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 a song: Day 12

I've been writing a lot from the NaBloPoMo prompts this month, which is unusual for me, but I'm not getting much time for contemplation so I'm using the crutch.

Today's prompt is "Share a story about a song or a piece of music that deeply affected you." That's an easy one because today found me driving through the city with tears running down my face because of a song Coraline's class is singing at her school's annual holiday feast for their families.

She was so excited when she crawled in the van because they'd been practicing singing and signing "Let There Be Peace on Earth" for the dinner. It's a song I heard my mother sing many times. One of her favorites. I think she may have sung it as a solo at church one time. She had a lovely voice, both from natural talent and years of voice training. I loved to hear her sing and play the piano, which she also did well. She told me when I was a baby the only thing that would stop me from crying was when she played the piano. I digress .....

Coraline started singing the song, and I joined in. She told me how they had changed the lyrics in the first verse from "God as our father" to "earth as our mother." We agreed that was better. And "let me walk with my brother" to "let me walk with my family." So we sang the first verse together, but as we moved on into the second verse, I couldn't hold my shit together and I started to cry. I might as well admit, I'm crying a little now as I write this.

Of course my voice broke and I had to stop singing. Coraline said from her seat in the back, "Mamá, what's wrong? Why are you crying?"

You'd think she'd be used to it by now. It's about the 20th time something has triggered my grief in the van in the past couple of months and I've found myself driving down the road with tears running down my face. "It's just grief," I told her. "I'm OK. That song was one of Grandma's favorites, and we sang it at her funeral. It just made me miss her."

"I didn't remember singing that song at the funeral," she said.

"Well we did," I told her. "Do you want me to tell you a funny story about your uncle Roger and me singing that song for Grandma before she died?"

"Yes!" she said. My girl is always down for a story. I hope you are too.

The day after I flew to Iowa we took Mom off the respirator and other life support. It was such a relief to get that awful tube out of her throat and the mask and tape off her face. We weren't sure how much  she was aware of. She had squeezed my hand the night before when I asked her to let me know if she knew I was there. The next day she was opening her eyes and seemed to be looking at us when we talked to her, but she didn't have any other conscious movement. No more hand squeezing. Certainly no talking. We didn't know how long she would last.

While we waited for a social worker to set up hospice services in her home town and arrange for her to be transported the 60 miles home -- a wait that took hours -- my little brother Roger and I decided we would sing to her, songs we knew she loved: "How Great Thou Art," "Bridge Over Troubled Waters," "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," "Amazing Grace," and "Let There Be Peace on Earth."

Roger has a beautiful tenor voice, and I'm not half-bad myself on a good day. We were kind of belting out the songs, having fun with them. Mom probably would have been embarrassed, but we were in strange territory. We just wanted to sing to our mom. And she was in no position to reprimand us. Anyway, we were pretty sure we sounded fabulous.

Roger led us into "Let There Be Peace on Earth," and as we moved into the second verse I stopped us and said, "This key is too high. It's going to sound like shit."

"Just keep singing," Mr. Bossypants said. "You're a soprano. Nothing's too high for you." I should have been flattered by his confidence, but mine was telling me this wouldn't end well.

Nevertheless, I kept singing with him in the too-high key to our captive mother who had no choice but to listen. We started the climb toward the high note .... "to take each moment and live each moment ..." and I knew a painful moment was coming up.

Maybe she can't really hear us, I thought. They keep telling us the hearing is the last to go, but maybe she's not even listening. I sure as hell hope she's not because here it comes ....

We hit the high note and I mean we hit that fucker. I sounded like a cat getting a bath. There was nothing peaceful about that note. A woman on her deathbed should not have had to listen to that note.

As I looked at my paralyzed, dying mother I saw a look on her face I'd seen more times than I can count. A wincing, disgusted, shut-the-fuck-up-now look that I never thought I'd see again and that I never did see again. It only lasted a few seconds, but it was there.

When we finished torturing that song my niece Care Bear said, "Did you guys see Grandma's face when you hit that high note? She didn't like that note one bit." She was laughing so hard she probably peed herself a little bit.

"Yes, I saw it, Care Bear," I said. "Thank you for pointing that out." She laughed even harder.

"Why did you start it so high?" I asked Roger. "That was mean. You're such an asshole sometimes."

"It wasn't that high," he said. "Besides, that's the key it's always sung in."

"What? You can't know that. You don't have perfect pitch. You just chose a key and that was it."

"No, I didn't. That's the right key."

"That's ridiculous. There is no right key. There's the key that won't make the singer sound like a cat in heat. You pulled that key out of your ass and now you're trying to defend yourself. Tell him, Mom!"

Mom did not offer up an opinion, but she would have agreed with me. I'm just sorry she had to hear that argument go on for another 15 minutes.

Ten days later my brother and I would be standing at our mom's funeral belting that song out again -- this time in a lower key. We also sang "How Great Thou Art," with its soaring high notes. Roger even threw in some harmony. He's a bigger show off than I am. I'm going to speak for both of us and say we sounded pretty good for people who had tears in their throats.

Such things are a mystery to me, but I like to believe my mom heard us singing her favorite songs in remembrance, and maybe this time she smiled.

I'm going to try not to cry this Thursday when the kids in Coraline's class sing and sign their song, but I'm not making any promises. Like I told Coraline today, this is what grief looks like. It comes out of us as tears and it's OK. We grieve because we love. We grieve because we've lost someone precious. And sometimes, even if we don't do it perfectly, we sing to remember.

Happy birthday, Mom. Day 9

Today is my mom's birthday. Would have been my mom's birthday. Her 81st. Happy Birthday, Mom. We threw her a bangin' 80th birthday party last year, for which I'm grateful, but this year .... it's been a tough day in that regard.

I was talking with a friend who also lost her mom recently, just a few weeks ago, about how hard it is to find time to grieve. About how we have to go on as if we didn't just pass one of the biggest, most painful, milestones of our lives. It's like standing on a speeding escalator watching those days and weeks that surrounded my mom's death recede behind me way before I'm ready to let go. Long before I've had a chance to sit quietly for long spells and come to terms with the loss. I guess that's why we call it loss though. Life moves on at its own pace.

Which got me to thinking about a couple of special times that did help me through it. The times when I felt some space open up around me where I found peace and felt cared for and comforted.

Of course I spent a lot of time with family and friends over the 3 weeks I was in Iowa, and we spent a lot of time reminiscing and laughing and crying.  The viewing the day before the funeral was seven hours long. I saw people I hadn't seen since I left home when I was 17. And those people took care of us, my sisters and brother and me. They brought food -- mostly beef and cookie bars. I had forgotten how people do death in a small town. Food is a remarkable gift to give a grieving family. I was so grateful it was almost painful to be cared for in such a way while I was there staying in my mom's house. I miss that in my life. I digress though.

The Saturday afternoon between Mom's death and her funeral my cousin, who was one of my best friends when we were growing up, drove over from Madison County to hang out with us. We talked about how Mom loved to color in adult coloring books with her colored pencils, and how precise her coloring was in spite of the stroke she suffered 18 years ago that greatly reduced her small motor skills in her right hand. My cousin said she loved to color too, and I told about the coloring party I'd had one evening for 11 women.

Pretty soon we were sitting at Mom's kitchen table coloring in her coloring books with her pencils. laughing and talking. And it was like a space opened up in time where we could step away from the world and just sit together in our grief, coloring like we did when we were kids. My cousin's dad, my mom's middle brother, had also passed away not that long before and I hadn't been able to come home for his funeral, so we were double grieving. That afternoon was a bubble that brings me comfort even today. It was healing.

The next day my cousin, who is a gorgeous quilter, brought 7 quilts so we could choose one to bury with Mom. After we chose, she gave each of us one of our own -- five in all. Mine is shown in the photo above. Her generosity of both the quilt and her time made such precious memories during a time of sadness and loss.

When I got back home I felt like I was trying to keep up on a runaway treadmill. Getting back to work, getting Coraline back to school, picking up the pieces I'd dropped when I had to leave so suddenly. Two weeks is a long time to leave a life untended. I felt like I'd been through so much, and then I had to just go back to normal as if ... as if normal existed.

I'd only been home a couple of days when a friend I'll call Piano Man commented on my Facebook that we should get together and play some music. We're always saying that, but we never do. Seven or eight years ago we played a show together, but he's way out of my league and plays professionally. This time though he persisted. 

How about Wednesday? Does that work for you?  he wrote. It did. I told him to come over around 8:00 and I'd have Coraline in bed. 

When he got here, we didn't get right down to the music. We sat on the couch and the cats came over to investigate and crawl around on him. Piano Man is a cat guy. He was digging it. We talked, and he asked me about my time in Iowa, what had happened.

I told him some of the story, and then I said, "I'm sorry. I don't mean to go on about this. You didn't come here to listen to me talk about my stuff. We should play some music."

"No," he said. "You're wrong. I did come here to hear this story. I want to hear it. Tell me what happened. It's important."

I still get teary remembering those words. Listening is a gift, but asking for the story, especially a story of a mother's death and a daughter's grief .... not many people ask for that.

So I told him what it was like to take my mom off the ventilator and to wait for her body to shut down over those days. And what her death was like as I sat beside her bed with her. And how she gave me a sign when I told her I loved her some time after she took her last breath. He listened to all of it as he calmly petted one of the cats.

And then we played music for almost three hours, and during that time I just focused on the music. Nothing else. Sure we talked and laughed. And we don't have a common book of music, so mostly we ran through some of the songs I like to play by myself. He's a talented, skilled jazz piano player and I'm mediocre at best, but it brought me home, grounded me. He even sang some harmony while I sang melody, which never happens.

It was exactly what I needed. Like maybe the Universe said, "She's had enough for a minute. Let's give her a break." And for a few hours, I was in a bubble of music and harmony and the kindness of a friend asking to hear my story.

Words are my life, and yet I don't have sufficient words for how powerful those bubbles of time were -- the music and the coloring. The telling and the patient listening. And these are not the only times. Just the ones I've chosen to write about tonight.

The lesson is, I think, that we can't know how such simple acts can bring great comfort and healing to someone who is sad and grieving, but we should be open to the opportunity to step into that bubble where time stops and the coloring or the music or the eating or the sharing of memories is all that matters. In the end, these connections are what I call God, the Divine, the Mystery. Or it's just what makes us feel better. Either way.

Happy Birthday, Mom. I love you.

The last time: Day 2

I joined a support group on Facebook for bloggers who are doing NaBloPoMo, and today was my day to suggest a prompt to the group. I chose this one: Write about a last time that you didn't know would be the last. I've been thinking a lot about last times over the past couple of months.

The last time I talked to my mom on the phone she had called to tell me my cousin, two years older than me, had died. We didn't talk long. I was fixing dinner and she was watching one of her shows, but we promised we'd talk longer soon.

The last time I saw her before her final stroke was when I was home for her birthday party, which I wrote about yesterday. I'm grateful for that. It was a practically perfect trip, but if I'd known it was the last time .... I can't really think of anything I'd have done different.

Mostly over the past couple of months I've thought about the last times I am aware of. Cleaning out Mom's house and knowing it was not only the last time I'd sit at her kitchen table, but possibly the last time I'd go home. Funny how I couldn't wait to leave that little town in SW Iowa when I was 17, but it never stopped being home to me. 

And so overlying the grief of my mom's death has been this second shadow of grief over the things I'll probably never do again in my hometown.

I'll never scoop the loop uptown. Back when gas was a quarter we spent hours riding around, and many of those hours were spent circling that square with the county courthouse in the center. I'm told the kids are no longer allowed to scoop the loop. The police make them turn off if they go around too often. I call bullshit, but I don't live there. And the square that used to be so busy isn't any more anyway. The grocery store and dime stores are gone. A chain grocery store and cheap discount store stand where the high school used to be, a few blocks from the square. And there's even a Dollar Store on the edge of town. I tell myself scooping the loop was already a memory that couldn't really be relived anyway.

There are other things I'll never do again. Take Coraline to the park to play on the horse swings I played on when I was a little girl. Drive by the house I grew up in, which looks about a third the size it used to. Visit my parents' and grandparents' graves. Not that I did that much anyway. They live in my heart, not in the cemetery. I'll never go back to the Methodist church that formed my liberal beliefs. Never pick up the Adair County Free Press and read names of people I knew decades ago. It was bought out by a corporate publisher who fired all the local reporters and doesn't print local news anyway. 

I'll never go out drinking again with my friends from high school who still live in the area. Not that we have over the decades anyway. Most of my trips home were brief and spent with family. Still, I wish we'd been able to go out one more time and get crazy at the bars. We keep in touch on Facebook. I guess that will have to be enough.

I'll never wonder again if I'll ever run into that old boyfriend. You know. That one. The one who wasn't really a very good boyfriend, but I loved him and for a while I believed him when he said we'd get married after he graduated from college. I hear some news about him from time to time, but I haven't talked to him since I told him I was getting married ... to someone else. I think he's had a good life though, and probably never thinks about me anyway. Still, a girl can't help wondering what it would be like ....

I'll never stop by the Tiger's Den, which was called Dunk's the three years I worked there in high school, for an ice cream cone. I learned a strong work ethic there, and I can still cook a mean burger and polish the hell out of some stainless steel.

I'll never drive out to the Nodaway Lake and park at the top of Reefer Hill and .... nevermind. I don't do that any more. Or lie on the hood of a car wondering how many stars are shining over me. I can't see stars here in the city, or not many. I can read a newspaper in my backyard from all the ambient light around me here. I miss the dark and the stars and the quiet of the water at that little lake where my grandfather helped dam the river when he was a young man.

All these years I've felt tethered to that small town, that one square mile, even though I didn't go back that often and I never stayed that long and a lot has changed there over the years. But now I feel like something has been severed. It's still home, but it's not. When I drove through town and headed toward I-80 on highway 92 just two and a half weeks ago, it may have been the last time I will ever drive past the hospital on the edge of town where I was born. So many lasts.

I'm not sure there's much difference between knowing it could be the last time and not knowing. It's just life, and as the Buddha tells us, we can't hold on. There are times in our lives when the impermanence of every single fucking thing hits us harder than usual though, and that's where I'm at. I know time will soften the edges of this grief, but for now, I carry it inside me and give it the space it will take whether I want it or not.

Do you have any last times to share? Did you know it would be the last?