Trails and Trials (L)

I don’t know if I can go about actually describing the moments, the reminders, the trails that lead to my sorrow these days of mourning my mother. Mourning, grieving, grieving is better-- mourning gives an illusion that there is an end, “a period of mourning”. I don’t believe there is an end. I believe I am in, or am entering into, my first real period of understanding of what my life is to be like without her. How many instincts, moments, there are that I didn’t recognize before; of thinking of her, bonding with her. How much of my life was lived for her approval--not approval, but in order to join her more. Joining her in her past was the only way I knew to get to her, it was there that she seemed the most content, the most “in life”. I suppose that’s why I am writing the story that I am.

Her living brought me great comfort, there were only a handful of months put together that brought me great stress. But I’ll admit the best of her evaporated when she left her home. That’s the real reason of the story isn’t it? My dream fulfillment of bringing her home again somehow.

Sorrow, real sorrow, it is a verb, it is a place, a plane of being. It can’t be explained, there are triggers that pull you there in a moment, but to try and capture them and hold them out for Chris to understand how I came there; it’s futile, pointless, because it’s not the moments that ferry me there that matter--to speak of them feels a distraction. How can you explain to someone who hasn’t been there? It is a place that will always exist on some level within me--because my mother will never be a voice I can speak to, a conversation, a story told, a question answered, an existence to be comforted by, eyes to see the pictures of my life. Part of me is now gone, half of my history swallowed up, dissipated, scattered. My favorite half by far.

How ironic the things you can’t understand about your mother until she is gone, I could never understand, truly, how she felt about losing her mother, such a huge loss for her, until I lost her. So many stories have come forward to me that I can’t query her about because she is gone, gone from me in the way I needed her.

I could curl up in this sorrow for a year and not be done with it. With work and babies and love and life, it sits below the surface waiting for the moments in a day to pulse out. It strikes now, blows to my heart and stomach, surprising me. It’s becoming familiar and I’m sure that the sharpness, the acute blunt force will dull with time, but the striking will not. Writing is my only hope of resurrection.

A Testament to Our Kindred Spiritness

I was just sitting here working like a fiend when it occurred to me that Facebook is the Devil. Beelzebub, Death Rusher, Time Stealer, Old Age Maker...you know, the Devil. I was thinking, "Huh, I haven't written on the blog in a while, maybe I should write a post about Facebook. In fact, I haven't even checked our blog in a while...wonder what my girls are up to?" When what to my wondering eyes should appear... but a like-minded rant, and all without beer! Ok, ok, I was forced to make it rhyme...sue me.

Which really all just goes to show...you can't fuck with kizmit. It will have its way. And thank holy crapinola for that.

Night of the Living Facebook

Speaking of Facebook, I've got two friend suggestions. One is a former member of my band, who actually lives in my neighborhood and I see around town. We have lots of the same friends and we're on totally friendly terms but have a wierd and awkward history that involves a drunken assault, passive aggressiveness, artistic differences and myriad other vagaries. I'm sure we've disappointed each other on many levels, despite the fact we both have mellowed since those days. There are also a lot of good and fun memories there, let it be said. I'd be totally fine inviting him and his family over for a neighborhood Sunday BBQ but I'm not sure we want to know every detail of our current lives in real-time. I wonder if my name is sitting there, unclicked on, in his friend suggestion box too.

The other is a friend from college during which I had a huge flirtation that never went anywhere due to the fact that I had a boyfriend at home. His personality at the time: wild, witty, smart as hell, piss-the-bed drunkenness, midnight motorcycle wheelies and a penchant for eccentric nonconformism for its own sake (a preacher's kid, need I say more?). I have no idea what he's doing now, and although I could find out with the click of a button, I kind of almost don't want to know. It's one glorious memory that should stay the way it is.

I also have a friend request from someone from my high school whose name sounds familiar but I can't recall a single conversation we might have had. She has something like three million friends and could be someone who collects 'friends' like serial killers collect souvenirs of their victims. Every once in a while I get a similar urge, just to see how many people I could accumulate. But what's the point of that? Will it make up for being an unpopular freak in high school? Not that I actually mind being that freak, I'm pretty happy to let that flag fly, actually. Maybe I am not cut out for the social applications of the oughts, just like I wasn't for the actual social interaction of the 80s and 90s.

I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook, vacillating wildly and frequently on its usefulness, but there is one thing I'm sure of: some memories of people should stay they way they were made, dying young and making a good-looking corpse. The alternate is a Zombie Friend, it looks and walks and talks like a friend but is actually an empty hull that wants to eat your brains.

Jesus is a Republican? (L)

Recently someone from my Tennessee past posted an anti-Obama status. Personally, I think political status updates outside of elections are tiresome (unless I agree with you, of course). Then someone responded to her telling of a bumper sticker they had seen saying "I'm a Christian, I own a gun, and I'm a Democrat." They went on to further imply that all three can't be true. I defriended her. (Not that all of my "friends" on Facebook are pro-Obama, but this comment from someone I barely know was just more aggravation than I needed that day.) It was either that or post these comments:

Really? Jesus was a Republican? I must have missed that part of the New Testament!

I'd say actually if I had to put Jesus in any political category, he'd be more of a liberal. Remember all that eating with whores and lepers? How about the mulitiplying the loaves and fish to feed the masses? I know the whole abortion thing doesn't jive with most people's view of Jesus, but I'd say the Republican Party's support of the death penalty probably balances that one out. I'll bet Jesus would actually say what is in someone's heart is more pertinent to their faith than which box they check off on a ballot.

Remember that little part of the Bible when Jesus was asked which commandments were the most important and he said "Love God above all others and love your neighbor as you love youself"? Ummmm, I don't think he gave any implication of an addendum of "unless you don't agree with their political views, or they are gay, or a different race than you, or they just smell like sinners to you."

If you're going to go about proclaiming to be a good Christian, you might want to review what that means.

I thought it was easier to defriend her.

(Now in defense of my friend in the previous post, I have to say, her mother was what I would consider to be a true Christian, and chances are, she is too.)

My favorite line regarding all of this comes from "30 Rock". Kenneth the Christian page says he doesn't believe in voting so he always just writes in "Our Lord Jesus Christ" on the ballot. Jack (Alec Baldwin) says "that's Republican. We count those."

Jesus Is Coming--Look Busy! (Alessandra)

Oh giant can of wormy goodness let us stick the blade in ... umm yes. There is quite frankly nothing worse than brainwashed fundamentalists of any stripe. The new Christianity of the QVC megachurch variety replete with soft rock albums featuring swaying, sweaty-palmed, sexually repressed teenagers is particularly loathsome because it seems to be pretty well understood that it is license to check any sort of mental vigor or curiosity at the door. These people have the blank stares of hardened cult members for whom all decisions are made. Their minds are made up well before any conversation. They have more in common with the wackjob terrorist Muslim fundamentalists that they are so scared by than they do to the Founding Fathers of the country they proclaim to love so much. But the blue eyeshadow is pretty awesome.

The most truly Christian people I know are among the most normal. They just live their lives as best they can. They show, they don't tell. They don't make you uncomfortable with that vaguely hostile us-or-them vibe that is a constant, nearly malevolent, presence among the brainwashed. So take heart L there are normal, spiritual people out there with a healthy aversions to pastel and ceramic figurines. You just have to look a little harder for them because they're not going to hit you over the head with their holier than thou faux piety. -A


Alessandra, I've tried to make a comment to this post several times, but it won't let me for some reason, so I'm going in head first. I know this to be true, this is why I lean toward the Catholic side of things pretty comfortably. Most Catholics don't feel they have to not listen to rock and roll or drink in order to be a good Christian. I know there are flaws in any organized religion, but I'll take one that gives you real wine at church any day.

Talk about brainwashing. I can tell you from my BB past that when we would go on Baptist youth retreats an inordinate amount of time was spent playing Led Zeppelin backwards to show you the evils that can pollute your mind through the radio airwaves. In college, after going through a minor resurgence, I went to another retreat led by a couple of which the man was a "cured homosexual", I then had to sit through hours of him preaching to us about how your virginity is the sticky part of the glue that helps you bind to another. I felt so sorry for his poor wife, can you imagine how long she has to wait outs in the car at rest stops on long trips?

I do have to admit I know quite a few people now that I would also call "true" Christians and you are right on the money that they don't go around advertising it or trying to make you feel bad about your life. I'm sure, in reality, that woman was a lovely person, but that does not make for a very interesting post...

p.s. You know how to nail it, your descriptions beat all.

-L


I like this format better. Sometimes you have more to say than that skimpy comment box.
Wow those retreats sound frightening. Let's hear more about them! I also wanted to tell you that I think "bringing the QVC" shd be nominated to our permanent glossary. I also just noticed that if you put our blog as an acronym it has TWAT in it...TTWATW!

But yes Catholics. Sin, torment, guilt, big flashy gothic old cathedrals, beautiful art, thoughtful writings, and the best part: the thinly veiled assimilation of paganism. Catholics are much more fun to hang around in general if you can just lay low during the "guilt" phase. Unfortunately as an organized religion they have a lot to answer for, death and molestation and corruption. Icky. I love how the newsletter from our local RC Church, St. Nicholas, went off on yoga; how it is the Satanic practice that leads to utter moral waste. Hmmmm....downward facing dog versus...Spanish Inquisition.... yeah. -A

Scares the BeJesus out of Me (L)

I love facebook, I love finding old friends and connecting with current ones in new ways. However, one weird twist to this for me is that I have a couple of people from my long ago Bible Belt days in Tennessee. It was strange during the election to be timid at first about posting all of my Palin slams (which you know I did) because my southern contingents and their string of friends were clearly McCain fans (as demonstrated by their "I'm a fan of John McCain" newfeeds). I'm betting that they had a prayer meeting in their church basement after the election results. One of them was my best friend from childhood. Getting to know her again and then meeting her in 1995 was amazing, it was like seeing my southern reflection. I was impressed that at such a young age we had actually found in each other true kindred spirits. She was smart and a rebel by southern standards (she has a secret tattoo) and had grown far from the awkward cute girl with braces I once knew, into a beautiful southern woman. I like to think I'd be better looking too if I lived in the south and was forced to keep up with all those standards. We still had an inordinate amount in common, though raised in very different lives.

I just clicked on her facebook "books I'm reading" page and saw a book of raising kids by the Bible and some other girly-too-flowery-even-for-Oprah book. I felt...betrayed, defeated, disengaged. It turns out, there are some girls you can't take the south out of and certainly can't take the Jesus out of.

Recently, I went to a gathering at someone's house I hardly knew. She greeted me and my friend at the door with a sweet fake hug and we stepped into her huge immaculate house filled with candles, angels, china dolls, and hand stitched Bible quotes strewn about like land mines for sinners, and I wondered if I was stepping back into my past. As I scanned for time portals, I studied her closely; she was blonde (fake), wearing baby blue and delicate gold jewelry, her make-up was thick enough to hide her gender, if necessary. Later in the evening, as we sat in her living room that looked like a staging set for a Sears portrait studio, I asked her where she was from originally, thinking here's the answer to it all...When she replied a town further south in Maine, I was scrambling to make sense. Then I realized it was not a southern connection, but a Jesus one.

This, if nothing else, will keep me from another altar call to the Baptist front--because, apparently, when you take Jesus to your heart he brings the QVC with him. Why is this? Is there no such thing as a cool hip Christian with a penchant for vibrant colors and clutter who likes to read intelligent funny literature?

I realize I am judgemental, I'm a judmgental biggotted anti-Christian fundamentalist (it's just the fundamentalists I'm a'gin). If they could read this blog, they'd send their Christ minions straight up here to try to cleanse my sinning soul and place collectible gnomes throughout my house.

More on Grieving, Sorry (L)

Sorry to not be able to just continue on the path that Marty has so kindly began for us. I am still to tied up in my own process, need to vent, and this is where I'm gonna do it! I also don't want to lose our flow of writing that we've developed here, just because I think no one wants to read what I'm thinking.

Following Alessandra and my's theory of the death experience being oddly like the birth, on the weekend that was two weeks post my mother's death, I felt a new similarity.

I remember when I was pregnant with my second child my pediatrician telling me to expect that after a couple of weeks my oldest would begin to ask things like "When's the baby going back to the hospital?" He warned me, at first, the older child is distracted by all the newness and excitement of a baby in the house, but after a couple of weeks reality sinks in and they've had enough and want things back to normal.

That's what I felt like during that second week: "Yes, I know my mother has died, I understand that, but when is she coming back? When will she call me?" With that sensation, depression began to set in and I wondered how I could be moving into the depression phase of grieving while still firmly in denial. On Sunday night, exactly two weeks after her passing, alone on my couch, that veil of denial was lifted, just a small corner. The wind of the reality of her loss blew in like a hurricane and cracked me apart. I literally could not believe that I would never talk to her again, never hear her voice in person, on the phone, even on an answering machine. This thought, this attempt at understanding that reality was like trying to comprehend eternity. It altered the air around me, my attempts at breathing through the wet onslaught of this gust were almost futile. When Chris came home and found me in this state, a thought bubble seemed to hover above his head as he held me trying to calm me down, "Aren't we done with this part?"

The next day, people tried to say things, kind, reassuring things. This phase of grieving needs to be silent, beyond the howling of the wind. Words cannot change reality and reality was trying to edge it's way in. Blah, blah, blah. She can't come back, I won't see her again, hear her again. No one more conversation would ever be enough, and I'd never have that one last conversation. She slipped out, as we pushed her before I could. Blah blah blah. There's nothing to be said.

The next weekend, which marked three weeks, stupidly, I let the kids all spend the night at Chris' mother's house, so we could finish shopping. Who knew they were the cork stopper in my sorrow and when they drove away in the Sears' parking lot, the bottle was upside down, flowing out it's endless depths. I walked through Shaw's crying, finally calling my sister on the phone. Chris, still angry from an earlier fight, slammed a car door on my tears and oh, how alone and sorry for myself I felt. Then I discovered what I had always known, but forgotten, when I feel so deeply sad and selfishly sorry for myself I only want to talk to my mother--creating a new cycle/cyclone of sorrow. This had never changed or eroded. My mother remained my mother and herself, complete in her mind, right up to the day before she slipped into sepsis unconscious. I still needed her, her words and voice still soothed me. I yearn for it. I don't yearn for her to be back crippled in pain and suffering trapped in a bed. But selfishly, I yearn for the sound of her voice, for days of the past when she would ride with me to keep me company.

Yesterday, I had to go to a doctor in Waterville (just a P. Surgeon who gives my scars steroid shots to make them flat). My mother always went with me for these appointments, she even taught me the back roads to get there. Like a coward, I grabbed my son and dragged him along with me to stave off the sorrow. I was repaid that evening when I opted to see the movie Benjamin Button . More on that later. Every day is better, though sometimes I wonder if every day I wall up more, or I am just placing another day between me and what I don't want to think about. I still haven't sat with the reality of it since that two week storm. Somehow, getting past Christmas has made me feel as though I have some odd permission now to just not think about it. I know it will come, it will all unravel itself slowly slowly over time and I'll just try to keep at least one hand on the string.


I posted this picture on Facebook. It's at C's mother's house on Christmas Eve. I had held firm until my father began to sing "Silent Night" and I realized I hadn't heard him sing a Christmas carol since my mother was standing next to me as we caroled, which we had done every year until she couldn't. In complete despair and surprise of crying in front of people, while not wanting to leave the sound of my father's voice, I turned my face into G's shoulder and cried as she joined me. C, unknowing of what was happening took this picture. When I saw it, I felt there is a presence of my mother in the room. Maybe that was why I couldn't leave.