The weight of an anniversary

Photo by Timothy Dykes on Unsplash

My Facebook memories remind me every day what I've posted for the past 11 years. For the past week, they've been reminding me that last year at this time I was in Iowa, spending my days in my mom's hospice room waiting for her body to shut down, after we'd taken her off life support, and my nights alone at her house. It sounds awful, but I don't know any other way to say it: I was waiting for her to die. In a different way this year, I've been waiting again. Waiting as the grief built again in anticipation of the anniversary of her death. Waiting for today.

The first time I felt anniversary grief was two years after my dad died suddenly at age 46 of a heart attack on the day the last episode of M.A.S.H. aired. I didn't even know he'd been sick. I was 24 and the oldest of five. I got the call at 1:00 pm and flew through the night from Georgia to Iowa. It was a life-changing education in growing the fuck up. It was several years before I could watch that last episode of M.A.S.H.

You might be wondering why the anniversary grief hit two years after and not one. That's because my grandma was dying at that time the next year. She died just two days short of a year after my dad died, and a day before her husband, my grandfather, had died in 1957. We held her funeral exactly a year from the day my dad died on February 28. (For those who struggle with math and care, my dad died on February 28, my grandpa on the 27th, and my grandma on the 26th. My uncle, son of this grandma and grandpa, was born on February 27. All of these deaths made his birthday difficult for him, no suprise.) I digress ....

It was simply more grief after a year of horrible, intense grieving. I was pregnant, as my mother had been with me when her father, my grandfather, died, so I borrowed the navy maternity dress with the white collar and red bow that we passed around base housing for just such occasions and flew home to Iowa again.

The next year the anniversary grief hit and I thought I was losing my mind. Nobody warned me. None of my friends in Georgia even knew how to support me. Nobody had been through the death of a parent.

I was so sad. I burst into tears for no reason. I couldn't focus. I felt anxious, like something horrible was going to happen. As the long days of February passed, the feeling built. But at some point I talked with my sister and my little brother and my mom and we realized we were all feeling crazy sad and anxious. And it struck me -- as if I had invented it -- that we were feeling anniversary grief.

It helped to know what was happening. And it helped the next year and the year after that when February rolled around like it does and we held our breath waiting for someone else to leave us.

This year I knew what to expect. When I found myself tearing up over small things the past couple of weeks, I knew why. And then the Facebook memories started, because I posted updates on my mom's Facebook page last year starting with her final stroke. I didn't post details, and I haven't been able to write about that yet. But I kept her friends and family informed most days.

I actually felt somewhat comforted to read those posts again. Grief causes us to pause and remember and feel. That's not a bad thing. Too often we try to push grief away or distract ourselves so we don't have to feel bad. But I'm OK with feeling my grief. It reminds me that I've lost someone I love. It reminds me that I'm human and I'm still here and this is one way I honor my loved ones who have passed on.

Today was hard  though. Is hard, which is why I'm writing. I was at the dairy at the farmer's market where I work part-time, and I guess I wasn't my usual talkative self. I was busy and not really engaging except with customers, although I wasn't aware I was acting different. Not until Marshall, the chocolatier next to me, commented that I was awfully quiet today.

It struck me then that today was the day. I looked up from wiping down one of the coolers, but I couldn't say anything.

"Everything OK?" he asked.

I gave a little shake of my head. I could feel the tears coming. Not the place. Not the place. Not the place....

He came out from behind his counter and walked over to me. I don't think he even said anything. He just waited. My eyes filled with tears, but I didn't let one drop. Not the place.

After a couple of minutes I got control. "It's the anniversary of my mom's death last year," I said. I couldn't say anything else.

I didn't need to. He just nodded and waited to see if I wanted to talk. And then a customer walked up so I had to take a breath and put on my professional face. He went back to his counter.

 When we were both free, he came over and held out a 2-pack of chocolate-covered cherries, one of my favorites. "Just take them and don't say anything," he said.

I did. I couldn't say anything anyway. Kindness hits me like grief sometimes, but I still couldn't cry there. Marshall doesn't do grief the same way I do. He doesn't have time for it. He thinks people should get over it. Which doesn't mean he doesn't feel things as deeply; he does. He just thinks death is a normal part of life and he doesn't like to dwell on it. The chocolate-covered cherries were his way of honoring my grief without putting me in the position of embarrassing myself.

At some point my youngest brother sent out an email to my mom's other four kids and her two step-sons reminding us that it's a difficult day, but he's grateful for his family and he loves us. My other brother and I answered that we were feeling it too. Again I didn't let the tears fall, but I felt them building.

Later yet Kelly, whom I sell kettle corn for other days, walked down from her store. She knew this day was coming up. Her mom died just a couple of months after mine, so we've shared our sadness through the year. She's got this day to look forward to as well. We shared a hug and some tears that neither of us let fall.

It helps to know others are on this journey too, that I'm not crazy like I thought I was after my dad died, that I have people in my life who honor my grief by just being with me and listening or texting or giving me chocolate-covered cherries.

It helps but it doesn't take away the grief.

I haven't written yet about my mom's last days and her death yet. I will. I need to. I will just write this much tonight.

One this day one year ago I was sitting with my mom in her hospice room. She hadn't been responsive all day. The lights were dim and I was playing quiet piano music on my phone. I had read to her from her Kindle for a while. Then I told her about some things that were going on in my life that I hadn't had a chance to tell her about before her final stroke. Finally I told her I was just going to read to myself. I sat beside her with my hand on her arm reading.

Her breathing had been rough all day, but it became more erratic. I put my book down and sat with her as she took her last breaths. It was difficult to watch her body finally give up, but it was also OK. It was her time and I was honored I could be there with her.

When it became apparent she wasn't going to take another breath, I said, "Goodbye, Mom. We're all going to be OK. I love you." And even though she hadn't taken a breath for at least a minute, her chin tilted up just a little, and I knew somehow she had heard me and she was letting me know she loved me too. A final gift of connection before she was gone.

Thanks for reading, if you got this far. Feel free to tell me about your anniversary grief or anything else in the comments.

Now I think I'm ready to go have that cry I've been holding back all day.

The weight of Memorial Day

(alliecatzgraphics.com)

I hate Memorial Day weekend. Or maybe the word I want is dread. I dread it like you might dread a triple root canal or the last episode ever of The Office or the death of a relationship.

I don't dread it because it's a day to remember those who have died. If I were home in the small Iowa town I grew up in, I would attend the flag ceremony at the cemetery and shed a few tears as I gazed up at my dad's flag with his name on it. Some years a family member sends me photos, and even those are poignant. My dad was 46 when he died in 1983. He was proud of his service in the Army, and he would be proud to see his name flying on that flag.

I would also visit my grandmas' graves and leave a geranium at each.

When I was a child, we would all pile in the car with the two grandmas -- the maternal and the paternal -- and visit graves all over the county in tiny countryside cemeteries. We'd start early in the morning by cutting all of the perennial flowers from Grandma B's garden and putting them in water in plastic waste baskets. Dozens and dozens of iris, peonies, daisies, tiger lilies, and the ferns that grew along one side of her house.

(andrusgardenquilts.com)

Mom and the grandmas would pack a big picnic lunch with fried chicken, potato salad, strawberries and angel food cake that we'd wash down with lemonade. We'd eat around noon in whatever cemetery we were at, being careful not to sit on the actual dead people who were stretched out in front of their carved stones. The rest of the day we traveled to the graves of long-dead (at least to a kid) relatives and carefully laid the flowers at the headstones.

As we drove through the cemeteries, us kids would reach our hands out of the car windows and try to touch the granite gravestones with our fingers, but Dad told us if we hit one it would cut our fingers right off so we just pretended to touch them.

No, these memories aren't why I hate this holiday. I hate this holiday because try as I might to push them aside, those pesky anniversary feelings -- my friend the Hot Italian calls it a mild case of PTSD -- darkens the edges of my world, and colors the days leading up to it gray.

I'm waiting, you see. I'm waiting for the anvil that's tied above my head with a frayed rope to fall, like it has the past few years. That's why I hate this holiday.

(siliconangle.com)

I realize anniversary feelings are ghosts, the past, never to happen the same way again in my life. But I'm kind of on a roll here. The past three years this weekend has brought one kind of relationship hell or another, and I don't think it's crazy to greet these days with some trepidation. It's become a pattern. Instead of memorializing people who have passed on, Memorial Day weekend has come to represent the death of close relationships -- relationships with people I loved, who were important (to me). For three years in a row, this weekend was the time when the nails were pounded irreversibly into the coffins that held those relationships. (Sure it's a tired metaphor, but it's fitting, don't you think?)

I don't want to write the stories of those weekends or of those relationships, although I have to admit, they are kick-ass stories involving the police and lies upon lies and toxic hypocrisy so fucking deep it's not worth excavating, in that order, through those 3 years. I could write them; they are my stories to tell, but I don't want to relive them any more than the stupid anniversary feelings are making me.

So maybe someday I will tell those stories here, but not tonight. Tonight I can feel that anvil swinging and swinging above my head, and the snap of tiny fibers ...

Yeah, this anniversary stuff is just ghosts. I've been through rough patches with holidays before. I suffered through a string of Christmases that I thought would never end. The first one LtColEx had orders to Korea for a year after just spending 6 months in DC, and he was leaving January 2. The entire holiday felt like the Last Supper. The next year, he was still in Korea, and the kids and I celebrated alone. Even for a military family, it was a rough one.  The next year my dog died a horrible week-long death as his body attacked his red blood cells.  And the year after that I fell face-first into our brick hearth 4 days before Christmas. The damage took over a year and a half to repair -- as much as it could be repaired. I was lucky I didn't end up on the mantle next to the box of standard poodle ashes. It was almost as bad as all those Christmases when I didn't get a pony.

But the year after that, nothing horrible happened. And the year after that and after that ..... I know the pattern can be broken.

People often tell me everything happens for a reason, that there's a lesson and it will keep coming back until I learn it.

I'm not sure I believe that. There are certain lessons I don't need to have pushed in my face over and over. I get it.

If I've learned any lesson from the jagged edges of those broken Memorial Day relationships it's this: No matter how close you think you are to another person -- no matter how much you care for him or love him or want to take care of him -- we are all actors on our own lonely stages. I could have saved myself much heartbreak by remembering I'm just a walk-on in everybody else's play, so it's better to be the diva in my own story.

This year I've been smart. I haven't let anybody get close enough to leave a hole in my life if they disappear this weekend -- at least not at ground zero like the past 3 years.

If I could just become a hermit this weekend, avoid the entire thing, I would. But I'm babysitting both of my kids' dogs, so they'll be coming Sunday and Monday to pick them up. 

And Free to a Good Home is playing at a festival north of the city tomorrow evening. We've been practicing for months, so I have to get out there and face one day of the weekend.

But after the festival tomorrow, I am going to retreat from social media, from social engagements, from anybody I don't want to lose. Fortunately, that's a lot of people. More than enough to balance those Memorial Day losses of the past 3 years. I'll stay home, count my blessings, and hope Memorial Day passes me by this year.

Superstitious? I suppose it is. It's just one weekend though. Maybe I can change the pattern. Cross your fingers for me, OK?

New Year's Eve 2011

I'm not going to drag my feet this year. I promised myself I'm going to be on time, even if I'm the first one there and my hosts are still getting dressed when I arrive. New Year's Eve is a variation of one of those anniversaries I wrote about before. I mean, who doesn't have New Year's Eve memories, right? Not really an anniversary, but a night that marks certain times in our lives like no other.

When I was a kid I remember staying home with my grandma and watching the glittery ball come down in exotic New York City--hell, any city was exotic to me. And the next morning I would get up and there would be confetti strewn from the back door through my parents' bedroom to their bed, where they were sleeping much later than usual. Obviously they'd been someplace exotic too, to come home with confetti in their clothes and hair.

As I got older, I went to parties of my own. Some of them I even remember. Then, when the kids were growing up, it was hard to get a babysitter so if LtColEx was in the country, we usually spent the night at home--no grandmas to watch the kids and no confetti. When the kids were older, we'd all go to a party at our church where we played games, sang karaoke, danced, and toasted the new year in with champagne and good friends.

Then came a few bad years--although it only takes one really. My marriage had already been flushed. I was just watching it go down the toilet. LtColEx informed me he had plans for the evening. He didn't tell me what he was doing, just that it wasn't with me. I wasn't about to ask, but I knew with whom. Elvira wanted to have a party so I told her she could. I couldn't go to the church party by myself and answer a bunch of questions with equivocations. Nobody else knew about the flushing....yet.

So a couple of Elvira's friends came over and they were playing pool or watching movies, eating popcorn and drinking fake champagne in the family room. I was sitting in front of the TV in the living room, not really seeing or hearing whatever was on the screen. I was feeling sorry for myself. Really sorry. I would still feel sorry for myself except for what happened about 10:30 that night.

The phone rang. It was one of my besties G. "Where the hell are you? We've been waiting for you to get to the church. It's boring here." I told her I'd let Elvira have a party and I was staying home. I could hear her relaying to her husband J. "If you're not coming here, then can we come there? We've got the girls with us." Their two daughters are a year older than Elvira and they grew up together.

I could have said no, but I didn't want to spend the rest of the night feeling sorry for myself and trying not to cry in case the girls walked into the room. LtColEx was going to be mad because I wouldn't be able to explain his absence. I told them to come on over. They were already in their car by the time I said yes.

So they got there, and their girls joined the other girls in the family room. I grabbed a bottle of wine for us ..... And waited for the question. Finally it came. "Where's LtColEx?" G asked. "He's out," I said. "Out? Where? What do you mean he's out?" I couldn't look at them. "I don't know where he is. I know who he's with, but I don't know where he went." ......    ........ ......  The girls were laughing in the other room. I was trying not to cry, but having little success. "That's why you didn't come to the church? You're here alone? Why didn't you tell us?" They were shocked. We'd all been friends for years. "I couldn't," I said. "And I can't really talk about it now." I still couldn't  look at them. Tears were hitting the carpet. They got it. They both came and put their arms around me.

"I brought my guitar," J said. "Let's just play some music." I  nodded. We played some music. We drank a bunch of wine and ate popcorn. And talked but not about that. The girls came in and out, laughing and cracking jokes. We all watched the ball come down at midnight with our arms around each other. And then they stayed for a couple hours longer, and we sang along to some music videos with the girls and drank some more wine and played some more music. When they left, I felt almost OK.

I don't believe in either heaven or hell, but if there are angels, they are the people who love us and who show up at just the right time, not even knowing they're needed. They got me through it, and I doubt I've ever been more grateful for two people in my life. It almost makes me believe in a benevolent, interfering deity.

But New Year's Eve has still been difficult--in my head. After all of those years decades of marriage, it's still .... I don't know. Awkward when the ball goes down and all the couples turn to each other and kiss and hug. Even though I have several parties to choose from this year, and lots of people who want to spend the evening with me now, I'll have trouble getting out the door. Again. I know it's silly. Silly and even ungrateful. And it's not that I want to be married. Emphatic no to that. It's just one of those nights when it's hard to be alone, and that mostly has to do with history, so I don't give in, but I struggle. Last year I didn't show up until almost 10:00, and people were getting concerned, which was then embarrassing. One guest shouted out, "Reticula's here. Now the party can start!" I felt like a dick. (And she probably said that to everybody.) I had a great time for the hours I was there. It still felt awkward at midnight, but I'm a good actor. It didn't show.

But I'm feeling it again this year--the reluctance. It's one of those things I don't want to give in to though. Really don't. I want to go to the parties I'm going to--hell, I wish I could hit all of them--and I always have fun once I get there. So I'll go heat up my curling iron and get dressed up and go out. And midnight will be awkward, but many moments are awkward. It won't be the most awkward moment of this week, that's for sure!

What did you do for New Year's Eve? Do you have a tradition? Has your tradition changed over the years?

Anniversaries

Do you ever have one of those weeks when you feel kind of .... off, for no particular reason? Maybe you feel a little anxious or eager or sad but you don't know why? They're like ghost feelings; they don't seem to go with what's going on in your life. I've been having a week like that. Not in a big way .... just fleeting wisps of feelings, a dream, fragments of conversations remembered or the memory of a hug. Misplaced nostalgia. An emotional phantom limb.

It's been there since Thanksgiving and getting stronger, although not intrusive. And then the other night I was engaged in one of those late-night, wine-soaked conversations with a good friend, and I found myself talking about .... well, what doesn't matter, but I thought, "Why am I talking about this now? I don't want to whack on this dead horse any more." So I drank another glass of wine and changed the subject. And then it struck me: an anniversary was coming up on December 1, today. Bleh.

I remember the first time I became aware of intrusive anniversary feelings. I was 24, my dad was 46, and he dropped dead of a heart attack one day at work. It was sudden; I didn't know he'd been sick and drinking lots of Alka Seltzer, his cure for everything. Nobody had mentioned he wasn't feeling well.

But I'd had a dream three weeks before. He died in the dream. It was awful, and I didn't know how I was going to bear it. I woke fully believing he was going to die. I wanted to call him and tell him to be careful. LtColEx talked me out of it. He said there was nothing wrong with my dad, and he'd just think I was crazy if I called him about a dream. He was right. So I didn't call, even though the dream still haunted me. My little dreams had come true before, but that didn't mean this one would. There was no reason to think Dad was going to die. It was ridiculous.

In fact, when a good friend of my parents called me at 1:00 pm that day, the conversation went like this.

Me: Hello.

Lila: Reticula, it's Lila.

Me: Hi, Lila. This is a surprise. What's going on?

Lila: I need to give you some bad news. It's your dad. He's had a heart attack.

Me: Oh, no! How is he? Is he at the hospital?

Lila: No, he .... honey, he didn't make it. He's gone.

Me: Oh, I get it. Not a nice joke. Put him on the phone. (My dad liked to play pranks, and it was lunchtime in Iowa. Surely the dream had simply foretold a joke.)

Lila: I can't. He's....he's really gone. It's not a joke.

Me: (getting angry) Tell Dad this isn't funny any more. I want to talk to him now.

Lila: You can't. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. You need to make arrangements to get home as soon as you can, and then you need to call your mom later. She needs you.

Me: Lila, I'm really not laughing. Tell Dad I want to talk to him. Now.

Lila: Is LtColEx there with you? Maybe I should talk to him.

Me: You're serious! Dad's really dead? He's dead?

Lila: Yes, honey. I'm sorry.

Me: OK, I'll call Mom in a little while. Thank you.

He was laying carpet with his best friend from high school when he died, which was just how he would have wanted to go, but not yet. God, not yet. He still had two kids at home. I was the oldest of five. It was the most traumatic event I'd experienced, and still is one of them. I grew up that late winter, a lot and fast. It was February 28.

The next year, my grandma died, the tiny woman in this photo. I was pregnant with Drake, and I flew home for her funeral. She had cancer, but she wouldn't let me come home while she was in the hospital. She said to wait until she got better and was back home. We buried her on February 28. My grandfather had died years before, not long before I was born. He died on February 28.

The next year as February dragged underway, I noticed I was feeling really fucking crazy. That's the only way to describe it. I was anxious, weepy, even scared. I had no reason to be. I couldn't seem to shake it, and it was getting worse as the month progressed. Finally, in the course of talking with my mom, my sister, and my brother, I realized we were all feeling that way. We were all going crazy. And then I understood what was happening: we were waiting for one of us to die.

It seems pretty obvious now, but I was young, and I didn't remember experiencing something like that before. Knowing what it was helped intellectually, but emotionally I was still braced for the call. Every time LtColEx left on a flight, I fretted--and that wasn't normal. I hated to hear the phone ring, and I jumped out of my skin if somebody came to the door; I was sure it would be two Air Force officers in their class A's, coming to give me bad news. Nothing bad happened.

The next year the craziness was there again, but not as intense. And the year after. Eventually February was only miserable because it's a miserable month, not because I was waiting for someone to die.

I've felt the phantom dread before on the anniversary of a bad accident and another time of extreme trauma--those were to be expected. But I've also felt them over much smaller events. I don't feel crazy this week, so I can only assume there are degrees of anniversary feelings. In the "literature," they're linked to post-traumatic stress disorder, but I'm not talking about PTSD now. I'm just talking about feeling a little bit out of balance, about a place or a person from the past popping up unexpectedly in my mind or in a conversation, about feeling nostalgia and regret at the mention of a certain movie or hearing a certain song or .... well, if you've ever experienced it, you understand.

I'm not sure why I've never noticed anniversary feelings about a happy event. Maybe I do, but those feelings aren't disturbing so I just accept them like a happy little gift from the Karma Fairy. Or maybe they're more obvious, like excitement about Christmas or the Crayola-scented feeling of dread and anticipation late in August when school always started starts. Those are so obvious, I'm not sure they count. The anniversary feelings, the phantom emotions, I'm talking about usually creep in over something that was traumatic or left unresolved.

Eh. I'm glad life is busy and I really don't have time to dwell. After today I expect the clock will chime the next hour, and the phantom will fade away quickly, dragging his chains behind him. I wish I weren't so sensitive to these time markers, especially this time. This should not warrant even one anniversary feeling.

I must have a an especially vivid calendar in my subconscious, because I wouldn't have noticed this one if not for how I've been feeling .... and the dream. And talking too much over one-too-many glasses of wine. If things had been different in this particular story, I probably wouldn't even have called it an anniversary. It would have been silly.

Tell me I'm not the only one this happens to. Do you ever notice you're feeling out of whack with your life? Can you trace it to an anniversary--a beginning or an ending, a special event? Does it help to know this is a phantom in your heart, not something that's happening now? Or do you indulge in a little grief for what might have been? Tell me some anniversary stories to take my mind off mine, and I'll tell you a different story tomorrow.