Red Nose

Straight Into My Heart

I was walking into the parking garage when I saw them: a tiny, frail old lady leaning on her walker, inching her way down the sidewalk, and her daughter, middle-aged woman keeping pace, encouraging her mom.

I had to bite my lip because... well, that was Mom and I, not so long ago. But the lip biting only made the tears fall out of my eyes as I passed them, passed them quickly because who wants to see someone crying in a public parking garage?

So thank you, person who asked if the meters needed feeding. You made me wipe my eyes quickly and gather myself together and focus on the here and now.

Here and now. Here and now. God. It doesn't matter how intellectual you are. It doesn't matter that I can talk and talk about it and be fine. That moment bypassed my brain and went straight into my heart.

Which, I guess, is what mourning is. Moments of remembering that go straight into your heart.

Is This Kinda Icky?

So I get home from work today and there's a wee package waiting for me on the stoop. I haven't ordered anything recently, so of course I immediately decided it was a check for a million dollars from an unknown benefactor.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

I picked up the envelope and saw that it was from The Washington Post. Maybe I'd won some sort of prize!

Again, no.

Inside was a plaque of my mother's death notice and a note thanking me for putting it in the Post.

It's 5x7, laminated, and has a hanger on the back, in case I want to hang it on the wall and be constantly reminded that she's dead.

Like I need a reminder.

Oh yeah, also included was an order form in case I wanted to order more plaques in different sizes.

Is this icky? It feels icky to me. I guess other folks might like this sort of thing and view it as a lovely remembrance, but it just makes me feel icky and sad.

But maybe I'm just nuts.

Bye, El

Ellie was SonnyeBoy's daycare provider. She took care of him from the time he was two months old until he was 14, so I could work. She was his third grandma and raised him just as much as I did, yet she always made me feel that I was his mother and that no one could replace us, his parents.

She was a tiny lady, under 5 feet tall, but her heart was huge. She took care of several kids, including my sisters' three, and kept up with all of them long after they left her care. SonnyeBoy didn't want to leave -- at one point, I had a vision of him driving himself to daycare after school. Her end tables and walls were crowded with photos of all the children she cared for.

She never took a vacation; she never got sick. Not once in 14 years. We tried to give her a raise; she wouldn't take it. She gave each kid a birthday party, complete with decorations, cake and ice cream, and presents.

Christmas was a special holiday for Ellie. The decorations went up right after Thanksgiving. Everybody got presents, parents and kids alike. She never spent much on them, but we knew they came from her heart. After the kids were in high school, she'd have a little Christmas party for all of us so that we could exhange gifts, have a Coke and a brownie, and catch up on all the news.

She took care of her neighborhood too; she even swept the street in front of her house! She fed the neighbors' pets and checked up on the old folks.

She didn't have a car. She walked or took the bus. On Friday nights one of us would give her a ride to the local mall where she did her shopping. She zipped through that mall like a dart; then she'd manage to get herself home.

She kept in touch after SonnyeBoy left her daycare, calling to give us the news and get the scoop on us. She always asked after Mom and we always ended the call with an "I love you."

Finally, a few years ago, she fell ill. Her son took her in, but she insisted on moving home when she got better. It didn't last very long, although she did have one last Christmas party a couple of years ago. When she could no longer take care of herself, she moved into assisted living.

On Saturday, at age 85, she died.

Rest in peace, Ellie.

Ellie and SonnyeBoy at his high school graduation, June 1999.

That Number Is Unlisted Now

Joe and I got new phones this week, the snazzy Palm Pre Plus, our very first smartphones.

Although the phones were free (Woo!), the mandatory data plan will increase our phone bill by a fat chunk o' change each month. Therefore, I have resolved to use lots and lots of unlimited data so that I get my money's worth. Look out, YouTube!

Anyway, we did run into a couple of snags, the most notable being the fact that Verizon's nifty little Backup Assistant application only assists you when you're uploading your contacts. After it finishes doing that, it quickly wipes off its hands and hangs up its apron and clocks out.

Oh yes, there is a workaround. You have to export your Contacts from MyVerizon into a .CSV file, log into Google Mail, import the .CSV, and then sync your Contacts from the Pre.

This all worked fine, except that the Pre, who was being a cranky little bastard, only synced up 10 out of 114 contacts.

Gah. Then! Joe's phone, deciding to out-cranky my phone, refused to activate. Eventually we ended up at a Verizon store, where the lovely helpful sales associate (whose name I stupidly did not remember) activated the phone. I then asked him if he could transfer my contacts from my old phone to my new phone, because another Verizon store had done that the last time we changed phones. He could, for $10.

Sold.

Since then I have been playing with the phone. I downloaded a Twitter app, and a Solitaire game, and I figured out how to flick, and throw, and tap.

Then I thought I would go through my Contacts and clean them up. I tapped the Contacts icon and right there, under A, was Anna Wise.

Mom.

My heart dropped into my feet and, once again, my throat filled up with stones. I stared at the phone number for a minute. I thought just do it, just delete it, she's not going to answer if you call it, her number's unlisted now, stop being a baby.

I pressed Delete and it was gone.

In a rush I deleted her cardiologist, the assisted living nurse, the nursing home social worker, the hospice nurse, the hospice chaplain, the hospice social worker, the nursing home room phone, the nursing home nurse's station, the Leisure World number.

Then I wiped my eyes and took a deep breath.

It was freeing, in a way, this letting go of her many numbers. It was good. Like the dream I had last week, where we were driving down the road in a cool convertible, sun shining down and wind blowing, and I thought that I was wrong about her dying, because there she was! Right there!

But I realized that I was dreaming, in that lucid dreaming sort of way, and as soon as I did, Mom vaporized and the tiny particles of her swirled off into the sky like a plume of smoke.

No Respect For The Dead

We buried my mother on January 28th.

This evening I went to the cemetery and saw my mother's grave. On Monday, I heard from my brother that the gravesite was a wreck, but I had to see for myself. This is what I saw.

See those wire things on the left? Flower stands, still there even though the wreaths have long since gone, stuck into my mother's and father's grave. See that slab of plywood under the mound of dirt? It's covering up my brother's grave. See that pile of dirt? Still there, after ten weeks. solidified mud with sticks and crap all over it. See that headstone just in front of the tree? 

My brother's headstone, still dislodged from his grave. See that other headstone, off to the right of the dirt pile?

My father's headstone. It belongs at the head of my mother's and father's shared grave, not way off to the side of a pile of dirt covering my brother's grave. It's been there for so long that it's sunk into the ground, thanks to two blizzards and several heavy rainstorms.

This is the way that Gate of Heaven cemetery treats the dead? This is what we get for our $1,904 fee, paid before the first clod of dirt was dug?

Shameful. Just shameful.

Believe me, the management of the cemetery has already heard from us. Believe me, they have not finished hearing from us. I don't care that there was a blizzard a week after the funeral; the gravesite should have been fixed no later than January 29.

They owe my mother and father and brother the respect due the dead; they owe us the respect due the living who have lost their mother and father and brother.

I am livid. I am beyond livid. Isn't it enough that we have to lose our mother, deal with her estate, sell her house -- now we have to chase down the fucking gravediggers and make sure they do the job we paid for?

I'm sorry, Momma. I'm so sorry.

I Guess I Just Miss Her

Joe had to work today so I stayed home. I didn't have anything in particular to do, so I watched a movie, made the bed, put a new battery in the clock, watched some more TV, made a late lunch, got and sorted through the mail, watched some more TV, noodled around on the computer.

It's so weird to have nothing to do on a Saturday.

For years, literally years and years, my Saturdays were booked: Lunch with Mom.

When Aunt Ruth was still alive, we'd pick both of them up and we'd head to the pub where Aunt Ruth could get her smoked salmon and Mom could get her baked brie. Or we'd have Mexican food, treating ourselves to margaritas and taco salads.

After Aunt Ruth died, Mom began to rely on the weekly outing. She could still get around pretty well; still get up and stairs. We went a little Italian place more often than not, where she could get a nice salad with pears and gorgonzola cheese. For awhile she wanted only Chinese food -- beef with broccoli, and don't forget the fried wonton chips.

Once she moved into assisted living, the weekend lunches were her escape. Even as she got weaker and weaker, nothing was going to stop her from making that date. A little restaurant close to her assisted living home became our regular hangout; the servers got to know us and brought Mom's iced tea before we were all seated. If I was just a few minutes late, I got a phone call asking where I was. If one of us couldn't make it, she needed a good reason why.

Anyway, it's a strange feeling to not be picking her up, helping her into and out of the car, joking about this and that, and eating a meal. You'd think I'd feel free as a bird, relieved to have my Saturdays back.

But I don't. I guess I just miss her.

Stars In The Black Night Sky

Riding in the big wooden sleigh pulled by two huge Percherons named Jim and Dora, I leaned back and gazed into the black night sky, chock full of stars, Orion decked out in his shining belt, and I realized that, for the first time since the new year, I was happy.

Isn't it funny that the tears again came falling down my face. At least no one could see them, there in the dark.

But happy -- what a feeling to be happy, even if just for a while, a ride through a snowy woods under a starlit sky.

I have hope.

Dancing With Grief

The last couple of weeks have been a wild roller coaster ride, ups and downs, g-force curves, and unexpected twists in dark tunnels. I haven't slept well at all; I fall sound asleep but then wake up and my brain goes into fretty overdrive over things I can't control.

I tell myself it will all be fine, I keep telling myself, it will be okay, it's all just details, just bumps in the road, everything will work out.

Well, yes, everything will work out, but so far it hasn't been easy at all, and just when I least expect it I well up with grief and hoo boy, my throat is crammed with a hundred thousand stones and my eyes are leaking salt water.

I wipe my eyes and breathe and move on to the next task, the next phone call, the next the next the next, one foot in front of the other, one step at a time, breathe, smile, breathe, move on.

Last night I had my first Mom Dream and it was a doozy. I dreamed that Joe and I were at the funeral home -- well, "a" funeral home rather than "the" funeral home -- or a hybrid of the funeral home and nursing home, or something like that, some place that my subconscious conjured up.

Anyway, the workers there had to move some bodies, including Mom's. I saw her there, in the casket, dressed in her pretty white sweater, her hands folded at her waist. As the workers pulled her casket along, she gasped and grimaced, as she did when she was dying. My heart leapt in the dream, thinking maybe she wasn't dead, but the workers saw my astonished face and said, "Oh no, she's dead! That's just a reflex; it happens all the time." And they continued to move the casket and she continued to gasp and grimace, and I kept watching and telling myself she was dead, and then I woke up.

And it was 3:30, or 4:00, or 5:15, or some dark, awful time of the night like that, and I couldn't get back to sleep. I lay there until I couldn't anymore, got up, read my email, and made the coffee.

I thought I was okay. I mean, I could be analytical about the dream; I could think about how odd the dream was and be fine. Bu then at breakfast I told Joe about it and the tears just poured down my cheeks and the damn stones filled my throat again.

But as of today, my work week is almost over. Whew. The day after tomorrow I will be at a weekend-long party, where I will hug a lot of people and play and laugh and dance. I will stay up late so it won't matter if I can't sleep. I think I need this weekend really bad, bad enough to spend money I shouldn't spend, because hugs and laughing and dancing -- they're like cures, they can get you through almost anything.