August Gloom

My heart has been so heavy the past few weeks. Typically I can "talk my self out of feeling this way" but this time, not so much. I should preface that August is always the toughest month of the year for me. It holds the anniversary of both my Dad and sister's passing which brings up so many triggers. I normally just like to pretend like the first three weeks of August don't happen; disassociate and come back to myself after August 22nd just in time to celebrate my birthday. This year I am FEELING everything. It almost seems like my defensive armor is lost or something. There are some bright spots---I got to see two souls I adore wed one another and dance at their wedding under the stars while the waves crashed into the shore behind us. My body aches still for moving in ways it hasn't in 18 months and to be amongst friends in this type of gathering sharing community, support, and love was fuel to keep me going. My bright, brilliant girl got to return to school full time and I get to witness a completely reawakened child whose zest for learning and peer connection returned within a matter of days. I got to meet my dear cousins new baby and hold her and rock her and sing to and giggle with her. It is a reminder that life goes on and what's at stake is for that next generation. My work is fulfilling in ways I had never known or experienced before and I have a roof over but my head, food in the fridge, and lots of love and support. But I also witnessed a country overthrown by terrorism and humans--- peoples brothers, sons, fathers, and friends---cling to an airplane as it departed only to fall to their death live on camera because the fear of remaining there was too bleak and scary. And those were only the men, which indicates to me that the women and girls are in an even worse position. I don't know about y'all, but much like the memory permanently tattooed in my brain of those people jumping from the twin towers twenty years ago, I am almost certain I'll never be able to unsee it. We are so deeply divided and a global pandemic rages on with mutant variants determined to take us all down, but our own philosophical or personal beliefs interject to banish the very things that could save us all and cause further divisiveness. Another domestic white terrorist stood in front of our nations capitol for hours yesterday threatening to blow it up with bombs he had strapped to himself. It barely made a blip on the news and we've all seemed to forget that home-grown terrorists stormed our capitol THIS year, causing anarchy while some people stood at home and cheered them on. Everyone is tired. Everyone is beat down. And each day seems to bring something new and more damning than the day before it. Due to all of this, so much of the grief process feels stolen and taken from me. My Mom has been gone over eight months. She died amidst the second (or was it third? Maybe fourth?) wave of COVID-19. Her hospice was on lockdown and we had to rotate in and out following changing rules by the hour based on positive case rates and other factors. We were the LUCKY ones too; so many people have had to say goodbye to their people over video or worse yet, no chance to say goodbye. Virtual funerals are better than no funerals I suppose, but it's just not the same. The next moment, people had to return to their chaotic lives and keep "figuring it all out" while those who loved her the most are just left reeling. It's all so...unfinished. A friend and colleague said to me, "life just is different when the person who brought you into the world is no longer in it anymore." I'm an orphan whose seen the dead body of both parents and a sister as they leave this earth before my fourtieth birthday. It sucks and it feels unfair. It is unfair. I know I'll be able to pull myself up from my bootstraps and keep it moving. In a few hours, I'll login and give my all to my work and then submit some stuff for my doctoral program and probably giggle with my husband at a funny line Kathy Hilton says on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills or text my daughter about who the new Head of Household might be on Big Brother. But right now, I just want to throw a bit of a fit. Kick and scream, shout and cry. The end.

Heavenly Covens

How does one feel in the world when the nucleus is gone? Or in my case the multiple, being nuclei? Where are they, my beloveds? Are they together? If not, do they convene when visiting or thinking of me? I like to think of it like a circle, a heavenly coven almost, or not quite, I am not really sure exactly. But doesn't that sound nice? My sister, the one who knew the real me fixing herself a nice cup of tea, just a tad sweet but strong nodes of chai or camomile. Once to the perfect temperature (is there temperature there or is it always a perfect 78 degrees outside) heads out of her floating cabin, hovers ever so gently over to Dad's hut as to not disrupt or spill or tea. Dad's place is much more masculine but equally as beautiful as sisters with strange and colorful artwork that inspires him because he couldn't see all color here on earth. They lock hands, sisters other still grasping the mug as they float over to Moms place. She's new in town and still getting her place just right, yet she insists on hosting for the coven visits to me. "I brought him into this world" she says and Dad and sister giggle at her to remind her there is no more THIS WORLD. I picture her place almost like a birds nest, but instead of chirping its Motown hits (only the REALLY good ones) playing ever so gently in the background. She can't decide on decor, sometimes when she starts to think about it she remembers that I am still here and instead of going to heaven's version of West Elm or Restoration Hardware, she instead does what all moms do and checks in to make sure I am OK instead. The decor can wait when baby bird is still so completely broken. Cross legged on the floor and hands clasped they tune into me. My three. In so many ways I want to be there with them. It's so completely messed up that I don't get to participate. I'm not saying I want to die, but I have always had FOMO, and a heavenly yoga-esque circle meetings with my favorites makes me yearn to hear the laughter, pay attention to the soft sips of tea, catch those only-with-these-people side glances and ways that we could make fun of one another, but strike and kill anyone else who even said boo about one of us individually. I am not yet forty and my three are gone. For now. Is it strange that I always do this math? If I live til ninety, I would've only had Dad for 15% of my life, sister for 33%, and mother for 40% of my earthly time. Total bummer. Totally and completely unfair. Grief is such a strange and intense ride. And I've never been a real thrill seeker to be honest. Where else other than on a risky endeavor (think Ninja ride at Six Flags or something similar) do you cry, laugh, scream, fly, fall, shake, be still and slow your breathing, feel your breathing rise and fall in miliseconds, and end with wiping tears away while yelling to the attendant, "again, again?" To me, that's how I feel most days and times. When people lovingly check in with me to see how I am doing (which I am so grateful for) I sometimes just shrug my shoulders because explaining THAT feeling to them as it swirls inside of me is almost impossible. You can't really put words into it while you're on the ride, and some parts of you feel like your insides will literally fall out if you open your mouth or try to speak. Look, I know loss. Very well. It's excruciating and there is absolutely zero way around that. As much as I want someone to take it away, make is subside (even if just for a day or two), when it came down to it, I wouldn't let them. What these three have given and taken from me is only for me and I hold it so tightly that I'd claw and fight anyone who ever attempted to remove or release any of it. It's mine. They were mine.

Mom

Bleh....this is the post I've been dreading writing for weeks although I know it's important to work through, and my process always includes the written word. I lost my Mom on December 5th, 2020 after her battle with cancer. Although I was there in the room with her on the moment she transitioned out of this life, it's still shocking to my system in so many ways to even see these words in some sort of formal declaration. I suppose part of me is just waiting for her to call or walk through the front door after going on a vacation or being away for a few months. Those that knew us know that we were the best of friends, and I believe the word Mama's boy doesn't even touch our bond or the way I felt about her. It wasn't unusual for us to talk on the phone for hours, sometimes twice a day. People would often wonder, what do you two even talk about for so long all of the time? We talked about EVERYTHING. My mother wanted to know me deeply, she was inquisitive about every aspect of my life. Perhaps what I miss most at this very moment is having THAT, a person who cared about how I felt about my work performance, how and what my life and friends and spouse and child were REALLY like from my perspective, what my fears about life entailed, made sure that I said "I love you" when hanging up the phone with my spouse (instead of 'love ya'), and most of all made sure to remind me that I needed to 'stop and smell the roses.' I remember one trip to Los Angeles where Mom and I were driving down a palm-tree-lined street and there was this beautiful overhang on one home's fence of pink and purple flowers enraptured by beautiful ivy and greenery. Mom made me drive around the block and park in front of the house. It was a drive I took often and she said, "How can you drive by this and not stop to absorb it all?" We stayed only for a few minutes, she wanted a photo of the beautiful flowers and moreso I think wanted to remind me to slow down and appreciate the beauty all around me. She wasn't pushy, but she wouldn't accept defeat either. In the way that only a Mom can do, she would push me without being pushy. Mom loved life. She had many "careers" in her short 59 years, many of them centered around art and beauty. She was a hard worker. She'd also want me to write that down here. She was also flawed, and often stubborn. She was deeply emotional. She was all of those things, and somehow found a way to find the silver lining in life. Many might be surprised by this but Mom and I also engaged in frequent heated debates. I think she found surprise in some of my opinions on life, especially those that seemed so far opposite of those she held about important topics. I remember her once saying, "I just don't understand how someone raised by me can have these opinions on what I see as fundamentally opposed to my own." A few weeks later, after what I would call one of our hardest talks about a very sensitive topic, she called to say she had thought a lot about it and knew deep down her role was to support me no matter what, and she also wasn't going to change her mind but that she also knew she wasn't going to change mine either. It was in these moments that I find so much peace right now. Isn't that what parenting and unconditional love really look like? I wish I had the words to tell her that back then because now I am only starting to realize all of the gifts she gave to me regularly and how impactful that was to me. While she could freely debate or push me on just about anything and everything, God help anyone else who ever even slightly tried to come for me. At '5 feet nothing' as she would say often, the lioness was ever protective of her children. Plus I was the perfect son, so what was there for anyone else to complain about? When I came out at 28, Mom went into overdrive. She read, she blogged, and she made sure to always tell me that absolutely nothing was wrong with me and she was so happy I was brave enough to live in my truth. When I met and married my husband, my Mom fell deeply in love with him as well. She couldn't begin to understand how his own parents couldn't fully embrace their son for the beauty that made him, well him. And she made her life's mission to ensure he knew that she was his parent too. It's a running joke, one I think that will never fully pass, that in some ways Mom loved him more than she did me ('flips own hair'- absolutely impossible by the way but we'll go with it for a moment) and I am so thankful Mom got to see me with the person she prayed for all of my life- someone who adored and cherished me and made me a better person. On the day she checked into the hospital for the final time, Mom called and spoke to him on the phone. I listened and wept from the bathroom as she...in the way she could always do...laid it all out there in love and made sure nothing was left unsaid. Mom wasn't scared to die, but she was scared to leave me behind. She knew what a devastating loss this would be to me, and up to the very last minute she held on for me because as she always said, "she'd step in front of a train for me, no matter where, when, or what" and even in her dying moments she fought to spare me anymore pain or suffering. I've been a frequent participant in the grief process. I lost my dad just before my fouteenth birthday to suicide. I lost my older sister in the summer of 2013 just before my thirtieth birthday to cancer. I've known crying until it hurts, and then just keep going until somehow it stops. This time just feels...different. It wasn't completely unexpected, but wasn't expected either. It's somewhere in the middle. We thought the cancer was gone, after many excruciating surgeries, only to find out it had come back fast and with a vengeance. Cancer completely sucks and is excruciating to watch it take the people you love the most, sparing no expense for goodness or kindness. It takes no mercy. I've been showered in so much love since Mom passed and I am so appreciative of everything and everyone. I've studied grief for a few years, and yet all of the studying and research, all of the outpouring of support, all of the great memories, and all of the previous grief experiences offer very little compensation for the giant sized hole left inside of me. Some days, I can barely get my body to cooperate and get me out of my bed in the morning. Other days, I am up and ready to take on the world by 8 am. I can be doing something one moment and a memory hits me so hard that I literally have to sit down right where I am at and breathe it out for a moment, kind of like getting the wind knocked out of you. Weekend mornings seem to be some of the toughest, as these were part of our ritual, to eat breakfast and FaceTime with Mom while Harper and her chatted and shared laughs in the background at whatever funny filters they could use that week. I would be cooking breakfast and inserting myself into the conversation to ask questions about what ingredients or foods I might need to buy that week to make one of her recipes or what show she had told me about yesterday that we needed to watch. Sabin would wake, and come in to say hello and they'd have their few minutes of video connection. We got a new sofa yesterday (very much needed) and as I sit on it typing this out I am also so saddened that Mom isn't seeing it right now. She had a strong connection to place and space, and would often want tours around the house or for me to send her photos of the background-like my office space setup or how the yard looked when the bounce house for a birthday party to come in a few weeks. I'd like to imagine that today she'd give motherly advice on where the pillows should be positioned on the new sofa, or how much longer I should cook the waffles to get them to the right crispiness. I would appease her and move the pillows, make the dogs get off because the Scotch Guard hasn't been on for 24 hours (which would drive her nutso), and then as soon as we hung up I'd let them back up and eat my 'soggy waffle' in peace. And then she'd call back a few minutes later because she forgot to tell me one special ingredient, where to find it in the grocery store (because Bay Leaves aren't in the produce section, they are for some-odd-reason with the spices) and see that I was eating the soggy waffle and have moved the pillows back and just roll her eyes. Today, the pups get to stay put as we all reminisce and miss her together.