She would have been 93...

Mom & me on her last Mother's Day, 2012

I wish I could tell you this gets easier, but I can't.

I'm in the beautiful Betkshires and the sun is shining and my children are raucously splashing in the pool, but I'm in the bedroom quietly crying.

Today would have been my mother's 93rd birthday.

I know I was lucky she made it to 90. But that doesn't matter. On her hundred and twentieth birthday, should I live so long, I will still miss her, mourn my loss.

The world is a poorer place without my sweet, saucy, loving, funny, brilliant mother in it.

Even though she was barely there when she left. Even though she was a wafting wisp of her former self, I felt the earth sigh and plunge a few degrees colder as I watched her animating spirit vacate the premises, that wan day, two and a half years ago.

I don't have time for this sodden mantle of debilitating grief. The boys' B'nei Mitzvah is a little over a month away, and I am frantically busy between now and then. Two school years starting, Dan traveling for work nearly non-stop this fall; and we're down to one viable, often already booked sitter.

And yes, it's a joyous occasion we're preparing for. And yet the sadness keeps leaching in. There will be no grandparents present to dance the hora at their Bar Mitzvah party. No great aunts nor uncles neither.

I knew it was nigh unto impossible for my mother to dance at their weddings, and witnessing college or even high school graduations unlikely. But for a while there, we had held out hope for her presence  at their Bar Mitzvahs.

I would have asked the universe for three more years with her, if I could have. But I know what the answer would have been. Our time is our time. No more, no less.

And for the rest of my time, I will miss her for at least a little bit of every day; and a whole lot more on days like this, her birthday, when she would have been 93 years young.

If only...

The day after Mother's Day

Me and Mom on Mother's Day, 2012, her last

I couldn't write on Mothers Day, the feelings too raw, the wounds still unclosed. Yes, even here, more than a year out and counting. So I gave myself the day to muddle through.

I shined at breakfast - lox and bagels produced by my offspring and husband - but then faded midday. In spite of abundant sunshine beaming in through our windows, the winter's accumulation of grime rendering them near opaque white in the brilliance, I took to my bed in the early afternoon.

"Mom gets to nap on Mothers Day!" I declared, making it sound fun. But really it was a retreat from the empty space my mother should have occupied.

Ethan was mad that I had slept though our potential stroll through the park. Instead we had a rushed half jog along Riverside to Jake's playing field, peeling off as we got there, me to accompany Jake to his weekly baseball game, Dan joining Ethan on the basketball courts nearby.

I love my son dearly, but must admit, watching special needs sports is simultaneously like watching paint dry and having your heart ripped open repeatedly. The pace is glacial, the triumphs beautiful and painful. I sat on my blanket in the sun and baked myself into a semblance of peace.

Afterwards, waiting outside the boat basin cafe for our table to come up and Ethan and Dan to appear (hopefully somewhat concurrently, and in the right order) Jacob befriended a dog named Sophie and talked to me about classical music. He picked up a stick and wanted to conduct violins "like Squidward" so I lazily googled "violin concerto" planning to let YouTube entertain my boy. I had forgotten the landmine there.

My mother loved music. My childhood home had been filled with it, from classical to folk to jazz and then rock as her musical taste evolved through the 60s and 70s.

My mother's amethyst and glass beads moved with a sweet heaviness around my neck as I swayed to the tinny Tchaikovsky pouring out of my iPhone. My mother also loved sunshine and the water, flowering trees and children. I was surrounded by the things she loved, as I often am, she who took such joyous bites of out the scrumptious world.

The rest of my boys arrived with perfect timing and we were seated at an outer table overlooking the sunset river, just as I had desired. Ethan was a bit grumpy surveying the menu, declaring nothing to be quite to his liking and questioning why we had to eat there.

"Because I love it here. It makes me happy to eat outdoors and by the water, and it's Mother's Day so I get to choose." I was trying not to whine. I really didn't want a scene.

For once he took my answer without a fight and resigned himself to a dinner of calamari and fries, supplemented with bites of everyone else's dishes.

I then did something I rarely do, I ordered a "Mommy drink" something silly and frozen and alcoholic, because dammit it was Mother's Day. It came with three maraschino cherries on top which Ethan devoured with abandon, his first time encountering such beasts. 

"Is this what they mean when they say 'and a cherry on top?'" he asked. Yup.

We walked back home through the park as the twilight thickened, the air heavy with the promise of a soon-coming summer. Up ahead the the George Washington Bridge's majestic sway cut through the haze, spanned over to the other shore.

"Look, Grandma's favorite bridge"  I pointed out. But I didn't have to. They knew.

They all knew.

This day

Mom, September 2012

I don't want the dawn to come, this day to begin.

I've been dreading it for a long time now: January 17th; the day, last year, that my mother died.

After today, it won't be "this year" that my mother died, but "last year" and I will be expected to be moving on, further from her.

And yet I find the more time has passed I seem to be tumbling further into her instead.  That final year of her life, I was so consumed with taking care of her, the frail, tentative, greatly diminished shadow my mother had become blotted out the vibrant, full-fleshed woman I had known and loved for years.

And now she has come back to me, memory after memory cascading though my dreams and waking thoughts. Though mixed and tumbled in, especially now, is the pain of those final days.

I would never, in a million years, have not been present for my mother's final moments, have let her die alone. And yet I can also say that I will never be the same, and not in a good way, for what I witnessed.

When her eyes flew open, unseeing except for her death come upon her; when she huffed and puffed and fought against the tide of her bursting, broken heart; this was seared into my brain. Her terror was terrifying, and will be with me always.  She did not go peaceful into that black night.

And then she was gone. And yet her body kept breathing. For a good five minutes still. As it wound down, I sat beside the waxy husk that had been my mother.  She had so clearly vacated the premises, but still I held her hand.  A body with the spirit fled is such a strange ghoulish thing, and yet there was also an odd comfort in sitting there.

I said goodbye to the body that had been my mother, watched it draw its last breath.

A year ago, today.

My mother is at peace.

Me, not so much so.

It's going to be a busy day today, Jake with no school, Ethan a mere half-day. There will be no time to mourn, to remember. I am a mother, my children need me. My eyes must search forward, not back.

And yes, tonight I will light a candle for my mother, let it burn through the night, encased safe in its shroud of glass; watch the flickering flame and its reflection in my heart, where her ember glows, always.

Goodnight, mom.

I love you.

One year ago, today

Mom, January 3, 2013

One year ago, today, I got a phone call.

A late night phone call.

One more in a long series of late night calls that began nine years ago, when my elderly parents moved back to New York City and into my care.

But this one was to be the last.

You never know it's the last.

Until it is.

4 am, I remember this one was.

Mom had fallen. Again.

I rushed to her side in the Long Island hospital her nursing home had sent her to; a cold, bleary ride in the pre-dawn quiet.

Another broken hip. A matched set. (I wrote a post about it.)

But this time my mother was older, frailer than the last time. This time my mother had already been through the ringer, and unbeknownst to anyone yet - but soon to be quite evident - she was also becoming septic from an undiagnosed infection.

A year ago today, my mother went into the hospital, and began the final, short sojourn of her life. She began dying.

I was by her side nearly the whole time.

I was with her when she passed, five days later, at 3:15 in the afternoon of January 17th.

I have been dreading the return of these dates, these days. January 12th through 17th.

They were excruciating to go through last year, every moment both drawing out and swiftly fleeting, galloping towards that end.

And when they are done, the wheel will turn; from first year to second year without my mother. It will be a different thing. And yet also more of the same.

I know everyone's parents die, eventually; that this is the natural order of things.

I know that ninety was a good run.

I know I was lucky to have had such a loving mother.

I know I was lucky to have had her for so long.


I miss her every day.

One toe in

I dare not say "I'm back."

I don't even know where I've been. Writing in my head only again, for months, it's now so full of words I feared the explosion would take out a city block.

I feel fake and false sharing the days' small trials and triumphs, the trivia that pile up to assemble my life right now -- meals and homework and mountains of laundry and paperwork, attending to my children's mental and physical health -- when throughout flows this raging undercurrent of grief, still; ten months in.

Ten months.

More than enough time to gestate. And yet what do I have to show for it? This egg-like orb of nothingness that is the palpable absence of my mother, lodged under my chest; barely dissipated, still.

But I feel I cannot yet either wear my mourning on my writer's sleeve. Even though it suffuses everything subtly, the constant filter on my lens, as a topic it is gray wisps, ghostly vague, deadly dull.

I am well aware that to go on and on about missing my mother now will likely incite impassioned and compassionate admonitions to "look forward" and "move on" which will make me want to shank my well-meaning readers.  Never a good place to be.

And Thanksgiving coming up.

Last year with my mother and uncle. This year without.

I almost can't look at the photos, the longing they engender so great, I fear the molecules of the screens upon which the images burn will burst apart from my desire to hold those people again against my actual body and not just in my metaphoric heart.

Mom and Uncle Walter, Thanksgiving 2012

So here I am.

Once again with all these little stories I want to tell, yet they remain untold.

I know it's okay to smile and laugh in the middle of grief, and I do, every day. I know that my mother, of all people in the world, would want me to enjoy each and every moment with my children with all my soul. And I do. Every day.

I hope the floodgates open soon (yet can make no promises).

Until then, here, now, is my one toe back in the water.

It feels good.

Even if it is just a pool of tears.

Fragments

Door, Upper West Side

I have a new friend and I'm not telling her name but she is delightful and I am happy. This is a detail from her door. 

<*> <*> <*>

My walk through the city tonight feels like a stroll through a movie set. Here, a cafe where every single person seated at the outdoor tables is wearing a blue shirt, hues ranging from sky to azure to midnight. There, a blonde family of five - impossibly attractive and dressed to the nines for a festive occasion - pose for a photo as a man who can best be described as an African-American Gabby Hayes crosses the frame, fur lumberjack hat squashed down onto his head, pushing his squeaky wheeled shopping cart filled with dingy stuffed animals and dented soda cans.

Yes, this is my city. We all come out of central casting.

<*> <*> <*> 

Sunday, for the first time in ages, I stopped at Zabar's to pick up some lox, and had forgotten the artistry of the slicers there. While the stuff we usually get from our local bagel place is serviceable, this was a revelation: fresh, delicious and so thin you could nearly, as the saying goes, read the newspaper through it.

While I was watching the counter man slice, before I could stop it, the thought popped into my head that I should bring Walter some Zabar's lox next time I go see him, as it always delighted him so when I would arrive bearing real New York City appetizing. And then the sadness rushed in, a now constant tide.

<*> <*> <*>

Jacob has now woken up at 5:30 AM for more than a week.

This usually means that he is about to undergo a big leap in growth and understanding, his brain too excited to slumber past dawn.

It could however, just be an attempt to get uninterrupted screen time on his own terms, no brother to share and negotiate with.

Only time will tell.

<*> <*> <*>

Today I sat in the "big yard" with Ethan after school, eating our ice creams in a shady spot and watching the kids swirl around us, playing their hearts out. We are both still easily tired, the legacy of the stomach bug that swept through our household earlier this week, taking us down like bowling pins, Ethan the first to go on Monday afternoon.

So instead of jumping up to join the fracas, he sits beside me, in the quiet watching, rests his head on my shoulder, waves back at his friend's younger siblings when they spot us and yell hello.

I look at the Kindergarteners among them, and then down at my nearly eleven year-old son, sifting through the years that brought him from that to this. I can't quite believe that he was ever that little. Or that his time here is soon to come to a close.

Six years spent in these red brick walls. Now less than two weeks until goodbye.

Tonight is the 5th grade dance. The girls will dress in taffeta and heels. The boys will need to be persuaded to wash their faces and put on clean t-shirts. They'll arrive in groups, still separate; the boys here, the girls there.

Growing up. But not quite grown. Ethan's heart is mine for yet a little bit longer.

<*> <*> <*> 

I need to change the name of my blog. My sandwich is open faced now. Open to the heavens. 

Although, needless to say, most days I am still quite squashed.

<*> <*> <*>

I thought we were finally done with Thomas forever... until Jake stared obsessing over him again about three months ago.  Only now we have to discuss which season and which episode number and who the narrator is and what year it came out and is it a "classic" episode or a new one and does the narrator talk "Americanish" or "Englanish" and...  (I say bomb Sodor back to the stone ages & be done with it!)

Well, we did get a break from it for a while. Over the years, we have cycled through obsessions with Teletubbies, Batman, Bakugan, Blues Clues, Ben 10, Power Rangers, Sponge Bob, Dragonball Z Kai, Pingu, and - do NOT ask me why - old basketball games/teams. Specifically the 1974 Celtics for some reason - and we're New Yorkers! Some of these were a relief, while others made me long for the fat controller.

<*> <*> <*> 

It has been a month since my last post.

A month.

I never thought I would lose my voice for so long.

But the other losses have been adding up, cumulative, weighing me down. The words swirl in my head, coalesce into nothing more than little jagged fragments. A sentence here, a thought there, an amusing facebook update at most.

I write them down, thinking I will flesh them out into posts soon, but there they remain, dry bones waiting for life.

I am tired of waiting. Of silence.

So I scoop my shards up, spread open my hands just a bit, so that they may waft out between my fingers, sprinkle down onto this page, and leave them there, where they fall, willy-nilly.

Not quite a post, but not quite NOT one, either.

A start.

Clearing my throat.

More to follow.

A beautiful thing

Jake and his Grandma, September, 2012

My mother's memorial service, held, finally, on Sunday March 3rd was beautiful; just what I needed. Although up until five minutes before it started I was feeling all jangly and out of sorts, grumbley about how it didn't feel right to be doing it at that exact time, a month and a half after she had passed.

I had been up nearly all night finishing and polishing my eulogy, wanting it to be just right, to properly honor the mother I had so loved.

When I stepped up to the podium to begin the service, Ethan was standing right beside me. He had asked to do so, telling me he wanted to support me, to be there for me in case I was overcome with grief. Sometimes I am astounded by his sweetness and depth.

I welcomed the assembled guests, a mix of family and friends, including, thankfully, one set of old, old friends of my parents, nearly the last left standing.

I read my eulogy: Some Heart: Sylvia Steinhardt's Eulogy and then opened up the podium to everyone who wanted to speak, starting with Ethan.

He spoke about where he was when he found out his Grandmother had died and how he felt. It was spontaneous and heartfelt and lovely. Clearly there is yet another storyteller in this family.

Then my brother Bruce spoke, filling in his side of the story of what it was like to suddenly have a step mother as an older teen, and how wonderful Mom had been, in spite of all the challenges. He spoke so lovingly of her, reminded me that I had forgotten "seltzer" in my list of things she loved passionately.

Then my fourteen year old niece Greta (my cousin Annette's eldest daughter) read a poem she had written for my mom. I was awed by its beauty, and am sharing it here:

To Sylvia

My most vivid memories of you
are summertime; flowers
stretching palms for sky,
a green new world
growing into its skin.

I wore golden, dangling earrings
to go see you.
You thought they were beautiful,
and you told me so.
Again. And again.

Your memory was a visitor
that didn’t stay for long,
But you knew who we were.
Your hands were for holding,
your eyes were an embrace.

I like to think
that wherever you are in the universe,
you will continue to find
new stars in the sky.

by Greta Wilensky

(Now you can see why she's been winning poetry slam contests.)

And then Jake, who had been sitting next to me, taking this all in, told me he wanted to speak too, and pointed to the podium... I asked him “Are you sure?” and he said “Yes.” Firmly.

So up we went. I had absolutely no idea how much of what was going on he had comprehended, and what he was going to say. If he had recited a favorite scene from SpongeBob it wouldn't have surprised me.

But no. He stood there silently for a moment, clearly working hard to come up with what he wanted to say.

And it was stunning and beautiful.

“I love my grandma” Jake said.

Pause.

“I see her in the hospital” (what he often called the nursing home, it being more like one than any other home of hers he had known)

“2012” (which was the last time he saw her)

“Mommy loves Grandma” (very true indeed)

And he was done.

My heart just filled to the brim – that he had understood we were all sharing our experiences with his grandma and he had wanted to participate, to be a part of it, and then that he had found his own words to do so, not a scripted phrase among them.

Well, I was floored, and so proud of my boy.

After that, I honestly cannot tell you in what order people spoke. I remember who spoke, remember their words, their stories, their love.  I deeply appreciated the tremendous amount of humor that everyone brought to their stories of Mom, which was so fitting because she was such a warm, funny, full-of-life person.

My cousins Jess and Annette spoke together, sharing what a warm and loving presence their aunt Sylvia had been in their life.

My niece Rachel, my sister-in-law Bern, Jess's daughter Ilana, my friend Emma, my husband Danny all shared lovely memories of my mom.

And my Uncle Walter? Brought down the house. He loved my mom, his big sister, so very much. Generally an earthy as well as intellectual man with a bawdy sense of humor, he has been ailing lately and may have been somewhat further disinhibited by medication he is taking.

He told more tales of Mom that frequently included phrases like "and then she bedded the boss, and was soon running the joint." But as these were delivered in tone so clearly full of admiration for her, he had tears of laughter streaming down our faces as he filled in many details of her adventurous life, pre-Dad.

When it was over, my friend Julie came up to me and said she absolutely wanted my uncle to deliver her eulogy, when the time comes.

Everyone contributed their stories in what felt much more a celebration of her life than a mourning for her death. And that was exactly right. What she would have wanted.

So many people came up to me during the lox and bagels brunch in the social hall afterwards, telling me they had never been to a memorial service that was so funny, so haimish, so relaxed and enjoyable. Those that hadn't known her well - like some of my recent friends and my husband's family members - told me they felt they really got to know her.

And that was just perfectly who Mom was: funny, warm, informal, wanting to know people and to be known.  I feel we truly honored her that day, sharing her essence as well as her stories.

I now carry this day around with me, along with all the other parts of my mother that live on forever inside me.

My mom is gone, but her love, and the love she continues to spread among those who knew her, lives on. As it should be.

It was a beautiful thing.

Mom & her brother Walter, October 2012

Happy Birthday, Daddy Jim

My Dad, September 2009

Today would have been my father's 96th birthday, had he still dwelt among the living. I almost feel guilty, so raw and fresh is my grief in having just lost my mother, that the pain of my father's passing - three years ago - feels most pale and ghostly by comparison.

Mom & Dad on his 89th birthday, 2006

Thankfully, the vivid memories of the horrible three months of his dying are fading, and what remains are wistful, warm memories of the loving father he was, my whole life.

Me & Dad on my high school graduation day, 1977

Dad loved celebrating birthdays, and there were so many memorable parties. I traveled to Sarasota Florida for his 80th, a bash he threw at Pelican Cove - the retirement community my parents were living in. Dad was in his element, surrounded by friends and family, drinking champagne and telling stories.

Mom & Dad at his 90th birthday party, 2007

For his 85th, I couldn't travel - being in the middle of my pregnancy with the twins and grounded by my OB - so I threw him a party here in New York.

The cheapest space I could find turned out perfect - the local Hungarian Hall, as my dad was always proud of his Hungarian (Jewish) ancestry, even though the only words he could speak in Hungarian were "Jo Istenem!" (pronounced yo ishtenem, meaning "Oh, my god!") and something filthy taught to him by a Hungarian cook at summer camp that caused his mother to wash his mouth out with soap when he repeated it to her upon his return home.
 

Dad with daughter-in-law Bern and his 3 grandsons, 2007

One unfortunate consequence of having the generations in my family so spread out, is that my children never got to know the vital, full of life man he was, as his fading away began when they were toddlers still. My kids' main memories of their Grandfather are of him sleeping on the sofa through most family gatherings. Though in pictures there is evidence of how much he enjoyed his grandsons' presence in his life.

 

Dad, you were a good man, a good father. Mom loved you right up to the end and missed you, acutely, every day of her nearly three years without you.

Happy Birthday Daddy, wherever you are.

March 25th will always, for me, belong to you.

Dad, 1961, photo by Bruce Steinhardt

All the other (good) stuff

Baking cookies with Ethan

You would think from what I've written about them lately (not at all) that I didn't still have kids, so consumed has my blog been with my mother's death.

But it's perhaps because I do still have kids (two, in fact) and I so strive to be present and cheerful with them in my daily life, that I come to this space (my own) to let all the heaviness leak out.

It is nearly two months since my mother has passed and time has not stopped, not even for a second.

Ethan is now in the final months of fifth grade.  Each time I bring him to or pick him up from school, I look at the tiny kindergarteners swirling past and marvel that he was once so small and that we looked upon the "big boys" back then and found it unimaginable that our sweet little five year old munchkins would ever become THAT.

He is worried about the future, about middle school - both getting into the one he wants (a unique New York City problem, I know) and about what it will be like when he is actually there next year, with new faces and routines and a whole higher order of academic pressure.

He is sad that his Saturday basketball league is about to come to an end. And that the Knicks really suck right now. And that his grandma is dead. (And probably about in that order.)

He grew a whole inch in the last two months.
 
We bake cookies together. A lot. I used to bake with my mother all the time. (Some of the recipes we use are hers.)

Jake & Belt at The Croods screening

Jake is a wonder.

I went into his recent parent teacher conference with trepidation, knowing he'd had a hard time adjusting earlier this year, and what I heard brought tears to my eyes. Happy tears.

They said that all the trouble at the beginning of the year seems to be behind them. They haven't needed the behavioral plan. He doesn't work just to earn iPad time at the end of his day. He is calm, engaged, participating, and if he starts to get out of line (throwing the word "stupid" into every sentence, perhaps, as he is wont to do) all they have to do is threaten to separate him from the group.

"I'm sorry. I'll stop." he says. AND HE DOES.

Furthermore, they all expressed their love for him so clearly. "Some days I just want to take him home with me, I haven't had enough Jacob time!" said his assistant teacher. That she already has a one year-old at home makes this doubly miraculous.

Jacob is having a burst of language and connection that is lovely to experience.

The other day he came into the room, uttering a very conversational "Mom, can I talk to you for a sec?" He stopped when he saw our cat lying upon me, purring. "Cocoa loves you!" he said.

SO much going on in those three simple words: being interested in and observing his environment, correctly interpreting what he saw, understanding the emotions involved, and commenting on it, in original language.

If you know anything about autism, you will know how beautiful this was, indeed.

He is also actively seeking to participate in situations, after observing others doing the same. (Again, awesome!)

Watching me, my friends and family sharing our memories at my mother's memorial service, he asked to go up to the podium himself, and then spoke a few very heartfelt, very appropriate words about his Grandma (more on that soon).

This past Monday I was invited to a mom-blogger family press screening of the new animated movie "The Croods" that Jake has been excited about since the ads and trailers for it stared popping up months ago.

We had a great time - it's a very enjoyable movie - and afterward there was a Q & A session with the  writer/directors Kirk De Micco & Chris Sanders, and Catherine Keener - the voice of the cave-mom. After answering The Moms' questions, they invited kids in the audience to come down and ask some of their own.

Jake and I were sitting near the back. He watched some kids ask questions about various aspects of the script or the production, he listened to the creators answer. And then he told me he wanted to go up and ask his own.

We made our way up to the front of the theater. Catherine Keener saw us standing by, and got up herself to hold the microphone for Jake as he asked: "How did you get the idea for Belt?"

(If you want to watch Jake yourself, it's the bottom video here at exactly 10 minutes in. It may look like I'm prompting him, but it IS the question he told me he wanted to ask as we were waiting our turn. He just suddenly forgot it when the mike was in his hand, and I had to whisper it in his ear.)

I was so proud of my (autistic) boy that day.

(And every day.)

Jacob, me & Catherine Keener at The Croods

So just in case you were worried that I had lost myself in grieving... I haven't.

I try to leave it here.

And in occasional tears on my pillow.

I haven't forgotten that I have two wonderful, alive, full of life boys.

And oh yes, a husband, too.

(Hi, honey.)

So expect me to be bouncing back and forth here between mourning my mother and telling tales from all the other myriad facets of my life.

I'll try to remember to throw in the good stuff as often as I can.

And ask you to forgive if the tears outweigh the laughs for just a little while longer.

Three Years (and nearly two months)

Me, Mom & Dad, Summer 2009

Three years ago, today, just after the 12th slipped into the 13th, my beloved father died.

Every year since then it has been a day of mourning and reflection for me, becoming a little less intense with each passing year, but still the ache remained acute.

But this year, today felt very odd, eclipsed by my mother's much more recent passing - nearly two months ago on January 17th.

My mother's death still hangs over me, feels much more recent still than two months.

If I close my eyes and think of her, I am, unfortunately, transported back to the final minutes of her life. That moment when her heart snapped and everything changed is burned deep into my mind's screen, sharp and bright, hopefully to be fading in intensity over the coming years.

But for now I remain somewhat ghost-ridden.

I regretted not being there, by my father's side as he passed. I had taken my first break in months, and many people told me that they think that allowed him to finally let go, that my absence was giving him permission to die.

Maybe.

He managed to do it quietly, with no one there to witness.  My sister Lois had gone to the bathroom down the hall, and said she felt a wave of heat and nausea pass over her, out of nowhere, at what she later calculated was probably the moment of his leaving, for when she came back into his room, he was gone, my mother unaware, fallen asleep sitting upright in the chair by his side.

At the time I felt like had missed out on something.

Now I'm not so sure.

The look on my mother's face as her eyes popped open, bugged out, unseeing, as she huffed and puffed as her heart was literally bursting, is something that will probably haunt me for the rest of my days.

I can talk about it most freely with my cousin Jessica, who, as an ER doctor, is no stranger to death. Other people I know I will creep out, make uncomfortable, so I hold this moment silently, in my mind and heart. But there it remains, indelible, most every day.

Even today, when I feel I should be remembering, mourning my father, yet still, my mother and her death hangs over all.

Though it is comforting to think back on the two of them at the same time, for they were such an entwined and loving couple. Fifty one years together.

I don't know where our spirit, our essence, goes when we pass. Truly I don't. I feel something remains, for I felt it leave my mother, witnessed how her body was just so much lumpen clay after it was gone.

And so, in the not knowing, I can only conjecture and hope that whatever wisp of energy that was my bright mother has found my father's counterpart out there, in the ethosphere, and their stardust particles are swirling about the universe in tandem, dancing together once more, forever.

The view from here

In the dark of a too early morning, I crack open the door of the boys' bedroom to wake Jacob, still deeply under, in the top bunk.

I entreat him to rise with whispers, remind him to stay quiet himself, so as not to awaken his brother, asleep below, as he sits up uttering his usual first word of the day “Stupid.”

“Jacob…” I whisper-scold.

“Don’t say the bad word” he repeats in a singsong voice.

“Shhhhhhh.” I remind, again. And in a louder, more urgent whisper “Come down now, Baby, the bus will be here in a half hour and it won’t wait, you have to get ready for school.”

“Stupid” says Jacob, one more time, as he lumbers down the ladder, his ancient blue bear firmly clutched in one hand.

Then, at the bottom: “Can I have a hug, Mommy?”

And thus begins our day.

By the time Ethan is up - after three visits to his bedroom, progressing from a cheerful “good morning” through a gentle shoulder shake, the flashing on and off of lights, the radio blasting an obnoxious rock station and the (idle) threat of a cold water dousing – Jacob is long gone, sent off with a kiss onto his long bus ride to his wonderful Special-Ed school on the far, other (lower, East) side of town.

(I try not to think about it too much, because it makes me sad when I do, but, yes, my boys, my twins - due to luck, genetics, a whim of the gods of autism & neurodiversity, and probably something I ate or didn’t eat when I was seventeen - lead very separate lives.)

Ethan and I talk, always; words his currency, as they are mine.

We talk a lot or a little, depending in the day. Did the Knicks win last night? How about the Nets? Chatting away through breakfast eaten, lunch made, bags packed.

Some days I take Ethan to school, yet others I send him walking with the neighbors, two boisterous boys whose testosterone-filled company he favors lately.

Already he has begin to resist my goodbye kisses when others are present. "Mooooooom" he protests as I hand him over in the lobby, though I know tonight he will still curl up into my lap as we watch the game together, after homework has been done (please God, let the homework get done without torture tonight).

<*> <*> <*>

And then I am alone, with too much to do, but no heart for any of it.

I am supposed to be writing my mother's eulogy right now. With the snow delaying her memorial service, I have had a long time to accomplish this seeming simple task, even longer to contemplate it, as I knew, bone deep, that the end was coming soon.

And yet I just... cannot. Words are failing me.

I wrote a beautiful eulogy for my father. Poured all my love and crystal knowledge of who he was into it.

But my mother... my mother.. my mother...

All I want to do is keen and cry.

In spite of so many words spilling out of me immediately after her death, I am now experiencing my grief in a visceral, animal way.

I am angry, bereft, pained; and in no space to make pretty words of it. For even at the very end, drifting away from her memories, from the shaped, sharpened form of herself, my mother was still filled with light and love.

And when we held hands the bond between us thrummed, strong as the day that I was born and we became mother and daughter.

My mother was unwavering in her love, and the space it took up in me is now dark, hollow, memory's embers being a paltry substitute for the heat of a living presence.

And there has been, yet, barely time to mourn, so filled are my days with the minutia of things that must be done; mountains of laundry and paperwork; all the threads that I dropped when constantly dashing off to my mother's bedside must now be gathered and stitched back in, the fabric of my life holey, like tattered lace.

<*> <*> <*>

The boys mourn my mother, each in their own way.

"I see Grandma, in my brain" says Jake. And I am never sure if that means to him what it does to me. He still asks to go see her sometimes, the concept of death as a permanent state being perhaps too abstract for him to fully grasp.

Ethan and I bake blueberry muffins, Mom's perennial favorite. No matter how low her spirits or appetite, I could always entice her to eat a blueberry muffin and a cup of hot cocoa.

Come to think of it, we're drinking a lot of cocoa, too.

Mom...

I raise my mug to you.

Mom, enjoying cocoa & a muffin with me, December, 2011

Each mourning is different

Me & my parents, 1962

Second time around and I'm realizing... each mourning is different. A mother is not a father, and the missing manifests in different places in my body, in my life.

And then there's the fact that it's both of them gone now, and as an only child I am thusly the sole surviving member of my nuclear family. The only one who knows, who remembers our own particular family's micro-culture... what we ate; what we sang; what we said to each other to greet the day, to bid goodnight; what we liked to do on long summer days, on starry winter nights.

The people that brought me into this world are gone. Elvis has left the building. And while it's ridiculous to think of myself as an orphan at 52, with all the attendant images of storm-tossed waifs and wide eyed boys in desperate need of mothering, there it is - that term - popping into my brain at odd intervals.

"You're a member of the orphans club now... so sorry." says my friend, softly. My dear friend, Rachel, who I do not think I could have gotten through these three weeks without, is herself a long-time member, the edges of her pain blunted, but never quite extinguished.

And I don't know how this would feel if I'd had a conflicted, difficult relationship with my parents. My guess is both easier and harder. More relief, more longing, less simple loss and keen missing. But it's all conjecture.

I had these parents: a pair of interesting people who loved me much and well. They were kind and generous and never withholding in their love. It was unconditional and freely given. I always knew I was both loved and accepted.

And now, of course, that spigot is shut off. Gone.

As much as my children and husband may love me - and they do, as much comfort as that brings me - and it does, it is not the same as the way my mother's eyes lit up as I entered the room, thrilled by my mere existence, my simple proximity to her.

And I know how lucky I am to have had that. I know far too many who have never known this kind of love. And I know that at times in my younger life I have felt burdened, smothered by this love, for yes there was some neediness on her part in there, too. But that has all washed out, years ago now, water long passed under all the bridges.

And what I am left with is a wistful aching, memories that are both fond and painful because the wound of losing her is still so fresh and new. Everywhere I go, everything I light upon, I find traces of her.  And I find so much evidence that so much of who I am has come down from her.

I am in the dentist's chair and the radio is tuned to the classical music station.  Beethoven's 6th symphony comes on (the "Pastorale") and I find myself conducting with my idle hands. "Oh, you know this one?" he asks, surprised, explaining that he usually has the radio tuned to classic rock but his previous patient expressed a strong preference for WQXR.

"Yes," I tell him, after I have spat blood and grit into the tiny sink, "it was my mother's favorite symphony, she played it often in my childhood."

"Sorry," he says, knowing my news, "that must be painful." But somehow it isn't. It instead fills my heart to the brim with gratefulness that my mother passed on her love of music, that she shared with me, her child, the things that brought her joy, and that their beauty lives on in me now.

My mother always liked the springtime best. Whenever I spot the first yellowing blooms bursting from the branches of the forsythia bushes that line Central Park's transverse passages, I am possessed by the urge to share this vision with my mother. Golden harbinger of spring, forsythia made my mother deliriously, unreasonably happy.

I am prepared for the mix of heartbreak and bittersweet pleasure this spring will bring, as each fresh round of blossoming unfolds.

And now Mom has managed to derail her winter's memorial service, which had been due to be held this past Sunday. She has somehow summoned an icy February Frankenstorm to come upon us, necessitating the postponement of her ceremony; kicking it down the calendar into late winter or early spring.

Forsythia season for sure.

It's my blog's birthday and I'll cry if I want to.

Three years ago today...

My father was still alive, but busy dying...

My mother was still alive, but wearing herself out taking care of my father...

My twin boys were seven years old, and a handful and a half...

And on February 6th, 2010, I sat down and wrote this post:

The Squashed Bologna: a slice of life in the sandwich generation

And thus, this blog was born.

I was hoping I'd get to write a happy "Happy 3rd Blogaversary to me" post this year, but that is clearly not to be, my mother passed just these three weeks on.

I hadn't been able to do it last year either, as Susan Niebur left this world on February 6th, 2012.

I did, at least, get to write a reflective first blogaversary post in 2011 - A Full Year of Bologna. Read again, it seems like so much more than two years ago I wrote all that, three years ago I entered this, the blogging life.

For in these three years I have found an amazing, supportive community, of which I had not even a glimmer of a hint of its existence before I fell headlong into it. Within this, of course, many sub-groups make up my community... the special-needs-parent-bloggers, my fellow LTYM-ers, my former SV Mom's Blog group, my "3rd wave" blogging cohort who began around the same time I did - Alexandra, I'm talking YOU here, baby! - to name just a few.

And this "village" (as well as my incredible circle of "real life" friends & family) has buoyed and sustained me through so much that I have gone through in these three years since.

Right now I'm in the middle of the muddle of my grief, and having a hard time pulling anything from it. In the first few days the words tumbled out of me. I was writing my way through the sorrow, as rough and as raw as ground meat.

I even wrote that "This is the only way I know how to do it."

But then I stopped knowing that, caught up in the paperwork of it all and the thousand stinging nettles of the minutia of my daily life that continued on apace, in spite of the beast howling in my chest, mother-lost.

I am struggling to find my voice again.

Also?

I am bewildered.

Who am I now that I am no longer sandwiched? I have lost a full generation.

I suppose... I suppose I will need to change the name of my blog soon, "Sandwich Generation" no longer properly defining me. (Putting that on the back-burner, not ready to think about it yet.)

But for now here I am, an open-faced sandwich (though still rather squashed), entering my fourth year of doing this, living my life out loud in the inter-web-verse.

Writing my way through the grief, through the sorrow, through the pain and the healing.

Because it's the only way I know how to do it.

Nothing about this is easy

I am unlovely in my grief.

Underslept, rarely showered, breaking out. My face a blotchy patchwork of red and too pale. A total mess, ten days on now.

Wait, it's eleven. Soon it will be two weeks. Soon it will be the memorial service come upon us.

And I have a eulogy to write. Photos to dig up.

Mom's ashes to collect. (I got the call today, but I couldn't; I just... couldn't. Not yet. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe if Dan comes with me.)

I have so much to do; so much todotodotodotodoooooo.

And I want to do absolutely nothing.

To stand still, frozen, like a winter tree, just being for a moment; no leaves, no flowers, no pesky photons to synthesize from. Just standing; my roots dug in, holding me up. Life still flowing at my core, but you wouldn't know it from looking at me.

I flip, like a flopping, water starved fish on deck, back and forth back and forth: I want to be left alone / I have to be with people.  From minute to minute I never know what I'll need.

I go see friends then run away and hide in the bathroom. I banish everyone from the house, then frantically call my cousins to talk.

When my father died, I had to take care of my mother, to be there for her. I had her to mourn with; I had Bruce and Lois, my father's other children from his first marriage, by my side, making all these terrible arrangements together.

But I am my mother's only child, and she is the second parent gone. So there is no one else. Just me. I am the sole surviving member of the nuclear family of my birth.

(And yes, there is the family I chose, the family I made, and I thank the heavens every day for their existence. But it's still not the same.)

I feel greedy and selfish taking time away from my family to mourn, from my children who need me as much today as they did two weeks ago. And yet even here I am hardly here, translucent, worn thin as the cotton of my mother's ancient favorite nightgown.

(More sad tasks on my list: drive out to Long Island to retrieve her boxed-up final belongings from the nursing home. And then what do I do with her teeth? Her hearing aid? I can neither throw them into the trash nor keep them.)

I took her glasses from her face in the hospital ER, promised to give them back when she was up to the task of reading again. I carry them around still in my pocketbook, come upon them when fishing for change and keys.

I put them on though they blur my vision, not cure it.

I want to see through her eyes; I want to see her clearly.

I want the sadness of the last, broken, lonely months of her life to wash away in all my tears. I want to remember the woman who loved birds and cats and babies and champagne and modern art and handmade things and the Chrysler Building in all its art deco glory. The woman who reveled in the crystalline beauty of the natural world.

The woman who loved ME so deeply, so fiercely, so freely; who loved me as only a mother can love a child.

I whisper in my children's ears (now, mostly while they are asleep): "I will always be your mother, and I will always love you."

She taught me to love like that, my one and only mother.

Me, her one and only child.

Ninety years, four months, fifteen days

Mom and me, August 1960

Ninety years, four months, fifteen days.

That was my mother's allotted time on this earth.

Fifty two years, five months, seven days.

That was how long we had together.

And now... one week apart.

(And yes we have spent many, many days, months, years, separated in this time, sometimes by continents, sometimes by oceans, sometimes just by emotions - adolescence, anyone? - and yet... and yet... we were always, somehow, still THERE with each other, connected by that invisible, permanent, virtual umbilicus that binds mother to child; infinitely expandable, invincibly endurable.)

I remember the first time I truly contemplated the impact of my parents' demise. I was relatively young, still - my late twenties. No husband, no kids, a very different life.

I was in the midst of many exciting happenings - though for the life of me now I couldn't tell you what they all were. I dimly recall I was deep into rehearsing a play (as assistant director and stage manager) and being on my way home from a rehearsal up on the Columbia campus.

I was driving, flying down Riverside Drive and wanting to call and tell my folks about how well things were going, about plans that were afoot. And I couldn't.

They were traveling at the time, far, far away on the greatest adventure they had ever undertaken. They were in Bali, in a little village, inland, upland - Ubud I believe it was called. And there was no way to phone. I knew the name of the guest house they were staying at, and of the proprietor, but this would do me no good.

There was ONE telephone in the whole town, in the "telephone house" and it was only to be used in case of dire emergency, which this was not. And it was only available in the daytime hours between ten and six, which, with the fourteen hour time difference, this most certainly was not, either.

My parents had never been so completely inaccessible to me and for so long (it was nearly a month's trip) and I felt frustrated by my inability to speak with them.

And then my stomach dropped and I started to cry. Because this thought rang out in my head: "This is what it will be like when they are dead. Only it won't just be for a few weeks, it will be forever."

And as the feelings washed over me, I sobbed and sobbed, thankfully alone in my car, then pulled myself together, feeling grateful for the temporary nature of our separation.

And yes, we had many more years together, my parents and I.

And yes, by the end it was their diminished capacity for cognition that was keeping me from sharing all the ups and down of my life with them; the strong, care-taking parents of my twenties so long gone as to be nearly recognizable.

But still, through it all, we were connected; their love of me a constant, never-questioned core.

And now the umbilicus is sundered, existing only as a phantom limb, aching in spite of its absence.

And I can visit with my mother (and father) only in memory.

And dreams.

So perhaps, though it is 4AM and I will need to be up in two hours to care for my own children, I should try, once again, hopefully successfully this time, to sleep.

Motherless

Mom & Me, Mothers Day, 2012

How could it be?

I woke up this morning and the world was still still here, popped into existence when I opened my eyes; the sun held high in the firmament, the bustling sounds of city life washing in through my air-cracked window.

How could it be?

The world in existence.

Yet diminished, greatly reduced, by one soul... gone.

Sylvia.

Mother.

How can the planet spin onward when she is no longer here?

And yet, it does.

Jake went to school. Ethan stayed home.

I am busy with a thousand phone calls I do not want to make, yet must.

Calls to tell people.

To make "arrangements."

Calls that involve the word "body."

(The husk that's all that's left.)

I shut down to do this. It's the only way.

***

I watched her go. I held her hand. I kissed her forehead, cooling.

***

I have mothered my mother for so long, it feels more like a child has died than a parent.

I keep thinking, routinely: "What do I have to do for her today, tomorrow, next week?"

And the blankness that comes back is cold and white with nothingness.

And the Kate Bush song echoes in my head: "All the things I should have done, that I never did."

Because even 52 years together are not enough when you want more.

And I am greedy.

I wanted more.

But there is no more.

She is done.

This last fight was beyond her.

The pain was too big.

Her heart valve too small.

She was tired, so very tired.

And now she is beyond the suffering.

(at peace.)

And I am motherless, forever more.

That train is coming...

I am sitting by my mother's side. again.

Watching her breathe. again.

But not for very much longer.

She is dying.

It's not just a broken hip.

It's a broken heart. literally.

And an infection that has gone septic.

Blood that won't clot, or that may actually be forming tiny clots within itself, and therefore not where it is actually needed.

There are all kinds of official medical terms for these things, and I know them; have heard all sorts of acronyms flying about the ICU that will surely be the last room my mother occupies.

But is comes down to this: her body is worn out, as is her spirit.

There is no more fight left in either, only pain and suffering.

And it's soon time for that to come to an end.

I thought it would be last night, came barreling back to the hospital through rain and fog, having arrived home at dinnertime and stayed through putting the kids to bed; all while fielding phone calls from nurses, doctors and family members.

I walked into her room here in the ICU a shaggy mess, expecting to find her the same. But somehow in the hour since I'd last phoned in, her blood pressure had normalized and her heartbeat reigned in, no longer pulled by stallions, champing riotous at the bit.

"Your mother may not last the night" was still a possibilty, but no longer a softened, near certain prognosis.

And, indeed, she stayed the night.

This morning a nurse woke her up in the wee hours to administer another shot of vitamin K, attempting to stem the blood tide. "Thank you" my mother responded, astonishing the nurse who told me she had never been thanked for an injection before (more frequently cursed, I assume). That's my mother: gracious, grateful, full of love. And sorrow.

"Tough old bird" I whisper under my breath as I kiss her forehead once again.

How thing-like a body becomes when it is old and broken and clinging to life with tendrils weak and brittle as snow-scorched vine.

And yet my mother's hands are strong still, fingers wrapped, embracing mine, one of the few points of physical contact not obstructed by tubes and wires, her whole body a minefield of pain.

She looks like a fighter pilot: mask covering nose and mouth, offering air ever more oxygenized as her lungs are capable of absorbing less and less.

And fighter she is (tough old bird) clinging still to life, diminished now to this room, my hand, my voice, a cup offering ginger ale through a bendy straw.

She is still here.

I am here with her.

She knows I'm here.

And, for now, that's enough.

Mom. Today.

Another day, another drive, another visit with my mother.

I arrive with a paltry cache today: no cookies for the staff no cake for my mother, no new clothes, no taking her out to lunch, no manicure, no courtyard nap in the sun.

Just myself, briefly, too briefly, but all that is possible today, and a wide toothed shower comb (two for three dollars at K-mart, the one I had bought for myself, as mom's had been pinched by her klepto roommate).

As ever she is surprised and relieved to see me, no idea of how long it's been since my last visit. It could have been just an hour earlier this same morning but that would be too long ago for her to recall, making it too long, so lonely long since my last visit; to her.

The tears stream down her face when I arrive, and when I leave, as always.

She has no memory of this week's visits, of last week's visit when I took her out for a drive, and to lunch in town at a Japanese restaurant. 

I show her picture proof and she is astonished: "Is that me?' she asks, barely recognizing her own image, the thinner, paler, diminished ghost version of any self she knew.

We have taken over the north-west lounge, my mother removed from the wheelchair, relieved to be ensconced on a vaguely comfortable sofa.

She wants to see more pictures and I oblige, scrounging around the iPad's spotty collection of photos I'd uploaded intermixed with images from the videos Jake watches incessantly on the thing. A thousand educational apps and all he wants is YouTubed basketball games from the 1980s. Knicks and Celtics, preferably.

Its always risky showing Mom pictures of Dad, of the two of them, together, looking so happy, robust and young, even if they are only from three years ago. The change is startling, terrifying. and she gets so wistful, so sad: "He wasn't just my husband," she tells me, who knows this better than anyone else in the world would, for perhaps the hundredth time, "He was my best friend."

Me, Mom & Dad, September, 2009

"Oh, Varda, I miss him so much!" and the floodgates open again. (But how much worse would it be if she started to forget him?)

Lunch arrives and I am once again facing off against a recalcitrant toddler. "I'm just not hungry" says my former food-loving mother, as she pushes the broccoli florets around on the plate.

But the mere act of my sitting with her pushes her appetite forward, if just a little bit.  And I resort to blatant bribery and outright bullying. Just like with my kids. "Come on, Mom, one more bite of chicken and you can eat your (rapidly melting) ice cream."

After a quick stuffing I take my leave. There are children to be picked up and dropped off, ferried about, and homework supervised and checked.

I know I'll be back on Sunday and Monday, but to her, just like my boys the first time I left them in someone else's care, it's the end of the world, abandonment forever.

I hope on Sunday I'll have at least one boy in tow. I pray that the phone calls I get from the home continue to begin with "Your mother is fine, I just called to discuss..." and never get darker.

Pop music floods my brain as I drop into the driver's seat, pushing out my tears, my sorrow, making the drive home possible, as Shakira serenades me and my car, like an old horse, seems to know the way home.

Missing my Father, Passover Edition

Batman & Joker at the Seder table, 2012

Food is the great memory-soup-pot stirrer. And so moments with my father often rise up to slap me in the face when I am in the midst of fixing food. (I would have said "cooking" but anyone who knows me would have done a spit-take, as I don't really cook these days, mostly assemble.)

Passover began on Friday at sunset, so our house was awash in matzo. Making Ethan his lunch, I asked if he would like some, or if he thought he’d be sick of it by the time these next 8 days were over, but he responded with an enthusiastic “Yes!” (Or as enthusiastic as a kid who is down for the count with a sore throat and bad cold can sound.)

And so I head to the kitchen to fix Ethan some (whole wheat) matzo the way he likes it… the way I liked it as a kid, schooled by my father because it was the way HE liked it: slathered with a thin, even sheen of butter and then salted.

He LOVED to eat matzo like that, and for years I did too. There is an art to it, making sure the butter is soft enough to spread, and spreading with a light enough touch so as not to pulverize the matzo as you spread. Then shaking on just enough salt. A delicate operation all around.

So standing in my kitchen, making my son his matzo I have invoked my father, tickled that such an un-religious man is so heavily associated with this very observant foodstuff.

He was a dedicated atheist/agnostic. He disliked organized religion. But we always did Passover and Hanukkah. I think because these were holidays in the home, about food and family.  And food and family were really important to him.

So every Passover of my childhood, we would head off to my Aunt & Uncle's (my mother's brother's family) where my wonderful cousins would be waiting for me.  We would go through the haggadah - a liberal, modern one, light on the "chosen people" & Hebrew and heavy on the social justice and unity of all peoples stuff - as quickly as possible. Then linger over the wonderful meal, finish up fast and roll home very late, very happy.

My husband's family is much more traditional and religious than mine, and in the years when my father was still alive and it was the year for us to Passover with Dan's side, my father would gamely sit through the long Seder, eat his matzo without butter, it being a Kosher meat meal.

As the years went on, his post-dinner sofa nap became longer and longer, eventually involving a pre-dinner one as well, encompassing most of the Seder itself. But still, it was good to have him with us.

He and my Mother-in-law passed in the same year, so my mother is the sole representative of their generation at Passover now. This year she appeared markedly more fragile than last, fading rapidly.

I feel her slipping away before my eyes, a pleasant smile always on her face, but less and less going on behind it with each passing day.  Caring for my father grounded her, kept her present, focused.  She is starting to forget people.  I do not know if she will still be with us next Passover.

This year my father is now two years gone; this our third Passover without him. But buttering and salting a square of matzo for my son, I feel him standing by my side, peering over my shoulder, reaching out for its crisp, crumbly goodness; reassuring me I've salted it perfectly, just right.
 

SOC Sunday: Not my Father's 95th Birthday post

I. just. cannot. wait. for. March. to. be. over.

@@@@@@@

Today is March 25th. But this is NOT a birthday post for my Father, now dead these two years. And twelve days.

He would have been 95.

I wrote a beautiful post for him last year. You can go read it, here - Not his 94th Birthday. I told a funny story about how he got his name, James, which was NOT the name he was born with.

In fact looking back in my archives to find that one, I was surprised to see how many favorite posts I wrote last March. I remember it as being a bleak month and feeling the weight of the first anniversary of his death (and my recent operation) bearing down oh so heavily upon me.

But I suppose last year, of that pressure some diamonds were born.

Not quite so much tihs year. I am hardly writing, here. The lumps of coal are not transforming.

The NYC Listen to Your Mother show, which I am producing, has pretty much taken over my life. Which is a good thing, a marvelous counter to all my self-absorption. And it's a wonderful show, a fabulous enterprise with amazing partners (Amy, Holly, Betsy, Ann, Deb, our NYC cast, and the entire gang of production teams around the country - I LOVE you!)

But it is also requiring a lot of workaday writing. And I am not a fast writer. So it's nearly all going there, very little coming back here. Lots of pragmatics. Very little creating going on. Sigh.

I am also hardly being a good enough mother, a good enough daughter. I spent the day locked in yet another homework meltdown with Ethan. We didn't go see my mother, who hopefully did NOT remember what day it was. (She didn;t bring it up when we spoke on the phone and so neither did I, figuring why remind her when all it would bring would be sorrow.)

And I know a big chunk of my blue today is the date. Weighing upon me. A date I loved for 49 years: my beloved Father's birthday.

Once a day to celebrate. Now a date for grieving. For missing. For looking backwards.


And I know I was lucky to have had him for so long. I have so many fatherless friends who lost theirs way too young, too soon, who never got to see them grow up or marry or have kids of their own.

And I know that as far as fathers go he was pretty damn wonderful, and I was lucky there, too. He was certainly not perfect, I could easily list his flaws as a man and father. But he was always gentle, and I always, ALWAYS knew I was loved, valued, cherished... and that goes a long way.

But today I am not feeling lucky. Just sad.

I want my Dad back. (And while I really want the one from my childhood who would vanquish all monsters, today I'll even take the frail one I was basically parenting, from his final, fading years.)

Just one more hug. (Not possible. Memory will have to suffice.)

Happy Birthday, Daddy.

@@@@@@@

 
New to SOCS?  It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump.  Want to try it?  Here are the rules…

• Set a timer and write for 5 minutes only.
• Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spell-checking. This is writing in the raw.

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