Dear Mom,
It has been four and a half months (and change) since you died.  I still miss you daily; hear your gentle voice in my mind and heart. I hope that when my children remember my voice, it is not the yelling voice, but the calm, loving, reasonable one.
Maybe you've heard; Dad's getting married again. He told me the day before my birthday, which of course was his birthday, too. He says he did his mourning while you were dying. He is quite proud of himself, you see; he picked someone he claims you were close to. They have all sorts of plans to redecorate your house; that is fine, and that is necessary, but Mama. . .I wasn't ready to go back yet, and I wanted it to be just like you left it when I am ready.
I will have your wedding set, the one that sat on your finger for so long. I will have that, and some of your owls, and a set of your mixing bowls, and some assorted odds and ends. I already have your morphine, the two bottles left from the two days I used it to ease your pain. I have it hidden away; it feels dangerous, like a weapon. But it also feels safe, like an escape route I'll never use but take comfort in the knowing that it's there.
Today, I drive back to your house; the 7 hour trip from my home to the place you called home. This trip feels momentous, like a walkabout; like a discovery; like saying goodbye. I don't think that I will be returning there much after this last journey. I will spend my days there remembering, walking, soul-searching, and letting go. You were what held me to that place, Mama, and you are gone.

this body: from temple to meat sack to beautiful, strong, imperfect self

One of my nieces visited recently, and in the course of one of many discussions, we started talking about our upbringing and how that upbringing taught us to view our bodies. She mentioned that she had difficulty reconciling what she'd internalized with what she currently believed, and asked how I'd managed it.
The truth is, I still struggle with it. Twenty six years out (I've now been out of the church a decade longer than I was in it), and I still view my body on occasion with shame. We were taught our bodies were temples for our souls, and as such, should be thought of as god's house; so really, not ours at all. No piercings, no tattoos, no tobacco, alcohol, drugs, or dirty sex. Definitely no cleavage.
I have piercings, I have tattoos, I smoked cigarettes for a looooong time. I drink. Rarely will I smoke pot, but it happens. Sex? None of your business, but our bodies were built for pleasure, and both god and the devil can kiss my ass about that one. (Growing up, I asked why girls had a clitoris. I was informed that it was a tool for temptation. What. The. Fuck.) Oh, and I'm a woman. I have cleavage, people. At least I do when I squeeze my arms against my chest really hard. But I digress.
So. I went from a desecrated Jesus temple to the opposite end of the spectrum--just a bag of skin and bones to carry my brain around in. But that really didn't give me any peace or freedom; I would see these curves, these freckles, these amazing hands, this ridiculous ass in the mirror and think, "that is lovely." But I'd also see the stretch marks and cellulite and dry skin and varicose veins, and think, "ugly." Mind you, this was in spite of working as a massage therapist, seeing and appreciating all shapes and sizes daily, encouraging women and reminding each of them that their bodies were beautiful.
Niece and I climbed an absolutely stunning place the day she was here. Shevlin Park is, for me, what New Mexico was for Georgia O'Keeffe. Truly. And niece commented how amazing it was to feel her body move and work, how fantastic the sun felt. I started thinking about that, and realizing that this body of mine may not be perfect, or completely toned, or even as strong as I would like it to be, but even at 42 it has potential. I can recognize the beauty even in the cellulite, the arm hair, the dry skin, the flabby belly. But recognizing and internalizing are two completely different things.
On what, initially, appears to be a completely different note, I've been working to deepen my yoga practice. I found this amazing book, Wanderlust, by Jeff Krasno. It is beautiful, and visually pleasing, and has so many different perspectives. It traces the lineage of all the different styles of yoga, and--finally!--talks about more than the asanas, the physical part, of yoga. Today, I learned about the 8 limbs of yoga, and after meditating on the Yamas and Niyamas, picked one to meditate on for thirty days in concurrence with my 30 day yoga practice for baby grasshopper pose.
Yoga brings me peace. The asanas always have, and I am so grateful to learn of these other 7 limbs that take the place in my soul of the god I've left behind.  And this is why this fits into that body acceptance bit:
Yoga is a practice. Constantly in progress. I am meditating on ONE WORD and ONE POSE for 30 whole days. I love this. I love that yoga understands progress, not perfection, and that I will be able to see, without comparing myself to anyone else, my body's amazing work and development. And after these 30 days, there will be a new word, and a new pose. And on.
My body is not a temple. It is a sexy beautiful amazing imperfect home, and I fully plan to use it hard until the day it breaks and takes my heart and soul with it.

"Goddam I love being a human being. Even grief is beautiful."

Tell me how to get to that point. In the last two years, I've watched my mother and my mother in law die; I watched one of my favorite cats die; and in the years before that, so many friends and other animals. I have no fear of death, and have been able to find beauty in death and in dying. But the grief? That I cannot seem to ever find beautiful, or spacious. And I definitely do not love being a human being.
And then I read this amazing response about grief on Reddit (and the first reply to the response that the title of this post came from). I remember describing grief as waves in almost just this way, so I suppose that makes the feeling almost universal. I do know that the loss can be so overwhelming that sometimes, you want to stop fighting the feeling of drowning and just drown. But instead, you just hold on and float.
I feel like I have been floating for a very long time. I think I'm ready to get out of the water.

this is the love letter I read at my mother's funeral

Mom loved birds. All sorts. Some of the plainest and most common she called LBBs, or Little Brown Birds. I have always loved that she made something special and lovely out of the ordinary. That is what she always did—with birds, with her gardens, with people, with me. She taught me to bloom where I am planted, that I can learn something from any place or space that I find myself in. She taught me that when I felt too much, or became overwhelmed by all the bad and terrible things in the world, that all I needed to do was to make my own nest, and work on small things—in my home, with my people, in my community. She taught me that small changes, small things done with great care and love, had an impact on the world. She was an amazing woman, and she taught us well.

We had our tough times, Mom and I, but I’m fairly certain that one of the reasons I exasperated her so much is that she and I were of similar mind, and by that I mean stubborn and independent. She used to tell me, in my more trying moments, “I hope you have a child just like you!” and in 2003, when my second child was a year old, I asked her, “Is it possible I could have TWO children just like me?” There was a long pause, and then she said (with something like glee), “Oh, yes. Yes it is.” And she should know. Because she had five children, just like her.

But as infuriating as I may have been, she encouraged that independence. When I was in preschool, I decided I was old enough to walk the several blocks to school by myself. I do not remember if I snuck away or if she told me I could go, but I set off on my own. It was only as I went to cross the street and looked both ways that I realized she was following me. She left enough of a distance that I could feel independent, but was close enough that she could save me if she needed to. She has always been my safety net, always the one I’ve come home to, always the one to comfort. So it was a great honor for me, in her last days, to be able to help comfort her.

At 4:09 p.m. on Friday, March 25^th, 2016, one day after her 58^th anniversary of marriage to Dad, Mom quietly died. It had been a busy few days; she had come home for good from the hospital only on Wednesday, her last wish to be at home. That day, my sister Cheryl tells me, she stared out her front window for hours from the hospital bed set up in the living room. Visitors came and went, there were bites of homemade pudding and strawberry and saltine cracker. And there was waiting.

Even when a death is impending and expected, even when the last few months or years of life have been full of pain, when it suddenly starts happening in earnest, when the focus becomes getting busy dying instead of getting busy living, it all seems too sudden and fast. In the last three weeks, I felt my mother’s rapid decline and started grasping, gasping, desperate to keep her close.

Birth, living, loving, dying, death. They are all messy and natural and mundane, and yet feel like they should be so much more important. How dare the world continue to go on as if nothing is wrong when I am losing my mother? I will never again smell the hollow of her neck that I associate with comfort; never hear her say, “I love you,” or “Oh, for fun!” with a clap of her arthritic hands when she finds something particularly enjoyable. I tally the losses, all the little things I wish I’d realized were for the last time, and I find myself mildly insulted that her garden hadn’t violated every law of nature and exploded with blooms a month or two early, just for her.

My mother taught us, all of us, about unconditional love. She taught us both in word and in action that people are who they are and are worthy of love regardless of their imperfections. She taught gentleness, but was the fiercest mama bear, and we, all of her children, learned from that, and our children, her grandchildren, may or may not appreciate it. She was a matriarch who ruled with a wide open heart and knotted apron strings, who taught us well and then let us find our own wings to fly, even when those wings took us in a direction she’d rather we not have gone—and then, even then, she loved us anyway.

I have said, and heard this echoed by my sisters, that I want to be exactly like my mom when I grow up. I feel so lucky to have called her friend in my adult years, although the road there was rocky. Her love of flowers, trees, and all things nature (except for squirrels) is something she passed on, as well. I will always feel most at peace with my hands or feet in the dirt, smelling soil rich with life and potential, coaxing plants from seed or bulb.

Last Friday morning didn’t feel special. We all ate breakfast, I rubbed Mama with essential oils, gave her medication and sponged her mouth out with lemon water. She had visitors in and out, and the hospice nurse, and then the bath aide came, for a “spit and polish.” They left, and Dad and Cheryl went out for groceries and tulips.

Mom died not fifteen minutes later. It was so quiet, and gentle, and unexceptional, the leaving of this exceptional woman. A deep breath, and then another, and then no more. I held her in my arms, told her she was loved, and let her go, my head on her chest, listening to her generous heart beat its last beats. And then I smelled that spot at the hollow of her throat, and I rubbed her down with oil and tears and so much love.

I am my mother’s daughter. I am reminded of this every time I look in the mirror, every time I hold my children close, every time I dig in the dirt or feel too much or bake a loaf of bread. I am my mother’s daughter, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I do not share the same beliefs as most of the members of my family, but I do know that my mother lives on—in her progeny, in her gardens, in her teachings; in the love she shared with my father. And I have found great comfort in the words of writer and performer Aaron Freeman, who states,

“You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy is created in the universe and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every BTU of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid the energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point, you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off you like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue in the heat of our own lives.

And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you...that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound, and that they'll be comforted to know your energy is still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone. You're just less orderly."

A little thing I found about yoga, and grieving, and goodbyes

This is How We Say Goodbye

by Bryonie Wise

via elephantjournal.com

“Warriorship is so tender, without skin, without tissue, naked and raw. It is soft and gentle.

You have renounced putting on a new suit of armor. You have renounced growing a thick, hard skin.

You are willing to expose naked flesh, bone, and marrow to the world.”

~ Chögyam Trungpa

This is for you, my love. 

I’ve been sitting for days, it feels like—weeks, or years, even.
My mat, freshly powered by the full blue moon sits beside me as I work; every time I walk by, I can feel her whisper, It’s time to move. 

Tonight, I could hear her, loud and clear; despite the heavy of my body and the weight of lungs, full of grief and exhaustion—I knew she was right: now was the time to move. 
And so, this moment that I had been anticipating, this moment that I had been avoiding, down to the tear drops I knew would fall the moment I stepped onto her sacred surface, was happening.
I stripped myself bare, down to my flesh and bones and beating heart, and unrolled my mat, turning up my latest musical love affair.

Here I go, I thought. Here I go, on my own, alone—me and my tears.

But they didn’t—the tears, which have been leaving little puddles everywhere I go, didn’t fall from my eyes and my body didn’t crumble to the ground.
Instead, I felt myself swell with strength—my body moved, my breath took over and I could feel myself shed the layers of grief and sorrow that had begun to weigh me down.
I took myself by surprise, of that, there is no doubt. I moved and moved and played with standing on my hands and standing on my head—I could smell my body and watch my rolls as I moved, my eye at first critical and then softening into my marks.
I took myself through backbend after backbend, spending longer and longer each time, begging my lungs to shake themselves free of the quicksand of grief that was clinging on as if it was the end of the world.
The truth of is this is the end of a chapter; the end of my world as I know it and everything is both an ending and a new beginning; it’s terrifying.
I thought that great love, real love, true love, was the kind that would sustain and hold us through every storm that would pass; I thought that what it meant to be in love was to hold on for dear life and to never let go, no matter how violent the waves.

But what I am learning is that even in the goodbye, we can love like the ocean.

And that maybe, this love, the love that starts the process of unwinding two lives, two beating hearts; the love that slowly starts to separate books that have hugged together for some time on the shelves, a thin layer of dust marrying them together; the love that stacks dishes and cutlery that have become the best of friends—the love that talks about where the four-legged beast that I jokingly-but-very-seriously call our kid is going to live, is the biggest love that there is.
Goodbyes, though full of sad nights relearning how to take a starfish shape in the bed at night, of awkward conversations and the random explosion of tears, are when our love shines through in its purest form.
The day I find a new place to lay my head, I will dream of the creak in the stairs and the dance of light through the windows in this old house; I will remember the weight of you sinking into bed beside me, late at night or early in the morning, our four-legged love carving a space for himself between us.
I will remember each moment, for they are imprinted in my heart, that beating, broken, bloody thing in my chest.
I will dream of you happy and free—of your hands in the dirt and your eyes shaped like a camera, a jungle of garden surrounding your silver-headed self.
I think of this all, as I move, slower now and sink deeper, now.
I settle my body into stillness but for a moment; the grief is not gone but the anxiety has lessened enough for me to stop moving and to feel this vibrate through my heart:

We will recover from this, I know; some day soon, I will laugh out loud at more than animals on trampolines—and light will bounce back into your eyes as we speak. Our story will always be ours, and we have learned, through this surreal, foreign land, what love truly is. 

For now, I will learn how to say goodbye in these sweet and sorrowful days, and continue to love as fiercely as the sea.

 

I am my mother's daughter.

At 4:09 p.m. on Friday, March 25th, 2016, one day after her 58th anniversary of marriage to my father, my mother quietly died. It had been a busy few days; she had come home for good from the hospital only on Wednesday, her last wish to be at home. That day, she stared out her front window for hours from the hospital bed set up in the living room. Visitors came and went, there were bites of pudding and strawberry and saltine. And there was waiting.

Even when a death is impending and expected, even when the last few months or years of life have been full of pain, when it suddenly starts happening in earnest, when the focus becomes getting busy dying instead of getting busy living, it all seems too sudden and fast. In the last three weeks, I felt my mother's rapid decline and started grasping, gasping, desperate to keep her close.

Birth, living, dying, death. They are all messy and natural and mundane, and yet feel like they should be so much more important. How dare the world continue to go on as if nothing is wrong when I am losing my mother? I will never again smell the hollow of her neck that I associate with comfort; never hear her say, "I love you," or "Oh, for fun!" with a clap of her arthritic hands when she finds something particularly enjoyable. I tally the losses, all the little things that I wish I'd realized were for the last time. I was mildly insulted that her garden hadn't violated every law of nature and exploded with blooms a month or two early, just for her.

My mother taught us, all of us, about unconditional love. She taught us both in word and in action that people are who they are and are worthy of love regardless of their imperfections. She taught gentleness, but was the fiercest mama bear, and we, all of her children, learned from that, and our children, her grandchildren, may or may not appreciate it. She was a matriarch who ruled with a wide open heart and knotted apron strings, who taught us well and then let us find our own wings to fly, even when those wings took us in a direction she'd rather we not have gone- and then, even then, she loved us anyway.

I have said, and heard this echoed by my sisters, that I want to be exactly like my mom when I grow up. I feel so lucky to have called her friend in my adult years, although the road there was rocky. Her love of flowers, trees, and all things nature (except for squirrels) is something she passed on, as well. I will always feel most at peace with my hands or feet in the dirt, smelling soil rich with life and potential, coaxing plants from seed or bulb.

Friday morning didn't feel special. Uncle Bruce, Mom's oldest living brother, and his wife, Kathy, were visiting. We ate breakfast, I rubbed Mama with essential oils, gave her medication and sponged her mouth out with lemon water. The hospice nurse came, and then the bath aide, for a "spit and polish." They left, and Dad and Cheryl went out for groceries.

Mom died not fifteen minutes later. It was so quiet, and gentle, and unexceptional, the leaving of this exceptional woman. A deep breath, and then another, and then no more. I held her in my arms, told her she was loved, and let her go, my head on her chest, listening to her generous heart beat its last beats. And then I smelled that spot at the hollow of her throat, and I rubbed her down with oil and tears and so much love.

I am my mother's daughter. I am reminded of this every time I look in the mirror, every time I speak to my children, every time I dig in the dirt or feel too much or bake a loaf of bread or hold my children close. I am my mother's daughter, and I can't imagine it any other way.

I did not cry on Wednesday.

I feel like I should have. And I didn't cry the week before that, or the first week of October, or any of the other times over the last year that we have lost multiple people to absolutely senseless violence.

I didn't cry because I am so very numb. Do you understand? There have been so many appalling crimes against humanity, the earth, and the inhabitants of it in my lifetime that I am just done. I am especially done when I think about the two biggest reasons for these crimes:

Religion and Profit.

Late last night, my children and I sat together around the island in the hub of our home--the kitchen. I'd probably had a little too much to drink; nothing like alcohol to numb the numbness, right? I apologized to their sweet and shining faces for the world they are inheriting. I charged them with saving the world, and do you know what they asked?

"How, Mama?"

I don't know. I don't know, dear ones. I do know that in the last twenty years, I have seen the rights of many taken away: rights that are inalienable, that shouldn't be taken away. I have seen blame placed. I have seen rampant fear fed and fueled by a media that hasn't been impartial for a very long time. I have seen so many people form opinions from sound bites and headlines without question or further investigation, without considering where the information is coming from.

I feel that I've failed you both; that this world, in the beginning of the sixth mass extinction (yes, really, and if you haven't read the research, I'd recommend pulling your head out of the sand), is no longer salvageable. But we can't think that way, or we might as well all just drown ourselves now. We have to try, for as long as we have this crazy beautiful world, we have to try to save it. And "thoughts and prayers" just aren't going to cut it.

So this morning, while I watched the sun come up and listened to the train and watched the crows converging to some distant, unknowable place, I thought about how. And this is what I came up with.

Find your passion. The world is too full of injustices to focus on all of it; you will find yourself overwhelmed. Find something that you are passionate about and fight. Work your ass off to be heard, to make it right. Environment, gun control, feminism, animal rights, ecology. . .whatever cause makes your heart ignite. Make your life about serving those people and causes who need a voice.

Don't waste yourself on silly pettiness. Don't stoop to talking shit about others, don't numb your brain with useless fodder. We are so over-inundated with media, unimportant creams and clothes and surgeries and diets and trolling, opinion pieces vomited from behind the anonymity of computer screens. Understand that you can choose what to let in to your brain, and you can choose what you think about it. And if you don't agree, or you don't like it, and you don't find it important enough to change it, leave it be and walk away.

Think critically. Always. Consider the source of everything. Who is profiting from the information? Where is the proof? Can the information be backed up from other, independent sources? Is the information or proof based on testimonials? Can the proof be reproduced? Are those spouting or selling the information being paid or benefiting in some way? Does the information mesh with what you already know to be true? Does it challenge your beliefs? Analyze your reaction to the information. What are questions you can ask about it?

Find common ground. It is so easy to stay safe in and among people and environments we are comfortable with, but nothing gets done when we are divisive and fighting, and as long as we are all taking sides, we will not find common ground. If we can agree on a few things- for example, that mass shootings shouldn't happen, and are definitely a problem in the U.S.- then we can start looking at what can be done about them. That is how this country is supposed to work. We learned it in preschool, watching Sesame Street- cooperation, and compromise. An awful lot of people in Washington have forgotten that.

Speak with integrity and honor. Follow your well-thought and researched words with action. Don't bother with lip service, and don't waste your time on those who do. And for fucksake, don't bother praying.

you can be the ripest, juciest peach in the world. . .

Or your job can be the best, most amazing, dream job come true in the world...

But that doesn't mean that it's the best job in the world for you. Or that you like peaches. Or something.

I started my dream job last January. 911 call taking. An incredible position with a really great group of people in a supportive environment with a director who "gets it." I was learning new things every. single. day. My 12 hour shifts allowed for several days off a week with my family. The benefits were amazing. I got to help people, be present for people, bear witness to their worst and darkest days, and say, "I am here for you until help arrives."

And then I started actual dispatch training. I hated it. I felt such a disconnect from everything I loved about call taking. I felt like many of the officers I dispatched for didn't take their safety nearly as seriously as I did. I wrestled with my heart about what I would possibly do if I lost one of those officers on my watch. My resting heart rate, usually in the low 60s, shot up to 98. Ninety-eight. That is not healthy, especially when you have a history of PSVT. I never took my blood pressure, but I'm sure it was sky high, too. I stopped eating much at all, I started drinking more coffee and eating more sugar. I stopped sleeping much. I stopped exercising, period. No yoga, no running, no weights. I had a really bad flare up of my rheumatoid arthritis in my fingers. I was a freaking mess.

I was in survival mode. I felt a strangely physical sensation of a disconnect between my head and my body, like I was a life-sized bobble head. Yes, really. I don't recommend it. In hindsight, I now recognize what was happening--I had to stop doing all the things I do to keep me sane and healthy, because, in my world, this new job was incompatible with my sanity and my health, and had I continued to do all the things that keep me mentally and physically healthy, I would have recognized and stopped that much sooner.

But I didn't. I kept on because I wanted to be a perfect fit for the job. I wanted to provide for my family, make sure they were healthy and taken care of. But because Mama is the glue in our house, the rest of the family was suffering. Yes, we had great health insurance and a nice monetary cushion, but most of that money was spent eating out or on groceries that went to waste, since default food for my Others is cereal. I couldn't remember the last time our house smelled like a home-cooked meal, or freshly baked bread, and--most distressing--I couldn't remember the last time the walls of our house had rung with laughter.

That was unacceptable. So I quit.

I've had three job offers. I accepted one. I'll let you know when it comes through.

Our relationships, our interactions, our interconnectedness in this web of humanity. . .these are what are important. We get this one life. I'm not going to waste it.

who knew you could be stuck in such a deep, dark hole at this high an elevation?

so much has changed in the last year, and yet so much has remained the same.

 I finally have a job that gives us some breathing room financially, and it is something that I love doing and that challenges me every day.  It also, unfortunately, provides me with an even more skewed view of the world, as I come in contact with people having the worst days of their lives for 12 hours straight, 4 days in a row.

I have friends in the high desert, I suppose.  People who, if I could get out from under this web of grief, would be excellent company.  I feel, though, like I've been the one putting out the effort repeatedly, with no return on the investment. This saddens me, and at some point I just decided to quit expending the energy.

That left me with two things--family and home. Home is no longer a sanctuary; the neighborhood where we had but one street of houses next to us when we bought our house two years ago has become one of the busiest roads in our area of town.  In just over a year, we had two major subdivisions pop up around us.  I can no longer sit in my yard and think.  Even inside, I have the constant sound of traffic.  Family is still the same, with one child always away, one child with me, and husband working over the mountain every week.

I miss my mother in law almost every day.  I am so grateful I was able to spend some of her last days with her.  I miss my own mother daily, too, and she isn't even gone yet, but I know the day is coming. I think I would like to just curl up with my head in her lap for a very long while.

I am done with all of this. I have a desperate need to look within, to calm my heart and soul, but the chatter and noise surrounding me is so loud it prevents me from doing so.

the days passed with morphine and roses

The phone rang this morning at 0220.  "It's done," my husband said, his voice low and broken.  "She's gone."

On Sunday morning, as Ma declined all her regular medications and any treats but ice chips and ginger ale, after I'd picked the dead flowers out of bouquets covering every surface and brought in new blooms from her garden to freshen up her night table, I started thinking about what we as a culture do for ritual in death and dying, and what I came up with was sorely lacking.  I hate funerals and always have; I swore the wake I attended at age 19 for my friend Tree was the last funeral I would be present at- I had lost 15 people dear to me in less than 7 years, and after multiple funerals accompanied by wracking sobs, perfumed black clothing, and waxy corpses, found that modern religious (and secular) death rituals kind of suck.

So.  I googled it.  I knew that I would not be present for Ma's death, knew that she would last maybe to Tuesday, but I wanted to do something to recognize this work of dying, something to celebrate the passing of her.  Being an atheist, the rituals of most Christian groups didn't appeal to me, but I loved the simplicity of the bathing and wrapping of the body after death that turned up again and again in so many religious customs.  I had been massaging Ma's swollen feet and legs with lemon and lavender essential oils every day, anyway, and so when I read that pagans give baths to their dead and dying with rosemary to cleanse and protect the body on its journey, it seemed natural to add that to the others.  This time, though, I worked every bit of Ma's bare skin I could find.  I gave her an angel bath of oil and fragrance and love, and she watched me, eyes locked on mine, and I couldn't help but cry. 

Like most rituals of dying--in which the ceremonies are more for the living than the dying--this bathing was more for me than for her, my way of saying thank you and goodbye to this woman I've loved for a few years but have just recently grown to admire for her stubbornness and tenacity, her optimism and her great love of family, her unwillingness to complain even in the midst of great pain, and her wide open, forgiving heart.

Sunday's sun tipped toward the west and it was time for me to leave, to get back to Bend and the work of living.  I leaned in close to tell her goodbye-- that I was leaving and likely wouldn't see her again.  She said, "No."  And held me close, and I told her that I didn't think her Jesus would come for her while there was a heathen in the house.  She laughed and said she'd like to see me in heaven.  I told her I didn't think that was likely.

I was so happy just knowing her here.

cancer is satan and other stories we tell ourselves to get by

It has been five days since I saw Ma last.  We expect a physical decline, but really, she still looks pretty good.  It is her medication changes and her vital signs that tell her story, her slide into sleep that isn't chemical sedation but rather an increase in CO2 and the metabolic changes as her body dies.  Although medically competent to care for Ma, I feel judgement (where there likely is none) from family and her church members-- why should the heathen new daughter-in-law be caring for this woman?  Sometimes I feel Ma's impatience, too-- that maybe the other daughter in law does a better job, or anticipates her needs more, or whatever.  And then I feel really, horribly selfish, because of course Ma's frustration has very little to do with me.  She is working very very hard doing exactly what she needs to be doing, and it is not easy.  Death is a process, and my job is to be supportive of her and make her comfortable and give her whatever she wants and needs.

Today what Ma wants is cold.  An ice cold wet washcloth for her forehead, ice chips and cold ginger ale to sip at bedside, a foot and calf massage with peppermint essential oil and a fan blowing on her feet after.  Every window in this house is open.  I'm shivering on the couch and she is complaining that she is hot.  And then, inexplicably, she wants to sit up.  I get her situated on the edge of the bed and await further instruction.

"Those plants out there need water," she says.  And sure enough, they do.  We are so focused on caring for her that things that aren't going to matter in a week when she is dead (like gift plants that will be thrown out) aren't high on the list of priorities.  But what Ma wants, Ma gets.  I remember her crowing exactly that two weeks ago, this woman who worked her whole life making sure everyone else got what they needed.   She isn't saying that now; frankly, she is saying very little.  The tumors are pressed up against the fundus of her stomach, which doesn't like things pressed up against it.  Hence, the persistent nausea.  They combine with the ascites in her belly and push up against Ma's diaphragm.  She is out of breath now brushing her teeth or talking too much.

The hospice nurse says that ideally, what will happen is that Ma's oxygen will continue to fall and her CO2 will continue to rise, putting her in a semi-euphoric state from which she will enter a coma and slip peacefully away.

* * *

It has only been a day.  So much of what I wanted to remember to write down about her I have already forgotten--things that, when they happened yesterday, I already knew would never be happening again.  Yesterday morning on a walk around the house, I found the most amazing moth.  My husband brought it inside to show her, and I laughed at first, thinking, "how funny.  He still brings bugs inside to show his mama."  And how quickly that laughter turned so very bittersweet as I realized that, like so many other things, it would be the last time.

Two visitors yesterday, the pastor who comes by every day and then a couple of ladies from church.  I wonder where the rest of them are; I know that in the church I grew up in, the members would have organized weeks ago, and there would be food loaded on tables and counters, the house would be spotless, the yard would have been weeded.  This is a church Ma has devoted her life to, and it angers me that so few of its members are showing much supposed Christ-like love.  Except prayer.  They sure do pray a lot.  They even mention on her facebook page, the one she has been too weak to check for almost 14 days, how much they are praying for her.  A couple have even mentioned that they are praying for her to be cancer free.  She rolls her eyes when I tell her about it and says, "they really don't get it, do they?"  The pastor sits bedside; I give them what little privacy there is by sitting in the living room.  I hear him say, "so your whole family has gone to Washington for the weekend!"  And after a pause, her pointed reply, "not all of them.  Some are still here with me."  The pastor and the church ladies thank me profusely for being here, as have other church members who have stopped by.  As if this is a chore.  As if I could be anywhere else.

Last night, after her youngest son had gone to bed, I asked her, as I do frequently, if there was anything she needed.  As she generally does, she shook her head and said, "no."  But then she got this stern look on her face, and she said, "I need to die.  Can you do that?"  I went to her and held her soft, smooth hands, and she said, "can't I just have a whole bunch of morphine?  Wouldn't that do it?  I've thought about this."  And I bit my lip to keep from crying as she looked at me and realization dawned on her that her god wouldn't approve.  "That would be suicide, wouldn't it.  And that would be wrong.  I just can't do this anymore.  I am done.  I am done talking, I am worn out, I am so ready.  But I don't know what else I need to do for Jesus to come get me."  I had no answer for that that she would want to hear.  So we talked about it, and I agreed that we could give her the maximum dose of morphine possible to keep her sedated without killing her.  She said no more phone calls, no more visitors except family and pastor.

She is done.  She is ready.  And I cannot think of any compassionate god that would prolong the life of someone so miserable and so desperate to go back home to Him.

so this is hospice

Ma is dying.  She says she is ready, that she isn't afraid, that she is pretty sure that what will happen is that she will to go to sleep and then wake up to the voice of Jesus calling her name. This gives her comfort.  Yesterday she grabbed my hands, asked me to open my heart and let Jesus in. I smiled and listened, but I won't lie to a dying woman.  She tells me she loves me even though I don't believe in god.
This is awkward.  Dying is awkward, and messy, and beautiful. And it doesn't matter how good your intentions are, toes are going to get stepped on (literally and figuratively), feelings are going to get hurt, tempers are going to snap, and commodes are going to tip.  Ma urps every now and again, even with her nausea meds.  I think she is surprised at how much the nausea is getting to her.
All the people who love her gather in clumps around her.  They trip over each other in bedroom and kitchen.  I stand helplessly with two of Ma's friends in the kitchen, waiting to throw away the lid of a pudding cup.  If this were my family, I'd give a playful nudge on their tushes and say, "'scuse your butt!" But they aren't family.  They are strangers to me and the only thing we have in common is Ma.
They are in there now, saying goodbye.  The grief is frightening, is explosive.  It is as messy as the dying is, as messy as love.  Ma is comforting them, absolving them for leaving in the middle of this.  And they are desperate to stay.  I have no part of this.  I am the daughter in law, and I have only been in the picture 7 years, not the 30 years of these friends, definitely not the decades of the other daughter in law.
I am here because I love this woman and I love her son.  I am here to offer emotional support and my medical training.  And in the middle of the night, as Ma is waiting to go to the bathroom and I am struggling with the legs of the commode, trying to get the stupid notch locked evenly on each one, I wonder what the hell I am doing and how I am failing so spectacularly.  But we do the best we can.
My husband's father showed up today with the woman he left Ma for all those years ago.  Left her with three boys to raise all by herself.  I think they were seeking forgiveness, even though they wouldn't admit it. Bless Ma.  I think she had forgiven them long ago, and told them so.  They left, finally, had someplace they suddenly had to be. And she has been sleeping ever since.
All these people calling, crying, praying at her.  And she receives them, listens to them, loves them.  Prays with them.  And then sleeps, because they exhaust her.

  Ma is dying.  As we all are.

sometimes it feels as if all the grief in the world has settled in my heart

You know how sometimes, if you can ignore something or pretend it away, you can stave off the inevitable?

Yeah, me neither.  That doesn't, however, prevent me from trying.

Jem died at the beginning of November, peacefully, at home, in my arms.  Just the daughter and I were here; the males in the family were over in the valley-- Rock Star at work, the son with his dad.  It was almost anticlimactic, really.  I don't understand sometimes why death, which is the second most momentous occasion in life aside from birth, seems to be a slipping away and then a sudden closed door, regardless of the violence or the length of the process leading up to it.  I do know that Jem's dying and death that morning was beautiful and gentle and near perfect, and I think even at the time I recognized and was grateful for that.

Ma's cancer is this ridiculous uncontrollable thing that I am still trying to make sense of.  I write that and it is a complete sentence, paragraph, story unto itself.  Cancer never makes sense, does it?  I am worried that she will be in this frame of hope and optimism for so long that she will put off doing what she wants to do because she keeps hoping that there will be another spring, another summer, another autumn.  I want to shake her and tell her, "Live this.  Right now.  Recognize the preciousness of what you are experiencing every single day."

That's what I need to be telling myself, of course. I seem to have got myself caught in my own little perfect storm.  Clarity will come, I'm sure.  Something will make sense eventually.  And I'm sure that my mind and my heart and my soul will eventually line up and start communicating, because there are some serious mixed wires in there right now.  I look at all I have and know I should be grateful.  I look at the raw beauty of this place and the way it chisels the people who live here, and I know in my head that it is amazing.  But my soul doesn't recognize it.  My soul looks into the chasm on the drive over the pass and thinks, "I could drive my car right off of that."  And the depth of despair that is driving this subconcious feeling is so hidden and deep I don't know quite what to do with it, or how to fix it.  I am sure I could go all metaphorical and realize that this desire to drive off the road is my soul's way of telling me it is time to jump into the chasm of the unknown.  Mostly it just feels like depression, when it feels like anything at all.

What do you do when home isn't a place, but a person?  My home-- my heart-- drives over the mountains every week to work.  This suddenly feels like a long-distance relationship, and I have never been very good at those.  Rock Star tells me nothing about us has changed, and this is necessary since my first job here didn't turn out to be all that the person who hired me said that it would.  Not to mention that my body feels as though it is betraying me-- pain in my hands and forearms (nerve compression and apparently no-longer-dormant arthritis) that make it difficult to massage, the onset of perimenopause.  And while Rock Star greets this with great humor and gentleness, I feel so very alone sometimes.  Alone and at fault because this was his dream, and yet he is here only half the time.

I wish I were as gentle with myself as he is with me.  I am grateful for his patience, for his support.  But oh, how I miss him when he is gone, my chosen one.  My heart and soul.

Jem

Once upon a time, back before two marriages, two divorces, and two children, not particularly in that order, I was fairly certain I was going to be the crazy cat lady at the end of the block with purple knee socks, purple hair, 17 cats, an assorted additional menagerie, and a serious gin and cigarette habit.  I made it all the way to 7 cats, 3 gerbils, a large fish tank, two foster birds, and one toe-less iguana near the end of the first marriage; with the first pregnancy, my happy zoo found new homes with the anticipation of the work of child-rearing.  All but the felines, who stayed with me.
The last two of those original 7 are all I have left.  Two white kitties, Jem and Scout, rescued as kittens from a dumpster, hand fed until they could eat solid food.  They're 14 now, these brothers, a year older than my eldest, named for literary siblings from my favorite book.  One is fluffy, healthy, vibrant; the other is actively dying.
It's difficult, this work of dying.  A friend of mine was over last week, cuddling Jem in her lap as she sat on the kitchen floor.  "We like to think of death as being instantaneous, but it really isn't," she mused.  "It actually takes a really long time."  And it does.  Jem has had almost three months of borrowed time; he was very ill when we first moved to the high desert, but a change of food and the change of air did wonders for him, and I thought he'd made a turnaround.  But it turns out that it was just a brief reprieve.  For the last month, he has been slowly disintegrating, kidneys failing, respiratory and heart rates increased to compensate for dirty blood.  But so sweet, as usual, this little kitty of mine.
Even after all these years of seeing death, I am not quite sure what to do for him.  Is that wrong?  I don't know what to do because he doesn't understand what is happening.  I can't tell him why he's breathing so hard, why he is so weak, why his proprioreception is so off.  He is not in pain, he still waits eagerly by his food dish every day.  But he can't tell me what he's feeling, and it leaves me to imagine the worst.  I don't know if he wants me to sit with him or leave him alone.  I just don't know.  Every morning I wake up and wonder if this is going to be the morning I find his body, and every morning I go downstairs and there he is, leaning against the refrigerator, waiting for his breakfast.
I've explained this process to the kids, had them say their goodbyes.  We talk about our favorite memories of Jem, we sing to him, our voices wavering through the tears and lumps in our throats.  We brush him gently, scratch under his little chin as he purrs.  I am so grateful to whatever god there is for animals that he had the chance to sit outside in our new yard, eyes closed, sniffing the air; that he had the opportunity to chase butterflies.  And that, I think, chokes me up more than thinking about his wasted body now-- the memory of his surprise and joy as a butterfly flitted past him, and the absolute abandon with which he chased it.  I wish I'd caught a picture of him mid-flight.

we might as well eat cake

My mother-in-law is visiting.  She showed up with some difficult news:  her primary peritoneal carcinoma has returned, four months after her last round of chemo, which we knew-- but her blood work showed marker numbers not at 176, as she had previously told us, but 996.  PPC carries a survival rate akin to that of ovarian cancer--36% at 5 years with rigorous, aggressive treatment and surgery, less without.  So Ma has decided that at the beginning of October, almost a year to the day of her first chemo treatment, 8 months after chemo and surgery had removed all traces of the previous tumors in her belly, she will start a different kind of chemo, this one designed not to eradicate tumors but to reduce and control them so she may lengthen what little time she has left.  She told us this after we had finished eating, sons and wives and grandchildren perched on stools and chairs and the couch, sprawling on the floor.  Except for some reason, while she was telling us about her odds (not very good at all) and her plans (nothing on her bucket list except a jet boat down the Rogue River and to visit with friends and family), and who is getting what money and who has power of attorney and how she wants to be buried, she stared right at me.  And it damn near broke my heart when I realized that the reason she was staring at me was because if she looked any of her boys or grandkids in the eye, she wouldn't be able to finish.  Her pride in each of them and her eldest's wife is palpable, and rightfully so.  Every single one of them is a person I am honored to know, in no small part because of her.

It is disconcerting, listening to her speak.  She's always nattered on about this and that, and I've heard many of her stories more than once, but it seems that her focus now is getting as many of these stories out of her heart into the hearts of those she loves and those who love the ones she loves. We have shared stories of our ex-husbands' infidelities, and to hear her tell them makes my heart ache for the woman she was and the little boys my mister and his brothers were.  She told me the only time she ever asked for money was the first time she found out the boys' dad was cheating on her--she figured she better do something since she had kind of let herself go after three babies and a full time evening shift job, so she asked her grandma for some money and she got her hair done up pretty.

It didn't work, of course.  The way she tells the story, however, her desperate trip to the hairdresser reminds me of her cheerful but desperate chemo treatments--it won't work, but she's willing to try, by gum, and if she can suspend disbelief for just long enough, maybe a new hairdo and going without glasses will keep her children's daddy around, and maybe the chemo will work and she'll make it three more years.

It took him five more years to leave for good, but even before the day Ma got her hair done, he was already gone.  And frankly, with as fast as her tumors are growing now, she might as well already be dead.  I cringe to hear her talk about the garden she is going to plant next spring five minutes after telling me that she can't sleep on her stomach because one of the tumors has gotten so big that it presses painfully against her bladder.

We have been planning this visit for a couple of months, now, right after Ma got the original news.  I've had a menu well-thought out and shopped for, heavy on the veggies, smoothies, raw, whole foods with no meat, dairy, or sugar.  We will stick with that, of course, but when you've been given six months to live, I think it's okay to eat outside the lines.  Diet isn't going to change anything now, and in a couple of months when all she can have is liquid because the tumors are choking her bowels, I don't want her to regret that she didn't get to eat food she likes.

I don't know what to think of this woman.  I find her cheerfulness and belief in miracles to be naive, but I know that they bring her comfort, and for a long time they are all she had.  I can't begin to understand how it must feel to know so acutely that the body you live in is actively dying.  Ma and the mister and the daughter and I all played Sorry! the other day, and the banality of it almost killed me until I realized that really, this is all she wants--to be with her people in the day to day of it, to find joy in the mundane.  When we came home from the gym and I saw her sitting in the sun on the back porch, eyes closed, head back, face tilted to catch the warmth and brightness, I had to bite my fingers to quell the grief suddenly welling up inside me.  I have spent six years rolling my eyes at her, six years sighing, six years holding my tongue, six years wasting time.  I wish I had taken a picture of her, out there on the porch.  I wish we had all eaten cake for breakfast.

living the life of the uninsured

Lown-Ganong-Levine.  Those are the last names of the three physicians who "discovered" the diagnosis I was given two years ago (after performing an EKG on myself at work when I felt my heart try to run a marathon while I was sitting at the computer, charting), a re-entry tachycardia characterized by a short PR interval, no delta wave, and the tendency of the heart to jump into paroxysmal tachycardia at the slightest hint of aerobic exercise, not to mention frequent premature ventricular contractions and occasional runs of paroxysmal tachycardia for no reason at all.  Lown, Ganong, and Levine apparently decided that they wouldn't be outdone by Wolff-Parkinson-White, the trio who discovered another self-named re-entry tachycardia also characterized by a shortened PR interval, but differentiating itself by having a delta wave.

I knew what WPW was, as well as all that other mumbo jumbo, being a paramedic, but I had never heard of LGL.  In fact, when I Googled it, what I found was that LGL is considered an outdated diagnosis, and it falls under the umbrella diagnosis of PSVT, and nobody really knows what causes it or how to cure it, but it can be controlled by medications that lower the heart rate and prevent it from increasing.  Medications I am unable to take because my resting heart rate lives in the 50-60 beats per minute zone, and if I were to take a medication to control my heart rate, I would most likely pass out any time I tried to stand up.

That is not at all helpful.

I should mention, at this point, that this "diagnosis" came on the fly from a couple of different sources, none of whom were really within their scope of practice to diagnose in the first place.  However, the insurance that came with my horribly underpaid job at the urgent care had a $5000 deductible and a $70 specialist co-pay, which meant that I wouldn't be seeing a cardiologist anytime soon.  Some of my cohorts and I performed a ghetto-style stress test during a slow stretch at work, putting me on a treadmill and hooking me up to the EKG machine just to make sure that when my heart rate shot up to 190 that at least it stayed regular, with no underlying dysrhythmias.  That was quite fun for everyone but me.  I found some relief with acupuncture at a community clinic-- twice weekly treatments prevented my heart from going above 165 during aerobic exercise, but even at $20 per treatment, that added up quickly.

The physicians I worked for hemmed and hawed and told me I really should go see a specialist, but they understood my financial predicament and were willing to care for and monitor my condition, so over the last two years I've felt fairly safe knowing that if anything did happen, my heart would be in good hands--theirs.

And then we moved.

Now, I find myself with no health insurance at all (not even catastrophic, with its $5000 deductible), and a potentially fatal cardiac condition.  Life has suddenly become terrifying.  For the first few weeks after we moved, I lived in fear that I would twist an ankle, fall on a wrist, cut myself badly enough that I would require sutures.  Then I started worrying that I would contract pneumonia again, or get a UTI.  I know what a self-pay urgent care visit costs for lab tests, x-rays, point of care testing, and medication.  It is not cheap.  Specialists cost even more. And in the high desert, acupuncture isn't cheap, either-- at the community clinic here, one treatment costs $45, and that's at the bottom of their sliding scale.

I have, at times, in the last few months, gotten incredibly depressed at what this means for me.  If I were to be hit by a car, found unconscious, fall down a mountain (snowboarding or hiking), break a bone. . .if my heart goes into PSVT and doesn't paroxysmally go out of it, I will need to go to a hospital, and the bills will bankrupt me.  End of story. 

I saw first hand in my work on an ambulance, in the ER, and at an urgent care how desperate the need for a single payer health care system is, and if you don't think it has anything to do with you because you happen to have fantastic health insurance, you are very, very wrong.  There are people presenting to ERs day in and day out with primary care issues, people who go to the ER because they have no money for primary care.  The ER must evaluate them regardless of ability to pay due to EMTALA laws.  These patients have no preventative care, no education regarding wellness, no resources except the beleaguered health care providers in the ER who don't have the time or the inclination to discuss well-being and general health, which means that those patients are going to be right back to the ER with their next headache, abdominal pain, etc.  Every uninsured patient that walks in to an ER becomes the burden of the insured.  Follow the loop, here:  uninsured patient = probable unpayment of bill = hospital write off = increased hospital billing rates to insurance companies = increased insurance costs for the insured.  Here's the icing on the health care cake-- the higher the rates the hospital bills out at, the less likely the uninsured or underinsured are going to be able to pay the cost.  This is the very definition of a vicious cycle.  And I may find myself in the middle of it very soon.