#anyway donnie deserves to look sick and go crazy

[r0b0t1me]

AND BOOM GOES THE DONNIE-MITE !!

[maybeilltellyousometime]

happy birthday is a sad song

I’ve been meaning to write about my mom for a while but the ideas about what I want to say come and go so quickly, I barely have time to save a quick note on my phone to look at later. But it’s raining and foggy here and 5 years ago to the day she had her first heart attack. Today would have been her 53rd birthday. Someone who she wasn’t really friends with wrote on her Facebook that they hope all is well. While I suppose all is well for my mother now, I still feel enraged and want to lash out at this woman. I won’t because it’s not her fault my mother is dead and anyhow I’m sure my brother will be drunk and terrorizing people later tonight because that’s how he deals with his hurt these days. I wonder what my mom would say.

 I find myself thinking about what my mom would say or do almost every day. On the good days, I can hear her voice and advice as clear as a bell in my head. It makes decisions easier and I feel confidant that I knew her well enough and she knew me well enough that I am right in what I hear her saying. Those days are comforting. Those days are easy.

 There are other days when I wish with my whole existence that I could just call her and ask her a question, or have her tell me the entire plot of a movie I’m never going to watch. When I remember those phone calls it gets hard. It stings because I know how much she enjoyed talking to me. How much a mother can love a daughter. Something I am only beginning to scratch the surface of now that I have a daughter of my own. This past week we had to take Vivi to the emergency room because she caught a bad stomach bug. Her skin was grey and she was vomiting and we had to drive through hurricane winds in the middle of the night to get there. I prayed the entire time for my mom to watch out for us, and as I was holding my daughter on my chest on one of those vinyl ER cots, I cried for my own mother. As I was washing every stitch of linen in our house, I closed the door to the bathroom, turned the washer on and cried again because I imagined her here with me. I knew that she wouldn’t make me feel like it was an inconvenience to help. She’d throw her hair into a ponytail, put on some music and start the soup while doing the laundry faster than I’ve ever seen someone do laundry. It’s not that I wanted her here to do all the work. I’d tell her to sit down and stop. But she would do it anyway and she would know how to handle a stomach virus and I would feel less afraid and overwhelmed.

 There are some days where I think maybe I’m glossing things over. Looking back with rose-colored glasses. But I’m not sure that’s it. I guess it’s easy to analyze and make decisions about a relationship when you’re the only one in it. I feel like I finally understand now. I can look at my mother’s faults with grace in hindsight. It’s something I wish I had more of when she was alive. I wish I got off my soapbox sooner. I wish I had known then what I do now. I was immature and ignorant and she didn’t deserve my judgment. Don’t get me wrong. My mother could drive me absolutely insane, and the relationship was rocky at times. She didn’t always make the best decisions. But, they weren’t my decisions to make and now I see that she tried to do the best she could with what she had. When I sit back and look at my mother as a woman, and replay her struggles and pain in my mind mostly I wish I could have mustered up more compassion for her. I would not have handled things and had the ability to keep going the way that she did. But I was selfish, and she allowed me to be and that realization is what made me realize what a mother really is. I wish I could apologize, but sometimes on these days I hear her voice telling me I don’t need to.

 It’s a lonely thing to lose you mother. I guess it’s hard to lose either parent, but my father has been long gone for a long time. Losing your mom is something else entirely. It’s the most sobering and alone I’ve ever felt in my life. Not to discount the family I do have but life as it’s always been for me exploded, burned to the ground and settled into ash. It’s over. My childhood, memories, consistency…a good part of my life went with her. I felt shocked. I still do. The only way I can describe it is that I often feel like I am looking into the quarry in Garden State in relation to my life now. It feels empty and hollow and gigantic and scary. I want to scream at it. I know there are many years ahead that will be filled with the richness of my own family. Where I see a vast, lonely space there will be a life with my own daughter filled with love. It’s just a weird fucking space to live in right now. I never knew how entwined mothers and daughters are. It feels like you lose a limb.

 Mostly I miss her laughter. For all the pain in her life, there was so much more laughter than I gave credit to. I miss her sense of humor. I miss the quirky things that made her Ivy. I miss her company and friendship. I miss her stories. I miss her singing. I miss her smell. I miss how her hands looked and felt when they held mine. I miss giving her haircuts at home and how she would always be excited and feel better and prettier after, even if I felt like I didn’t do much. I miss making stuffed cabbage with her on a winter Sunday and listening to the radio. I had to start listening to podcasts because I literally can not cook and listen to music right now. I miss how much she used to talk. And she talked. A lot. About everything. When she came to live with me I thought I would lose my mind because she would just chatter on and on. But today, I’d give anything to hear her read recipes she found on her Facebook to me or to talk about Donny Osmond. I know she talked so much because maybe she finally had someone to listen to her, and she genuinely liked me. She liked talking to me. She liked spending time with me. Fuck this is so hard.

 I wish she was here for Vivienne. I can’t even write about how much she loved her and how I feel about the life they are missing together. She was close with her grandmother, I was close with my grandmother and this is just ridiculous. It’s absurd. I am angry. I feel cheated and robbed. This is the most bitter pill to swallow.

 I wish she could call my brother and mend our relationship. At this point the gulf is growing wider and more distant every day and I don’t know how to build the bridge. He is all I have left of her and I’m afraid at some point our relationship isn’t going to be repairable.

 I keep telling myself I need to see a therapist to figure this out, but my gut tells me there will be no figuring it out. I’m not going to get over missing my mother. No one does. And I don’t want to move on from it. For all the fixing I planned on doing and all the caretaking I’ve done in my life this is one thing I don’t want to remedy. This cut is deep and the best I can do is stop the bleeding. I’m grateful she is not sick and suffering anymore physically or emotionally. I am grateful that she was able to come live with us and have her time with Viv. I believe she was happy. I just wish we had more time. I wish she was here on her birthday so I could make her a special dinner and Viv could sing to her. I wish David could make stupid, inappropriate jokes at the table to make her laugh. I hope she is with her mom today, enjoying herself, wherever she is. I know we will see her again when we die and I hope everything that has been written about the afterlife being eternal and peaceful is true. I want an eternity of laughter and time with the people I love.

 I’m coming back to NJ at the end of the summer. I plan on having a memorial service for her then so her ashes can be blessed and people she loved can have a chance to say goodbye. Things got so utterly out of control immediately after she passed with the wildfires. I guess things work out a certain way. Her memorial should be in NJ.

 A friend asked me what we are doing today to honor her. I woke up and picked the last 2 of 3 daffodils I planted in my front yard for her, and placed them next to her picture and ashes. They were her favorite flower. (I planted 12 daffodils. 3 sprouted. I wish I could complain to her about it.) Beyond that I don’t know what else to do. If I think about it too much I think I’ll just spend the day crying. I like to think she’s here with me, watching Viv use the potty she bought for her and laughing at all the crazy shit she does all day. I have to believe that she’s here all the time. I guess maybe that belief is the best I’ll be able to love and honor her for the rest of my life.