknowingly led me to feminism by being herself.

Boiled and steeped

As I hunched my shoulders against the 30 degree air this morning, I remembered that a year ago today I was in San Francisco on my honeymoon.

The air was a bit chilly there, especially on the ferry from the wharf to Alcatraz. But I got by with a sweater. My human radiator of a husband got by with just a button down shirt. Because he is a Martian.

Though P and I had been living together for over a year, I still had a giddy newlywed feeling. The most amazing man alive, in my estimation, had chosen me. We'd gathered our closest friends and family into one room--something that we'll never get to do again--and we said, Sure. We said, I pick you. We said, It's been rough and it may be rougher. But I want to do it with you.

I hadn't been that happy in a long time.

We were both making more money than we ever had, and the kitchen in our rented guesthouse sat unused--save the mini-fridge, which held wine and cheese. We ran all over the city, eating all the seafood we could, and trying ethnic cuisines that not even our sweet home Chicago could offer. We fell in love with the plant life there. We cursed the city we loved and called home for it's inability to support a jade bush outdoors.

Like most things in my life, the best parts of the trip were unplanned. Google all you want, but stumbling upon a tea store with a tasting bar manned by a guy who know everything about tea? Nothing gets better than that.

What I didn't realize until we were flying home, watching California fade below us was that for almost a week, I hadn't been sad. It had been four months since my mom died, and four months of intense sadness. As happy as the wedding had made me, it also reminded me that my mother was not there in attendance. But the honeymoon was a week off. I couldn't believe that I'd been able to go 5 days without crying. The tears came on the plane, as I wished I could call her when we landed to tell her about it all. I cried realizing that when I got home, my mom would still be dead, I would still be sad, the first holiday season without her was approaching, and that the week had been an exception and not a new chapter.

A year later, I am spending my day reading and writing, and drinking a puerh tea, aged a year. It's dried wrinkled leaves sit shriveled in a glass canister on our tea shelf. It tastes like the earth. It smells like outside. It is not blended over with a fruity infusion, and it does not take honey or sugar. No getting around that you are drinking a plant.

Perhaps that week of exile from grief was indeed the beginning of the next chapter, a flip of the page. I had someone with whom to grieve, yes. But white dress and open bar or not, P would have been there with me. What began in San Francisco and evolved all year was a keener sense of reality than I'd ever had. Like a good puerh tea, a good life is gnarled and cultivated, ugly and steeped. Sometimes, tea is just tea. It tastes like the earth from which is came and there is no need for cranberries or cardamom. And sometimes we desperately need a fruity distraction from reality. 

I still enjoy both varieties of tea. It's learning to live with both and not knowing which you'll be served when that gives me challenge.

As You Can See

There are things you do when someone dies. One of those things is to call everyone, seemingly, in the world, and keep ruining people's days with the bad news. I had never done this until my mom died. The people who are close, that are really upset, are difficult people to tell. But maybe more difficult are the people you haven't spoken to in years. 

My godmother was one of these people. We sort of lost touch somewhere in there. She lives in Virginia and she was my father's best friend. She did a wonderful job after he died of keeping up with me, but as I got older we lost touch a bit. But I wanted her to know that my mom had died. I only had an address, so I wrote her. She wrote back quickly with her number and we spoke on the phone shortly after that. We've been corresponding ever since. It's been really, really good. She knew my father before my mom  did, and she even met my grandmother--my parents met after my grandmother died. She still calls my dad "Danny" and referred to him as "one of the greatest men I ever knew." She said he was the one you'd call when you needed something, and he'd be there. Car trouble, family trouble, whatever. She told me the story, from my dad's perspective, of my parent's meeting. She has brought nuance to stories and vague remembrances. In her eyes, my dad was a real person. I don't remember enough of him for him to be real to me. 

She's been going through photos and has been sending me some of my parents, of me as a baby, and of her. There were several of my mom sitting at a piano, playing while everyone sang at a Christmas party. This was before I was born. When I look at that I think that the years I am living right now are the years my children will never know. These are the mystery years that are a part of me but that will never really be real to my kids. And I'm just old enough to understand, I think, that my parents were people before they were parents. 

I got a card today from my godmother with more photos. At the end of her note she says, "As you can see your mom has a problem, while pregnant, with swelling." There is a photo included of my mom with her legs propped up, ankles swollen. And I thought about how I won't have her to call when I'm pregnant and swollen. But I'm hoping to take advantage of the relationships I do have, like with my godmother, and other women in my life. 

birthday

As one of my best friends, A, has said, "Those Catholics really did a number on you." She's referring to my guilt, over practically everything. And this week, I felt serious guilt about my struggle with depression. Because I had a damn good week. And for a lot of it, I just wanted to cry. 

I don't remember Monday. Not what I did or didn't do, nothing. It would have been my father's birthday. His 80th birthday. P's dad is 57. P's grandmother is only 8 years older than my dad would have been. I remember my dad's last birthday, when he turned 60. My mom threw a big surprise party for him. She rented out a banquet hall and everything. I don't know if she knew that would be his last, or if because of his health she knew it would be his last milestone birthday, at least, or if his impending death always haunted her. But 8 months after that party he was dead. But at that party I was giddy. I had kept the secret, and my parents were proud of me for that. The very next day was my own birthday, and I would be 6. My friends were there. My father was the center of the world for the night. And as I ran and danced around the banquet hall I had no idea. Did he? Did anyone? I was just getting to a place where I felt comfortable asking my mom these questions. And I still have them. 

You lose days in depression. And it depresses me more to know that I remember a September 24th 20 years ago better than a September 24th 4 days ago. 

Tuesday was my birthday. 26. P told me to do whatever I wanted that day, to "take a bath and watch Netflix and drink a bottle of wine at noon" if I wanted. I read a lot instead. I checked my Facebook for birthday greetings. I received happy texts. I ran 5 miles. I had a pretty good day. I met P downtown that night and we went to a wine bar and out for sushi. 

Wednesday I trekked out to Logan Square to meet a good friend at a pie shop. We sat and talked for about 4 hours, which seems to happen with the two of us. It was a welcomed change to sitting at home. I put on real pants, so that was good and different. This northside snob found some redeeming qualities about the neighborhood, even. :o)

Last night was good. P and I had tickets to a show I have literally been wanting to see for about 10 years. It originated in Chicago, went on to NY to win a Tony, and when I learned they were reprising it this fall, I about jumped out of myself. Thankfully, it lived up to the expectation. But part of me was in a cloud, after a day of puttering around the house, hoping to get some inspiration to do anything but watch Netflix or scroll Pinterest. I did the dishes and took the dog out. That was about it. 

I know that if I run in the morning, it gets me going and I feel better. I can have a productive day. Before running this morning I had a near anxiety attack thinking about the day in front of me, hours of time to waste in wallowing. But then I got up and ran 5 miles. And now I am sitting in a coffee house in my neighborhood, writing. I am going to try and edit some previous writing for submission to lit mags. And though it is small and makes me feel like an invalid to admit it as a triumph, I am really proud of myself for making the decision to just get up. 

I had such a wonderful week--friends, my love, sushi, theatre, wine, good coffee, good reading. I renewed my license and the photo doesn't suck. Lots of good things. And I feel serious guilt for not reveling in it and loving every moment. in 2010 I thought I had turned a corner. I had a new, great job. I had started dating P. We entertained friends often. But now I know that it was a manic break, and as happy as I was, I am just a person who struggles with depression. It's simple. My mother's death threw me for a new low, and I'm crawling out. But I can't compare my mood to 2010, because I'll fall short most days. I have to take it "one day at a time" as everyone seems to say, no matter the issue at hand. But I suppose we say it so indiscriminately because it's fucking true. 

It starts with running.

To Live

Twenty-six years ago, right now, my mom was at an appointment with her OB/GYN. It was my due date. And then it was quickly my birthday, when her doctor ordered an emergency c-section. Yanked out at 3:15PM, the story goes, they thought I was stillborn. Cord around my neck,  a dichotomous noose of life-building nutrients. Blue in the face. Not breathing. My mother was put out. My father was there. They told him I was gone. But then I wasn't. But then they noticed that my legs were severely twisted. Then I was whisked away to another hospital, since the one into which I'd been born did not have a NICU. Then I came home, and the real fun started.

When I look through my baby albums, I realize how insane that time was for my parents. I was a mess. They were told I'd likely never walk. Then throw in my dad's open heart surgery somewhere during my mom's pregnancy, and then her hip replacement before I was two? Yeah. The Sweeneys were a disaster.

But today I'm okay. Relatively, I guess. 26 years ago I wasn't breathing and I ran 5 miles this morning. I just ate some Thai food. I woke in a foul mood, missing my mother, wishing for her annual call singing Happy Birthday. I started my period. I have to go to the DMV. What am I doing with my life? Blah blah blah. But I felt better after running, and after discovering a note P left for me on our bed. And while my mom won't be calling today, many people have. And I think about how I came into this world, medical professionals hurriedly extricating me from my mother, from the only home I'd ever known, being strangled by the connection.

Sometimes you have to let go to live.

Run

I bobbed on the steps into the pool and my mother held her arms out to instill confidence. I could swim. I had taught myself that summer. But I had always been a nervous kid, afraid of loud noises and shadows and my own death. My mom was extolling the benefits of swimming.

"It's the best exercise for my arthritis," she offered. This was supposed to be reassuring.

"Do I have that?!"

"No, I do. You don't."

"Then why do I need to worry about it?"

"You don't. I do. I'm sorry."

"Am I going to get it?"

Pause.

Pause.

"You could."

Since that day, and I think I was in about the second grade at that point, I worried. Every time my muscles ached, every time I felt stiff. Do I have it? Did I get it? I had already inherited a rare joint disorder from my father that necessitated casts and braces and physical therapy and surgery by the time I was six years old. I was worried. And I prized my physical ability. I rode my bike, I started martial arts. I danced. For a kid that was never supposed to walk, I did okay. My mother's RA symptoms began in her early twenties and after I made it past that time, I felt less concerned. Until she died from congestive heart failure.

I began exercising again last week. It has been a while. I walk more than most people I know, because I live in a city with no car. Going to the grocery store is a mile round-trip, carrying my loot. I have a dog who goes out three times a day. Walking to and from my nearest el stop is about the same. In a given day I'll walk several miles. But last week I started running on the elliptical, running away from two parents who died by age 63 of heart failure; from RA that WebMD tells me can be delayed or slowed by exercise; from my unknown medical history since my mother was adopted. I run.

"Going to Carolina in My Mind"

I am hanging some photos and getting some chores done and select "folk rock" for Pandora to churn out some tunes as my backdrop. I am in my relatively new house, over seven years into my life as a Chicagoan, but when I hear James Taylor, I am no longer. I am in an Indianapolis kitchen, the sun cascading through an open sliding door in summer. Meats and summer squash sizzle on the grill just past the screen and I'm home. I am home.

James Taylor was often the soundtrack to my former life. He would sing us full, along with Gordon Lightfoot and Tom Petty, as we passed the mushroom rice and the beer supply dwindled. I realize now that when I think of "home" I am usually thinking of my former in-laws home. As I've detailed previously on this blog, I grew up with my ex-husband. By the time we were married, his sisters were my sisters, we had holiday traditions and inside jokes, and I'd passed many lazy summer days in just this fashion. They were never "my in-laws" or "his family" but simply "my family." And I miss them still, though my divorce papers were filed years ago and I have a new set of in-laws, even.

In the winter, they heated their home with a wood burning stove, and I'd return to my mother's house smelling of that dry air, my hair full of static and smoke. Their kitchen table was tiny, but we were prone to sitting in laps and sharing chairs anyway. I think it would be difficult for P to imagine me doing any of that. And I'm sure he wishes he would see me do it with his family. Someday, I may. It's not as if I don't want that. But before I can, I have to stop desperately wanting to gather around that particular dining table with those particular people. I have to grieve that loss. Replacement isn't the way to achieve contentment.

It was my fault. I filed for divorce. It was my fault. I could have kept them, could be sitting there still. I could have been moderately happy. But I wouldn't have P. And as soon as I realize that, I know that I made the right choice.

10:04 PM

My therapist has said repeatedly that my circumstances are strange, that I've not had an ordinary childhood, and other such sentiments. But I think that when someone finds your lived reality bizarre, it is often hard to concur. After all, it's all I know.

I sort of understood her a few nights ago.

Cleaning out our guest room, I had to move boxes taken from my mother's house. I didn't want to go through them yet, but a few things caught my eye. There was a file folder, and I opened it, wondering if I would stumble upon some important paperwork. I did. They were 4 different death certificates for members of my family.

A great-uncle who died when I was about 8; my mother's parents, only one of which I met and she died when I was 4; and my father who died when I was 6. There they were, filed by my mother, also dead now. All neat, all put away. All telling a story about another person I did not really know. We were clearing out the guest room so P's sister could move in. She's going to school in Chicago and is staying with us for about a month until her dorm opens. And I was struck by the juxtaposition. Making way for P's family, and moving the scraps of mine. Photos and death certificates. Military honors and rosaries. Objects that held meaning for people I do not know but who were instrumental in my existence. Who were they? It begs the question, Who am I?

My therapist described me as this last branch on a dying tree. And now, I'm being grafted onto P's family tree. But that's not an easy transition. No matter how this new tree suits me, the feeling of being lifted from my trunk, from having vague memories of knowledge of leaves as they fell, leaves me feeling less than whole. Less than stable.

I doubt I will ever forget receiving my mother's death certificate in the mail. You know the drill. You come home from work, open your mail nonchalantly. And suddenly, an official document was staring me down. My mother's full name, her stats, all neatly typed. And at the top, Time of Death. I don't know why this caught me so, but I couldn't stop staring at it. 10:04 PM. What was I doing at 10:04 PM? It was 9:04 my time. Where was I? Had I felt differently? Had I been laughing? Had I been thinking of her? Was she actually dead at 10:00 PM, but they called in four minutes later? The specificity got me. 10:04 PM. I couldn't stop thinking about it.

It's a lot to find. It's a lot to digest.

Next

I quit my job. Two more days and I won't be employed. "What are you doing next?!" people excitedly ask me.

I don't know yet. I don't really know.

I landed my current job after landing an entry level job at the same company. It was early 2010 and I was finally finishing undergrad, after taking some time off to get back on track after that pesky divorce business. I had majored in Social Justice Studies with a minor in Feminist Theory. Right. Super marketable. But how I loved it, each and every moment of it! School had become my escape from a bad marriage, a place to hide, and luckily, that hiding place made me a better person. Not knowing what was next, I just wanted to find a job I didn't hate, and one that paid the bills. And there I was, an entry level customer service agent. And here I am, two and a half years later, an account executive, managing hundreds of thousands of dollars in my portfolio of clients. Sometime earlier this year I stopped and thought, Huh. How did that happen?

I remember that I had just started dating P. not too long before landing the gig. I told him excitedly about it as he made me breakfast one morning. He was waiting at my apartment after my second interview and we jumped up and down together when I told him I had been offered the job. He was there when I called my mom to tell her that I had just doubled my annual income. And through it all, both P and my mama kept reminding me that there was something else out there that I wanted.

My mother was a musician. She made her living doing this. When it came time for college, she didn't direct me practically, but told me to do what I loved. At eighteen, I loved a lot of things. I chose one. For a long time I thought my choice unwise. But now that I see it come full circle, that I'll be using those skills and interests and talents again in graduate school and beyond, I feel whole. Is that weird? I think of the broken self I was, trying to finish school, but how whole I felt, somewhere inside of me. Somewhere, I was storing all I was learning, there for a later time.

I think this is that time.

In the four months between two days from now and starting school in January, I am breathing. The past five years have been the most beautiful and most painful. I am cashing in all the summer breaks I never had, all the indulgences of arrested development I never took, and taking four months to be me. To figure out who I am, emerging from the first half of my twenties. To make sure I'm braced for the next crazy thing. (They're always around the bend.)

My sister-in-law is moving to Chicago this week. Today, we texted back and forth about her move. Of course, I couldn't help but remember my move to Chicago at her age. Walking home from the el tonight, a perfect city breeze guiding me home, I recalled my last night in my childhood bedroom. All of the furniture was packed in the moving van, ready to drive north early the next morning. I made myself a pallet on my bedroom floor and grabbed Ernie, the plush Sesame Street character I'd had since toddler-hood, and stretched out in that room one more time. The walls were bare and my bed was gone, and my books were packed. My mom knocked lightly on the door and pushed it in.

"You can sleep in my bed if you want, honey." I said I was fine, wanting one final night in my room. Looking back, I see now that she wanted one final night with me next to her, something she knew she'd never have again after that night, that she hadn't had in years. But she was usually good with boundaries. She knew what I wanted too, and shut the door.

I hope my sister-in-law does what she wants. I hope I continue to. I hope my mother would look at me again right now, take in the gravity of my decision, shut off my light, and close my bedroom door.

Notes

I was never a good sleeper. Never. My mother said she thought it was because I spent so much time in the NICU after my birth, waking at odd hours to be poked, prodded, and monitored. Well into my young years I'd cat nap during the day and keep my parents up at night. It suited my system.

Because of my genetic joint disorder, I was in physical therapy from a very young age. I had a small trampoline for this, and even when the therapist had left our house, my youthful energy came to bear on the springs, my parents straining to hear Dallas or Matlock above my jumping. Many nights, I would actually jump myself to sleep. Fearing that they'd never get me back down, often my parents would just  throw a blanket over me and leave me on the tiny trampoline for the night.

What I remember from those nights is waking and feeling a bit uneasy at first. I was slumbering on Jazzercise equipment, afterall. But as soon as my eyes adjusted and I understood that the cool, sleek bed on which I rested was my beloved trampoline, my rigid body went lax, and I stared up into the soft light from the lamp atop my mother's piano. I can visual the bottom metal base, under which we hid "emergency money," and I can see the little brass key that turned the thing on. I can see our living room alight, subtly, the spotlight shining though, of course, on the piano. It wasn't a fancy piano, but it was hers. And it was always part of what made houses into homes.

For years, I remember thinking that I had never felt at home the way I had felt in that living room under the glow of that lone light. My first apartment after moving out on my own, I chased it. And each home after it. I think I am getting close. Closer than I ever have been, anyway. But then I wonder if we ever find it again, or if we just create a new one for our children. One that we can never truly have, but just create for another person. Another light for another lifetime of chasing a light.

I wonder if I'll get her piano again one day. It still sits in her husband's house, unplayed, collecting dust,  the music in it silenced for over a year now. I emailed him a list of the larger items I wanted, eventually. What I didn't want was for him to feel as if I was going shopping in his home. What I was really saying was, "If not for you, these things would be mine now, but when you die, this is what I want. Because they were always mine and never yours."

I don't have a photo of the actual piano. But I can recall the gold letters spelling out the brand, and I typed that into Google. This was literally the first photo returned in the search. As I said, not a special piano. But few things bring back such special memories. Few photos could bring back such vivid sounds and smells. The leather of the bench. The creak as the bench opened, storing the notes that scored my childhood. 

The things she will not know

When my mother first died, I thought only in the abstract about the future. I couldn't fathom a real future without her in it, and all I had were vague conjectures and assumptions. I lamented the typical milestones that had not yet come to pass. She won't see me marry the love of my life. She won't see me become a mother.

At the time, nothing yet had happened to me without her, except for her death. And in the insane, rocking grief of those first weeks, I actually found myself upset and wanting to talk to her about it. Someone would say something ludicrous in an attempt to comfort me after her death and I'd think, Wait until she hears this. The people from my past who came crawling out for her funeral inspired a lot of, Wait until I tell her who I saw! This made me feel crazier, of course.

For the most part, I could only imagine the things I would experience without her. Sure, I would probably get married, but it wasn't certain yet. I hope to have children, but who knows? These were abstract. Now, there are real experiences. And she hasn't seen them.

Last week I learned that I was accepted into a graduate school. This is a program I have been looking at for 6 years. I spoke with her about it many times, actually. She encouraged me to apply, and I even started to once. It just wasn't the right time. Yet now it is and she can't see it.

I bought a new home. With my new husband. Every day he amazes me, the trust and love I have for him amazes me, and I just want to call her and tell her. I want to tell her I understand how she felt about my father, finally. I want to talk about paint colors and curtains with her.

My mother would take great joy in the simple things I was doing. I would tell her about a date, or a class I was taking, and she wanted to hear the minutiae. Sometimes after a really wonderful day I want to throw myself down on the sofa and call her.

I'm writing this and my husband is practicing the cello, and I know she loved that he played. I know that she would be delighted to know that I eventually lived in a house of music again, after growing up in one.

When I graduated from high school and college, my mother was there to see the ceremony. She was tickled over it. At the time, I thought it was silly. I rolled my eyes a lot. Since applying to grad school sometimes I can't stop thinking about the seat unfilled for me at commencement, the only person in my life who I expected to appreciate the mundane, even as I ridiculed her enjoyment.

Dear Mama,

Last night, you would have been really proud of me. You always loved when I tried new things or visited new places. You enjoyed life in a way that is somewhat rare in my busy city life. I don't see many people around me who enjoy it the way you did. But I did last night, and I wanted so badly to call and tell you about it.

It's been just over a year now since you died, and I still get the urge to call you. I don't start to call you and then have to stop myself, but rather I think, "I really need to tell her about this and I can't." Maybe this is where the god thing comes in for people. It makes them feel as if there is still an open line of communication, however indirect or one-sided. They may not get a response or any give and take, but instead it's like they are sending emails to to someone who never answers. But somehow, you know they are read.

I guess that sounds awful to me. I don't know that it would offer me much more comfort.

Speaking of email, it sort of rules me life. Well, the internet generally. I work for a dotcom, and I write, and I'm a twenty-something in 2012. Everything I do is online. But last night was screen-free.

P and I went kayaking.

You have known since the first time I visited New York City that I wanted to live in an urban area. You told me that after the first time you brought me to Chicago, you knew you'd lost me to it. And if it's possible, I became further entrenched last night as P and I paddled down the Chicago River. The sun was setting over us, making gold out of the skyscraper glass above us. We saw wealthy people in yachts, and their condo buildings with docks right on the river. We saw the grit and grime as we traversed under old bridges. And as we rounded a bend I saw this:

I took this photo in 2010 on an architecture tour, with you. You were in town for my college graduation and we ventured out onto the cold May day. You and I loved this house and  you said that when I wrote the "great American novel" I could buy it and put you up. 

I saw this again last night and I remembered all of the traveling you did, the scary new things you tried, and I was glad to realize that I'd perhaps gotten more from you than my 5'2" frame and curly hair. I wondered how you never seemed depressed when your health took away some of these things for you--and then wondered if maybe you were, but that you hid it from me. 

I don't know if any of your health problems will be hereditary, but I think of your early life, before me, and how you tried to do it all. Maybe I'll take that advice.

Getting it right

I've been absent, obviously. I did make a promise to myself that I would post something each and every day here, but I think I have learned that as long as I am writing something, somewhere, every day, I can't get to upset at myself. Part of it too is that some days I just don't have room to process any more about my mom, or D, my adopted dad. Some days these things are not at the front of my brain, and I want to keep it that way. To come here and conjure it up is healing, most days. Some days it is better to snap the top off of a beer and sit on my roof, gazing at my city skyline and reflecting. Or talking about work with my husband. Or not work. Or go see a friend. Some days these things are what I need in order to keep moving past it all.

I've also been working on something that I'm not really able to disclose yet. But it is exciting, and healing too in a way. 

I've noticed that the further removed I become from my losses, I am able to think about the person with happiness and not just bitter sadness. This morning, I am thinking about D, my adopted dad, and his laugh. I am thinking about his hug that wrapped my tiny frame. But this morning I can smile about it. That's progress.

Last fall, D married P and I. We didn't want a religious ceremony, and D jokingly said he would "just fuckin' do it." So, he went online and get ordained.

The smile on his face here makes me so happy. It's nice to know that while my mom was not there, I had D there to show his approval, to tell me he thought "I finally got it right this time."

You okay, kid?

I was, like so many times before it, smashed amongst four people on the front bench of the white pickup. I don't recall now if we had seat belts, but I don't know how we could have been buckled, crammed in the way we were. To my right was my childhood best friend and her little brother, to my left their father. He drove us south on 135 and as we passed German American Park on the left, he rested his big hand on my left knee and said, "You okay, kid?"I felt the late May heat on his palm through the yellow flowered fabric of my dress.

I don't recall what I said. It was probably the first of many lies I told to make other people feel comfortable around me. I may have offered a much too enthusiastic "Yeah!" or "Sure!" if I remember my six year old self at all. But I was not okay. Maybe an hour before he asked, I had learned that my father had died. Whisked away by family friends so my mother could "make arrangements," it was my first realization that my life made other people very nervous.

Growing up, most kids ignored the fact of my dead father with purpose. No one wants to talk about that, and no one wants to face the reality that parents can die. If my dad could die, so could their dad. I remember one day in the first or second grade when a boy in my class said a family had to consist of a mother and a father. "Mine doesn't," I said, indignant that he wouldn't classify my mom and I as a family. But then I felt badly for not recognizing my deceased father as a part of my family, and amended with, "Your dad could die, I mean." The kid cried, and I got in trouble.

In high school, I lost another important man. My mom's best friend, whom she had chosen as my god father, died from complications with diabetes. I had a show that night, and had to be ready to dance and sing just a few hours after hearing of his death. When I came in, it was obvious to one of the cast members that I had been crying. I told him what happened and he repeated an old theatre mantra: "Leave you shit at the door." While he did hug me, he added on, "No one wants to hear about that. This is a Christmas show. Don't tell the cast. It'll bring the show down."

In the midst of my divorce, I was describing the reasons I had left to a friend I'd had for literally ten years. He looked pained, and replied with, "Well is that reason enough to leave? That sounds a lot like my partner and I." I said, "Well, then maybe you should leave too." Again, I reminded people of what could be. I didn't hear from him much after that.

A year ago this week, my mother died. I can't tell you how many times since then I have heard my peers say, "I can't imagine" or "I can't even think about my mom dying." I silently respond with, "You should try. You're going to have to do this one day." When I thank my husband for sticking with me, for being eternally supportive, for listening to me cry and scream, I stop short of saying, "You know I'll do this for you one day, right?"

And in April of this year, I lost my adoptive father. With him, I also lost one of the only people I have ever met who had a realistic understanding of loss. He was actually the director of the musical that opened the night my god father died. When he found out a week later what had happened, he was furious. "Why didn't you tell us?!" he asked. I reminded him of the old adage: Leave your shit at the door. "That's for people who can't deal with shit," he spat out. We spent the next hour sitting outside the stage door, talking about our losses in life. We talked about the people we missed desperately, and we laughed about awkward funerals. I had never been able to speak openly with anyone about these things. When I'd tried, I'd been cast as macabre, inconsiderate. That time I got in trouble for speaking the truth about my dead father, and the nature of the world, in school. Et cetera.

But not with that man. That conversation changed our relationship. And twelve years after having it, I was counted among the immediate family, the primary bereaved, when he died. And there is one less person who gets it.

A year ago this evening, I stood in a funeral home and vacillated between bereaved and comforter, hosting and then being catered to. As I stood with my mother's body laying in the background, my former in-laws walked in. Seeing them, my breath caught in my chest. When I had married their son, I had really been marrying them. So many times I was comforted knowing that when my last relative died, my mother, at least I would have them. And here I was, standing in a room with my dead mother lying in the front, and I didn't know if it was okay to hug them. It was one of the loneliest moments of my life.

They walked up to me, and my former mother-in-law gave me an awkward hug, and said she was sorry. But my father-in-law, true to his sweet, giving, loving nature, embraced me, but really embraced me. In my ear, he asked, "You okay, kid?"Suddenly I was back in that white truck, sandwiched between my friend and her father, his hand on the hem of my favorite yellow sun dress. To bring myself back to the present, I shot my eyes down to remind myself that I was not wearing that little yellow flowered thing. I was wearing my current favorite dress, a black sun dress. Had the years of loss and suppressing them for other people changed me from someone who had a favorite dress in yellow to someone who had a favorite dress in black? Does that happen to other people as they make their way through life, or did all of this really fuck me up along the way?

I pulled away from this man who had been my family and said "No. But I will be." It was one of the first times I was openly honest about my grief. I would not lie this time. I would tell people that I was not okay. I was a black dress wearer now. In a surge of pain, I figured I would embrace it.

"I like your sweater," he said. "It was always one of my favorites when you wore it." He winked at me and they left. I looked at my arms, crossed tightly in front of me, and realized that I had shielded the chill of the funeral home with a pale yellow cardigan.

When I hear church bells,

I think of you.
Standing with you in European cities snapping photos of cathedrals
The story of Child You clinging to the bell tower ropes to make them sing
Your cue to place your hands and feet upon the organ
The steps outside your church
when I made my first communion
when you remarried
when they chimed for your funeral.
I think of you when the church on my block chimes the hour
and sometimes I smile
and sometimes it hurts so badly my breath catches
and all the time I think of your music.

I remember the first thing I said was, "What am I going to do?"

This morning a year ago, I awoke to a world changed. Everything looked the same and except for a relatively small group of humans, nothing was changed. But I changed. A year ago last night my mother died.

I'm the kind of person who remembers dates, and they mean something to me. And while I know my husband is right, and it doesn't really matter if it has been 12 months or 13 or 8, all day yesterday I would think about July 1st last year. What I was doing at that exact time. What my mother was doing. Around noon I thought, "I've officially not spoken to my mom in a year." Throughout the day and the night before it, I thought "She had less than 24 hours to live and no one knew." In the evening I recalled the movie I had been watching when I got the phone call, what I was wearing, what we were eating. Later in the night I couldn't shake the image of the neatly typed death certificate with the precise time of death.

This has been the most challenging year of my life. Tumultuous is perhaps a good word for it. There has been plenty of good and plenty of bad and the bad has stoked the fires of my depression in a way that sometimes consumes the good. But I'm working on it.

All that matters

When my mom died, people said about six million different awkward things to me. That's just a rough number. There were probably many more. Some of these things were awkward because people just don't know what to say when someone dies. Most of these things were awkward, however, because of an assumption.

Most everyone except my nearest and dearest assumed that I believed in god.

My mother was one of the most devout, yet one of the most wonderful, Catholics I've known. Usually you can't be good at being Catholic and also be wonderful. The misogyny gets in the way. But my mother had managed to find her way past that in her journey through elementary, middle, high school, and college in the Catholic education system. And she stuck with it. She made her living as a church musician. My childhood home was always vibrating with the strikes of her piano pedals, or the air passing through her glass flute, or her voice echoing off the ceiling fans. We had a family dog that would howl along. I would be upstairs in my room doing homework, reading, or practicing karate and it would be to the soundtrack of Catholicism. The sounds of a cathedral would mix with those of the garbage truck or sprinkler system outside, and suddenly my middle class suburban house was not the cookie cutter it appeared to be. We were a little bit strange.

I was raised in the church myself. As early as I can recall though, I remember going through the motions during Mass thinking, I better do this in case this heaven and hell stuff is real. But it never actually sunk in, I never actually believed it, it never resonated. And it became a real problem once I started doing theatre and made many gay and lesbian friends. I'd have shows Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday matinee, and then I'd go to Mass. And I'd know that everyone around me would be sickened by my friends. I know because they said so. That's how I knew, if you were wondering. It was no longer okay to pretend, to play along "just in case." Because not only did it offend me, but it didn't seem plausible. Sometime in early high school I was able to let go of the fear of it being real once I started reading philosophy and Greek mythology. I couldn't help but see that the early Greeks created stories to explain a world that left them scared and without explanation; what was the Bible, if not the same endeavor?

My mom didn't like that I left the church. But she accepted it. Afterall, she had encouraged reading and learning in our home. She had bought me the books that led me to my disavowal. She became downright supportive after a time. When I was in late high school I fell in love with Mandarin. I took several years of the language in school and while she hammered away on the piano downstairs, I was upstairs humming along while I practiced writing characters. This led her to suggest that I study Buddhism. I checked into it, but it was still too much for me.

Sometime my first year out of her house, at the age of 18, I picked up my first book by Christopher Hitchens. Nothing made as much sense to me as this book. His words led me to Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and Julia Sweeney and these voices gave me the courage to call myself what I'd been all along: an atheist.

Like coming out in the gay community, this was a defining point. I was nervous and I was committed. I felt alive, yet squashed by the expectations around me.

These expectations were never more present than at my mother's funeral. People I did not know, people who had no reason to assume that they knew anything about me, assumed something huge: that I ordered my life in the same way they did, that I chose the same book they had to guide me through life, that I believed in a place vaguely assumed to be situated somewhere up north where my mother would now be. And if I were to correct them, somehow I looked like the asshole.

I have never attended a funeral and assumed the bereaved were atheists. "Well the good news is, she's not suffering anymore, and that she's just gone. She's not able to see you, or watch out for you, and you don't get to count on seeing her again when you die." I would never say that. Are you kidding me? But that is exactly what I believe. When my mother died, she died. I didn't have any lingering, nagging feeling that she might meet me when I die, and that I better work toward that as a goal. Whenever people said she was watching over me, I resisted the urge to say, "Like, all the time? Because there are definitely more intimate times I'd like her to not see." I like to think that I handled most of these moments with the grace my mother instilled in me, but when someone at my wedding, just four months after my mother passed away, said, "Oh, she's here. And she thinks you look beautiful," I called upon all of the acting lessons my mother had ever paid for and opened my eyes wide. "This is awkward," I started. "But maybe you didn't hear. My mom died about four months ago. She's not here." This of course sent the other party spinning, trying to explain that they knew, but that they meant she was looking down on me from heaven. Obviously. It's when you ask someone to explain something so fantastical, yet that they have thus far assumed to be known by everyone, that shit really gets strange. I recommend it as an amusing way to extricate yourself from conversations you no longer want to be a part of.

My point is, people really thought they were being comforting and helpful. Many people reminded me that they were praying for me. Most everyone, actually. These things only worked to further my stress and anxiety. Not only am I grieving, which for me meant that I was having to think very hard about how to stand up and and remember to shower and eat daily, but I also had to deal with either outing myself and being subjected to a lecture, or how to avoid the issue. But of course avoidance actually only meant that I was avoiding making the other person feel uncomfortable, while I was left listening to someone place upon me a set of rules and beliefs that I have never believed, and that have brought a lot of pain to people I love.

I never told my mother that I was an atheist. But one of the last times I went to visit her in my hometown, we talked religion over lunch. At this point in our relationship, she had watched me walk away from the church she loved, but had eventually said she understood my moral objections to their teachings. She had admitted that she had used birth control, and didn't understand the undue burden the Church placed on women. When I called her crying, telling her that I was getting divorced, and that I was sorry to disappoint her, she said "Well when the men in Rome have daughters in unhappy marriages, then they can tell me what's right and wrong."

And I shared that last part. In her eulogy. Standing next to the altar, across from the seated priest.

To me, that was my mother. Unequivocally tied to her past, to a faith that made her feel at home, yet able to see the trees for the forrest, to use one of her favorite expressions. She didn't like it, but understood my volunteer work at Planned Parenthood. She didn't like it, but she understood my divorce and only wanted me to be happy. And over that lunch the year before she died when we discussed religion, I said, "Do you really think those abortion clinic bombers are going to heaven just because they think that's what Jesus wants them to do? And that they believe in him?" She smiled, shook her head and said, "I don't. The cardiologist who saved my life is Muslim. And I believe he's getting in before those awful people." She looked at me with a knowing glance and simply said, "You're a good person. And that's all that matters to me."

Sunbeam Mixmaster

My mother inherited

an old stand mixer.

The kind

that swirls

and grinds

and blends

seemingly unrelated matter into

warm scones and soda bread.

It was not her mother's

but my father's mother's---

it was white and black and chrome

and, aged at least 40 years it would still groan

churning

turning

on yet another kitchen countertop.

It is some nonspecific day

in the specific 1940s

and there is a war

and there are ration cards

and there is not enough to eat

when there was already not enough to eat since the 1920s

(before they stopped roaring).

My father has a number pinned inside his clothes.

If the Germans

or the Japanese

or the Italians

invade, this number will help account for my father.

All children have a number.

It is eerily similar to children

in concentration camps.

But instead of wooden, flea-infested bunks

no food

no clothes,

my father sleeps on a cleaner bed---

not clean, but cleaner, as clean as can be managed---

behind blackout curtains

his stomach is mostly quiet

and he has clothes. But they are embarrassing.

His mother spends hours

throwing things into pots and pans

and the mixer

and hoping that whatever comes of the blend

will be enough to feed her family.

She is glad for potatoes and their heartiness.

The mixer also cradles seaweeds,

sent to her illegally from Ireland

so she might make some sort of living.

She makes toothpaste and other apothecary items.

She is the midwife in their small New Jersey Irish community.

Balms and candles

soothing women as they bring another being

to soothe and number

into this unreal world.

I often wonder if my Irish Catholic grandmother

made abortifacients

not because she was "pro-choice"

but because she knew her world

and because she knew the hardships of relying on a

stand mixer

to pay the rent

to feed the children

to be.

It is a specific day in

a specific time

in a specific suburban kitchen of my youth.

1995. My first Communion.

My father is already dead

my mother is thinking about that today,

she wishes he could have seen this milestone

which makes me regretful now,

the adult atheist daughter,

that day meant so much to her.

We spent the morning baking.

The tradition in her family,

a cake shaped like a lamb,

is failing like my Catholicism eventually would.

The head falls off

we prop it up with tooth picks and

use icing as glue

and we try desperately to hide our

desperate efforts

which

of course

makes it look all the more desperate.

Yet this mixer has seen desperation before

and if it were to personify

would likely explain to my mother

myself, and my godmother

that desperation does not come on days

that also see expensive white dresses

clean, flowing curls on

little girls

and a buffet spread out on an oak dining table.

These are not desperate times.

I,

my grandmother's stand mixer would say,

have seen desperate times.

But this is me.

I am this queer amalgamation

of a desperate woman

grinding seaweed so she might buy clothes for her son

in which she will pin his identification number

in case evil men on another continent---

her home continent---

get it in their minds to blow his limbs across the Hudson;

I am also

of a desperate woman

grinding flour and eggs

grinding an axe,

as it were,

with her god.

"I am desperate. This is desperation,"

she might reply to the personified mixer.

"I have a little girl

who has no father.

I have love

and no lover.

Don't let the oak dining table

or the crisp white dress this May morning

fool you.

This is desperate."

The amalgamation,

Myself,

I sit in yet another specific time

and specifically recall the way

I came

to be,

through the women in my life.

And I think about the man

my father

who bridged the gap between those

differing desperations,

three women, all desperate

all tightly wound and all

regrets.

A stand mixer;

the common thread.

Maggie, desperate to make a living

Carol Ann, desperate to find a way to keep living

Mary-Margaret, desperate for that stand mixer that no longer works.

Finally.

After about a 50 year run.

And I am desperate to display it on a shelf

to tell it's story and be near it

to remember it in the well-appointed suburban homes of my youth

and to imagine it in the ascetic tenements of my father's youth

and to cling to it,

desperately,

as those who have touched it age

leave

and live only through

my poetic personifications.

Family

One of my favorite musicals is Les Miserables. I grew up performing in community and semi-professional theatre. I was never great in musical theatre, tending more toward dramas (I'm sure you're shocked) but I loved this one. For starters, it sort of perfectly illustrates musical theatre theory. I'll not say anymore about that because you either don't care, or you do; and if you do, you're nerd enough to probably already know what I mean. But secondly, the show reminds me why I admire fiction writers so. To come up with so many characters, scenarios, side stories... it just boggles my mind. I am completely a non-fiction writer which I know is a different skill set on its own. But I can't help feeling that fiction writing is in some way superior. Makers of fiction, I bow to you.

I watched a DVD of a high school Les Mis production tonight. My sister-in-law was in it recently, and they are visiting us from Philadelphia. As she and I sang along, I realized this may be my in.

You see, I don't really know them yet. And I also miss another family, a different set of in-laws, and I'm trying to reconcile it all.

When I set out to write this blog, I set out to accomplish a couple of things. I wanted another writing project. Also, I am in a process of confronting the losses I've experienced. They haven't all been deaths. I also went through a divorce in my early 20s. In that, I lost a family. And there are days, these years later, when I still miss them.

My ex and I met in middle school. We had the same friends. I met his parents around the same time. Beginning junior year of high school, we started dating. I spent at least three nights a week hanging out at their home. My mother and I were going through a difficult time. She had begun dating for the first time since my father died when I was six years old, and I didn't particularly care for the guy. She and I fought a lot. I escaped to my ex and his family's home. Soon I was crying on their sofa, telling his parents about my mom and I. Soon I was in on the inside jokes of the family. They started attending my plays. I was invited on family vacations. His sisters became the sisters I never had. I never really thought about them as "my husband's family," but as my family. By the time he and I married, they were indeed my family. I loved them deeply. We had traditions. And the tug of doubt nestled in the depths of myself on my wedding day were silenced yet again when I spotted my father-in-law waiting for me to walk down the aisle. I married them, really. At that point, my mom was really my only living family member. I remember being so content knowing that when she was gone I would have other parents, two sisters, brothers-in-law, eventual nieces and nephews. I had a family in a way that I never had before, and in a way that I thought I never would. And there they were.

And there they went.

By the time of the divorce, I had grieved that relationship, I think. The hardest part was losing them. I had these grand delusions that we'd all remain friends somehow. Instead, there was an abrupt end to communication, an immediate severing, to a family. I understand perfectly that it most likely helped me to move on and create a new life. I also understand that they needed to rally around their son. Yet I missed them. Once in a while I still do.

And now, because I fell in love with P, I get his family too. This is wonderful, indeed. But I'm not ready, I think. I'm not ready to take it all on again. And I don't know that it would really be the same. I knew my other family during formative years. This new family will be different. This other family knew my mother. This new family did not. And perhaps it is too much to ask right now to take on the role of daughter in a family, fresh off the loss of my mother. I know my situation makes them want to embrace me more. But my grief makes me want to take my time. I don't love as easily as some people. I don't hug people I've just met and resent those who assume I'd like to be touched. Grieving is not a great time to meet new people, at least for me. You inevitably share current events, and my current events make people uncomfortable. They make me uncomfortable. But they are there. And they are me.

My former in-laws are me, my ex-husband is me. My father who died 20 years ago, my mother who died almost a year ago, my adoptive father who died two months ago; all me. To share my story is to share those losses, and I don't know that I'm in a place to trust another set of humans again with my pain.

At the end of Les Mis, Cosette is given a letter, telling her her life story, basically. Secrets are revealed. She learns her history. It's all presented in black and white, finalized, and neat. You get the sense that even as she grieves, she has peace. But life, at least mine I suppose, is never so neat and final.

"...'cause you are my medicine when you're close to me"

Being in love with a grieving person has to be similar to being in love with a crazy person. I suppose I feel somewhat qualified to make that call, as I have been a grieving person several times over, and I once dated a man who ended up in a mental hospital. Oh, my twenties.

I often wonder where I would be in my grieving process had it not been for my wonderful husband, who we'll call P for the rest of this blog. I'll ask him this sometimes, usually at the end of a particularly rough crying jag, beating myself up about not being able to handle this on my own. "Well, you don't have to handle this on your own, so it doesn't really matter," P always says. But the part of me who was taught to rely only on herself by a single parent, the part of me that forgot that lesson and let my ex-husband steer me onto the brink of financial ruin, my survival instincts have said "Don't trust that guy. Adorable curly hair aside, he might be shady."

The day my mother died, P and I were on vacation. Thankfully, it was a "stay-cation," and we were taking advantage of the long weekend of July 4th. Adding two extra days off, we had about a week to do the things in our city that we hadn't managed to experience yet. A full list of restaurants, a few pairs of theatre tickets booked, we were ready to relax. "Part of me just doesn't want to do anything," I told a work friend my last day at the office.

Our first day off was Friday, July 1st. We got up and had breakfast and went to an antique store. The store had a couple of those frames with butterflies under glass. I remember lingering there, and remembering the one my mother had hanging in her bedroom, for years, in all of the houses I had ever lived in. I had always loved it, amazed at the beauty of the wings. Standing in the antique store at 11am that day, I thought that I'd like to have my mom's frame one day for my own home. Of course, "one day" is the euphemism our death-scared culture uses for "when that person no longer has use for it because they are no longer alive."

Next we had lunch at a restaurant we had never tried, and over our meal, I told my husband the story of my parent's courtship, and my dad's childhood. Then we went home, I saw that my mom had called, and her message said, "Don't bother to call me back, I know you guys are on vacation." But I did. And I'm so glad I did.

The next phone call I would receive would actually be seven phone calls. We were sitting in a park near Lake Shore Drive, watching a movie on a large inflatable screen. Sitting in a sea of strangers all spread out on blankets, I simply wanted to check the time. When I pulled my phone out of my backpack, I saw that I had missed seven calls. In about an hour. My mom's cell, my step-father's cell, his daughter's cell. Something was going on.

Since I made that phone call back to my step-sister, since I stumbled back to our blanket and told him that my mom had died, P has been the strongest man in the world. I practically fell down onto our blanket, still barefoot for our summer night in the grass and said, almost like a question, "My mom is dead?" He sighed sharply,and it was as if a switch flipped. He instantly gathered all of our belongings--two pairs of shoes, snacks, backpack--and wrapped them all in the blanket. "Let's get a cab home," was all he said. But I demanded to walk the short distance back, thinking the worst thing right now might be sitting in a hot cab with a stranger driving, even if only for five minutes around the block. We maybe got five feet out of the crowd when I collapsed, wailing, a barefoot crying woman in a dark park with a man hovering over her, trying to pull her along. People probably think he's trying to kidnap me, I thought.

He sat down with me, got my shoes out of the blanket, and put them on my feet. He waited until I could stand, helped me do it, and we began walking again. He called my adoptive fathers and made sure they could take our dog. He didn't tell me to calm down as we walked past others, me sobbing, asking into the city night, "What am I going to do?" He got me home, and as I raced into the bathroom to throw up, he bought bus tickets to my hometown. For two.

What I have to remind myself right now is that at this point he was just a boyfriend. One who was living with me, but just a boyfriend all the same. But he made it clear that this journey I had just been thrust into was not mine alone. The next morning, after having not slept all night, we sat on the el heading downtown to catch our bus. Two stops in, an obviously mentally ill individual stepped onto the train and poised to punch me in the face. I was so out of it, I literally just stared back at her. P stood up, and gently pushed the woman to the other side of the train. When we finally reached the bus, he worked out a ticketing snafu with the driver as I banged my head against the bus door. When we boarded, he chose seats, situated my belongings, and held my hand. When the bus doors opened again in my hometown, he alighted with me, entering this strange new world by my side. He helped my step-family, people who I don't even know really, make food, find legal documents, make phone calls. He got all of my close friends there. He tried to get me to eat. He reminded me to shower. He laughed with me at my inappropriate macabre humor, and let me cry and throw legit toddler-like tantrums.

If it hadn't sunk in yet that we'd crossed some kind of threshold in our relationship that weekend, that came the night before the funeral. I come from a family of only children. It's not big. We were already pulling step-family men to act as pallbearers. We needed one more. It had crossed my mind to ask P, but it's a strange thing to do."So you don't know these people. Fuck, I don't either. And I know we haven't really talked too much about where you and I are headed together, but would you help carry my mother's casket?" It's a lot. But I didn't have to ask. Because he offered.

Shit gets real when you see the man you love literally and actually carry your mother to her grave.

I realize now that P was actually one of the last people to see my mother. He was the one out of the two  of us to see her for the last time before her casket was closed. I looked at her, and then I was ushered outside to the waiting car. He and the other pallbearers stayed as the casket lid came down, and then they carried her out. After she was placed in the hearse, he came over to stand with me and my step-father. "Thank you for doing that," my step-father said. "It's my honor," P replied.

I watched him carry her up the precarious stone steps to the church she loved, steps I had walked with her when she remarried there in 2005 and I was her maid of honor. I followed him as he carried her down the center aisle of the church. I laid in his arms in the front row after giving my eulogy, crying like a maniac for the rest of the service. Yes, I was actually laying down in the pew.

I followed him as he carried her out of the church at the end to the waiting hearse. And when we got to the cemetery and I watched him bear the weight of the woman who raised me one more time, as I held a close friend's hand I said to her, "If I don't know now, I never will."

Two week after we got home, I proposed to him.

Script

You will collect them.

One day.

I hope one day far from this day.

And you’ll marvel that you ever rolled your eyes and wonder what was so silly about it

because now?

Well.

In her careful hand she wished me happy birthdays and merry Chirstmases, but even happy Halloweens and Happy St. Patrick’s days and the occasional card just to say she missed me. A news clipping, detailing the lot of some former classmate, the fate thrust upon an old building in the neighborhood, that someone had died.

I hold all of these now and stare at the way she wrote my name and remember that she chose it and that means that she loved it, and that my father, gone eighteen years before her, loved it too, and there was a moment when they both said “that’s it!” and named me.

I look at her careful handwriting and remember the notes she sent to school with me after I’d been absent for with a stomach ache, detailing the mundane for Ms. So-and-So on fine stationery. She wasn’t a writer, I was, and my dad was, but not she, she always said. But for someone who did not write, her words were so beautiful.

I know now that, of course, somewhere inside of my unknowing, untested 20-something mind, I knew that these things were important because they were still mine. They were shoved into shoe boxes and drawers and not discarded.

The strange glow of her death, those couple of days before she was in the earth, I had to do what I’d seen her do many times. I made the phone calls. “Hi, this is Mary-Margaret and we haven’t spoken/barely know you/repeat my name, but you knew my mom and she’s dead now.” My reference was her address book, and her careful print in my lap was somehow grounding as the rest of the universe whirled around me.

Her recipe cards that are kept not because she was a good cook because she wasn’t, but because they are in her hand. Because she sent them with me when I moved out. Because they are her, still feeding me, all these years later.

Letters she wrote to my father over the long-distance courtship not because I want to know details of their intimacy but because she meant every slide of pen to paper and because she was charting a roadmap to me, and the rest of forever, and here I am at a destination I have yet to explore, and not sure if I will be able to understand. But the key is forged in characters that are all at once marshmallows toasted in a Vermont fireplace, Gregorian chants hummed as stained glass sunrays rested on her cheek, the morning my father died and the night I shouted that I did not like her second husband. They are fraught and confused, and pleasant and warm, but most of all they are known, they are known.

Hearth

When I was a kid, we didn't have cable. I was raised by two intense bibliophiles and there were books and newspapers everywhere. When I look through photo albums of my childhood, any photos taken in our home show strewn pages of the New York Times, the local paper, and books. It was a house covered in words, and while we had a television, it wasn't really the hearth of the home, as it seems to be for most living room set-ups. This is probably why I've comfortably not owned one in three years.

I had a television during my first marriage. My ex loved it. We had cable, and extra football channels, and a plug-in for his video games so he could play over the internet with others. It was indeed the hearth, leaving little room for the heart, of the home. It was like turning on the lights when you enter a room. Come home, set down your bag, pet the dog, turn on the TV. Even if it was CNN just as white noise during dinner. That glow was always spraying forth from the corner of the room.

Last week in Vermont, we didn't realize there was a television in the house for the first two days. To the left of the fireplace, and really too far removed from the sofa to be completely watchable, was a squat wooden armoir. The fireplace ablaze with split birch trees, books in both of our laps, my husband said with genuine interest, "What do you think is in there?"

I love this guy.

We ended up watching a bit of TV. Conan was filming in Chicago that week, afterall. But we were so out of touch with what was on and when, and what channels we might enjoy. So we'd eat dinner, read, watch Conan until the musical guest, and then grab the binoculars and head out to the balcony to star-gaze, the hearth of the home appropriately blazing with flame rather than newsreel.

With the television the unappreciated novelty this time around, growing up, the fireplace was a curiosity in that house. Our family home didn't have one, and it brought images of Santa Claus, of course. In the early June when we always go to Vermont, it still gets cold enough at night to warrant a fire. And while the TV sat unused, my father would go find three long sticks outside when he went to the wood shed, and we'd roast marshmallows. This is one of the few memories I have of my father eating sweets. Actually, Vermont holds most of my limited memories of him at all.

My father was 54 when I was born. In traditional Irish culture, there is a saying that "the kitchen isn't big enough for two women." A lot of men will wait until their mothers die to marry. My dad did this exact thing. Not consciously, I don't think, but he was her caretaker. Before she was sick and dying, he was her caretaker. When he was 13 years old, he kicked his father out of the house after a particularly brutal beating he gave to my grandmother. Since that time, it was just the two of them against the world, as they say. They had always been poor, living in an Irish tenement neighborhood of New Jersey. They didn't have medical care. So when my father contracted scarlet fever as a young kid, they didn't get to a medical professional until it had really taken a toll. My father's organs were all permanently damaged and weakened, most notably his heart. He spent the rest of his life eating as healthfully as he could. But Vermont was a little different.

It was different because he would eat s'mores, yes. But it was also different because there, he could relax. For a whole week, no doctor appointments. No mustering the energy to complete household tasks. Just a book and a view of the mountains. Many of my memories of him at home take place in a hospital setting. His hospital stays were so frequent, that I could probably still return to that hospital and navigate my way around it. It was part of my terrain, part of my life. Christmas mornings spent there, most afternoons after kindergarten. White walls and Jello cups, the excitement when he didn't have a room mate so there was more space for me to play while we visited. It was all very normal to me.

Finally, his heart just gave out. To the adults involved, this was inevitable, and a clear conclusion to this rarified existence. But to me, it wan's rare. And his death was sudden. I went to bed one night, dad away in the hospital, mom at home with me. I woke in the middle of the night and rather than finding her in bed, I found my great aunt sleeping on the sofa. She told me that my dad needed her, and that she'd be back in the morning. I went back to sleep. I woke up to hear my mom on the phone, and abruptly ending her call when she saw me emerge from the bedroom. She sat me down and told me that my dad had died during the night.

I know now that she was "making the calls," going through an address book in a newly deceased person's handwriting, calling those close and those you barely know, knowing that with each call, you're ruining someone's day. Knowing that you almost don't care though, because your life feels ruined. I know that now. I did it last summer when she died. I did this two months ago when a friend died. You don't get better at it.

Last year I would have said that you also don't get better at grieving. When my mom died, it was the third major loss I had experienced in five years, and probably the fifth in my relatively young life. Yet it wrecked me the most. I'm getting worse at this, I remember thinking.

But one more loss sustained, and somehow, I'm still here. Still functioning, still eating, still going to work, still laughing once in a while. Over the past year, I've done a lot of reflecting on my mother's life, and the losses she encountered. Somehow she remained one of the most positive human being I've ever known. Somehow, she raised a daughter to the age of six while also caring for a dying husband. Somehow, she raised me on her own while grieving the love of her life. Somehow, though she is gone, she is teaching me how to carry on.

And I think she would have loved that fire and listened intently to my husband explain how to identify the Milky Way through binoculars.