To be back in a hospital so soon after Mom’s passing brings mixed feelings. I’m here w/ my daughter for her to receive her infusion of Remicade to treat her Crohn’s Disease—medicine I know she needs to keep her intestinal cramping and frequent trips to the bathroom at bay. Even after five years, it tears at my heart when the IV goes in. I still get that tightening in my pelvis to see her in pain. Tomorrow will be two weeks since I was in another hospital room watching a machine force air into my mother’s lungs. When she communicated to us that she wanted the breathing tube out, she and we knew that the pneumonia wouldn’t allow her to breathe on her own for very long. But that breathing tube gave me time to get to her, time to say the words that I had been denying weren’t necessary yet.
I’ve decided to start this blog as a way to mourn Mom’s passing, celebrate her life, and hopefully progress to a point where I can think and talk about her w/o breaking down. My plan is to write in this blog every morning for this year of mourning. I chose a year b/c at some point in time, in some culture, I read that family members were in mourning for a year. Maybe that memory comes from watching Gone With the Wind where Scarlet shocks everyone by attending a ball in her black gown and proclaims that she thinks it’s a stupid tradition to have to wear black for a year. I googled mourning rituals last night and discovered that across many cultures and religions, much of the traditions surrounding funeral rites are similar. Jew, Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians all express the importance of a visitation or viewing as a way to help the family mourn. I thought of the long line of people who came to the funeral home to pay their respects to my mom and to extend their sympathies to us. For over three hours I stood by my father to cry and remember, and even at times to laugh. Mom’s visitation was on Sunday, 13 December 2009 from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. That morning I went to church w/ my father. They announced that Christmas carolers would be meeting at the church that night. I asked a family friend after church to please ask the carolers to stop at the funeral home. They came and sang two songs: Away in a Manger b/c it was a song that Mom had been teaching her preschool Sunday School kids for over 50 years; and Silent Night b/c Mom was now “sleep(ing) in heavenly peace.” Again the mixture of feelings. Happiness that the carolers were honoring Mom and her faith. Sadness that she would no longer teach and sing those songs to fresh-faced three-year-olds. The visitation taught me that it’s an important part of the grieving process to allow friends and family to express their love and sorrow. The carolers made me cry, but when they were finished I led the applause and hugged the woman who organized it.
I spent the week following the funeral with my dad. My oldest brother stayed for most of it as, each morning, we ran errands. One morning taking care of banking business and returning the nebulizer to the pharmacy. Another morning paying the funeral home bill and buying a few groceries. Another morning returning some unused shots to the cancer center. The afternoons were spent making out thank-you’s for the memorials, flowers, and food. It is true that staying busy and distracted helps, but ultimately these are all just distractions. The evenings are the worst for my dad. He likes to sit on the four-season porch he and Mom built years ago and when it’s dark, he can’t see the people and the birds. And all he’s left w/ is a darkened sadness. He keeps the funeral folder, a new term w/ which I’ve become very familiar, next to the loveseat couch they shared. He picks it up to glance at mom numerous times throughout the day, but at night he misses her the most.
The day after Mom passed away (I still can’t get used to saying or writing that), I made phone calls, a lot of phone calls: to relatives, friends, and ministers. The first call was the hardest, but w/ each call I made it a little longer before the emotion caught in my voice. And talking helps. Understand that this goes against my German and English upbringing to talk and cry openly. The newly ordained minister at Mom and Dad’s church said he’d never before witnessed such comfort w/ sharing a public grief. I was surprised and pleased that finally we were sharing our feelings. He had recently lost a brother and his father but hadn’t been able to attend their funerals. I told him that maybe witnessing our grieving would help him grieve as well. I hope it does.
A week after the visitation on Sunday, 20 December 2009, Dad and I went to the Sunday School Christmas program, a program that for over 50 years, Mom had guided the three- and four-year-olds through saying their pieces and directed them through their Christmas songs. This cherub choir in the last several years has come to be known as “Lucy’s Kids.” Sitting in the back of the church that night, I felt her there watching. Nearly every child in that program had at one time been one of “Lucy’s Kids,” which is why the program directors chose to honor my mom on that first program in over 50 years when she was absent. During the offertory, the entire congregation sang, This Little Light of Mine, and in the program they wrote, “A tribute to Lucy. May her light continue to shine in each of us.” Just the week before Mom had requested this song be played as her casket left the church. She knew. And knowing that she knew made me cry that much more, but now we were in the back of the church instead of the front few pews where we publicly mourned at her funeral. Now in the back of the church, our grief was still public but slightly more hidden. Our grief was moving from the public to the private realm where each of us has to come to personal terms w/ our loss and our sorrow. Others can support us but ultimately we have to do this alone. I guess it’s rather ironic then that I’m making my private grief again more public w/ this blog, but nobody will probably read this anyway.
A nurse just handed me my daughter’s CBC results, which reminds me of my one of my mom’s lab results from a couple of months ago that I still have in my purse. Results before the leukemia caused her white blood cell count to soar to over eighty thousand. Results that showed she was still going to be w/ us for awhile. I’ve begun to measure time w/ words, “Who knew in three months she’d be gone.” She knew. Even at Thanksgiving, she knew. Normally my husband and our two daughters spend Thanksgiving Day w/ his side of the family and travel to my parents’ for the weekend after. This year, we decided to be w/ Mom and Dad. When we arrived Wednesday night, she kept asking, “But why are you here?” Then later that night she said, “Oh, I know. This will probably be my last Thanksgiving.” Having a terminal illness holds much physical and emotional pain, but at least it affords everyone the opportunity to treasure the time that remains. Time to re-tell all those family stories; to look through all the old, broken bits of jewelry that hold such warmth that they were never discarded; to look through photo albums. We’ve had a tradition that whenever we leave, we have to “beep, beep around the corner,” which means that as we turn the corner, we have to honk the car horn. As we left at Thanksgiving, it was too cold and she was too tired to go outside so she stood at the window, waving. In that moment, I knew that it would be the last time we would “beep, beep around the corner” for her. Mom knew that her time on this earth was limited, and she told me on numerous occasions that she wasn’t afraid. The night she passed, she was ready. For me it’s going to take longer.
Here’s where this blog comes in. Even while writing all this, the tears come, which leads to the tissues, which hopefully leads to healing. No, I don’t expect it to be that simple or that sudden. I have never mourned the loss of someone close to me so I don’t really know what to expect. I’ve lost grandparents, uncles, aunts, and a niece who only lived a few brief hours. I’ve attended funerals of a student, a student’s child, and co-workers, but never before have I felt the grief so closely. I’m hoping writing about what each day of mourning brings will help me accept, remember, and live.
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