The "big cry"

Wow.  It seemed so far away, and here we are... almost.

I will get on a plane, in two days, to take my mom to my brother's house in Albuquerque.  And then... poof ... she's gone.  I'm free of the responsibility. I go home a couple days later.  Home to ... NOT having to go visit, NOT having to pick up Ensure and yogurt.  NOT having to check her clocks every few days. NOT having to plan my day around when I can manage an hour or so to sit, possibly knit, and visit .... about nothing.  And everything.

I surprised myself today.

My mother has, for YEARS, said she needs to have "a big cry".  Even when my father died, in 1993, I don't believe she deeply cried.  She has trouble with emotions. But I think she aches to cry, to express the emotion that she wants to feel.  She talks a lot about "the bit cry".

Today, as we packed up the contents of her rooms, we looked at each other, and talked about our impending separation and she talked about the 'big cry'.

And I started to tear up.

It surprised me.  I have had such conflicted emotions about my mother.  Anger, resentment, tenderness, sadness, impatience.  Is it love?  I honestly don't know.. or haven't been able to say.

The last few weeks have been filled with logistics.  Arrange for legal transfers. Change addresses. Open new accounts, close old accounts. Pick up my brother at the airport at 2:30.  Rent the truck at 3:30. Call the helpers about when we're arriving at the apartment. Go to apartment.  Pack truck. Disconnect phone.  So, I've been playing Project Manager these last weeks.

Then ... this afternoon ... the tears almost came.  Welled up.  Subsided.

But it's about time. Tomorrow, my brother leaves at dawn with the truck. My sister arrives with her family midday. We hang out ... and Saturday (day after tomorrow) we leave for the flight to Albuquerque. I will stay to get her settled for a couple of days, then return home.  Free.

But between now and then, I know I will cry.  And that's a gift. I thought that my ability to cry about/for my mother was robbed of me, robbed by my anger and pain.  I will have the gift of tears, the gift of being able to mourn.  Because only with mourning can we move to that time that is beyond the mourning - days of peace, of (in time) knowing what's next.

When I was 17, I left home three days after graduating high school. And I sobbed for hours. I cried for things I didn't even know, wasn't even aware of.  Just blindly sobbing.

Now, finally, almost 45 years later, I will cry. And I will understand why. What a gift. Something I can own, emotion that finally can allow me to grieve, and then ... break free.

What song would you sing about your mother?

I went over to a friend's house, a Guatemalan family, where we did karaoke along with other guests from Mexico (I speak Spanish fluently). The hosts didn't have any 'American' songs, so we just enjoyed a fun evening of robust singing of very sentimental and classic Spanish songs by the likes of the famous Latino idol Pedro Infante. These songs were as well known to the other guests as would be, for me, "Blowin' in the Wind", or "Big Girls Don't Cry" or "Somewhere Over The Rainbow". So we listened and joined in to the extent possible, and had loads of fun.

One song came along tenderly addressing the singer's mother, talking about how sweet and gentle and loving she is, how tender and giving she was. The singer adored his mother, missed her terribly. My misty-eyed Guatemalan friend spoke tenderly about her beloved mother, and showed me a picture on the wall of a warmly smiling and round mamacita.

And I felt so alone.

I really tried to imagine how that felt, to have such a tie, such a fondness. To be able to feel so warm and filled with rich and loving memories, to have felt so secure and nurtured. To miss one's mother so terribly. I felt like I was trying to imagine some foreign culture, some alien life. It's like there is an empty space in that part of my heart, a space that never got filled.  I grieve that loss.

My father died in 1993.  I have never missed him. I have never cried at the loss, and feel utterly no need to do so. I have never wondered, "What would he say about this or that?" Not once. It makes me sad to admit that... a loss for him, a loss for me. But, that is another subject.

Make no mistake ... I continue very engaged in her care. I tell her I love her, and I do. She has suffered some possible cardiac problems over the last few days, and I'm very worried and am talking to staff to ensure the best care, and I am going to see her to hold her hand. This post may sound cold, and that's not the whole truth of the matter. I feel tenderness toward her, and she expresses her gratitude and her desperate need for me. We laugh together and spend time together. We have a glass of wine and dinner each Tuesday. I pick up her room, and bring her treats.

If I were to compose a song about my mother, I could honestly say she had a sense of humor, she was intelligent, she was articulate, sharp and observant. An excellent speller and perfect grammar. I could write a verse about how she gave all she could, based on her own coolish upbringing. But I'm utterly unable to wax poetic about her sweet warmth or rich love or tenderness. It feels weird ... and very alone.

Smoke and ashes

I posted this about a week ago, but found myself terribly uncomfortable to have so much very private history made public. No one responded (except a friend, privately). I have no idea if just no one read it, or if they read it and found it repulsive or terrible uncomfortable.  I un-posted it for a time.  It's now going back up, but I don't know for how long. Courage and honesty is one thing, but this may be another, especially if I don't get any comments.  But, here goes. Uncomfortably, I'll press Publish again. 



Over the last two weeks, anticipating a move from our house, I have been purging my basement of about ten years' worth of material from therapy.  They were awful, awful days, those ten years, of vomiting out loads of pain and grief and anger and anxiety I'd held locked inside.  For a few years now, I've been done with therapy, really really done, and a thousand times better.  It was time to let go of the detritus of my therapy. As I burned the material, I watched the smoke curl upwards, and ashes drift across the grass on this beautiful day.  I tried to catch some of the larger ashes, and they crumbled in my fingers.

Over the years, I have kept my mother mostly in ignorance of the extent of my therapy and pain. Let's just say that she was there when I was absorbing the pain and fear at the beginning, and the few times when I shared tiny pieces of my recovery with her, her response was not what I might have hoped. So I have completed my internal work without her, and I am glad of it. 

And yet...

In recent days my mother talks about feeling her own death is quite close.  Not just what she has said for years, "I want to die".  No, she now says that she feels she WILL die in the next days, perhaps weeks.  And I see her weakness, her utter weariness, her lack of appetite, and I believe it is possible.

As I look back on that bonfire, I have been reflecting on the symbolism of the smoke and ash.  It was so difficult to get to that point, but now it has been consumed so easily. It has disappeared into nothingness. I no longer need to carry all that. And my own mother, her own history, her own hopes and dreams and disappointments, her own behaviors as a mother, her own pain, will soon disappear just as quickly.

I celebrate that I have been able to spend the last five years caring for my mother without being crippled by the past. Being an adult with choices, with power. I have been able to find a way to love her, to be tender and kind. I'm so glad we've had these last five years. I've become whole.

When she does die, I'm sure I'll miss her, to some degree, but I also see her passing as a moment when I pick up the ash and it crumbles in my hands. She has no more power to hurt me. I will burn away any remnants of the grief and I will be left with some of the love that she surely intended to give me, even though she wasn't really able to love as she might have wished.  But me?  I will be free, with my face in the autumn sun, a cooling breeze and dear friends at my side.