screw a title, spew a post
Posted: January 9, 2009 Filed under: Uncategorized 8 Comments »For some reason I wanted to call this post "rolling stone" or something like that and I don't know why. Something about "gathering no moss"? Something strange in my brain, when I sat down and thought, "Today I want to really, truly look at some important feeling in myself and really, truly write it down." and then the Bob Dylan voice crooned in my ear, "How does it feeeeeel?"
Notice that I could probably go on to write an entire post about the mysterious saga of Why I Named My Blog Post What I Almost Did.
Instead, I will try to spew something more honest.
Mom has been dead nearly 13 years now.
Today I found myself in the faculty room for one of those ridiculously extended lunches that can happen when you are there with just one good colleage. This time it was MacTechWitch, my mentor and friend whose mother is dying of cancer. We did crossword puzzles and shot shit but it all leads back to THAT when we talk. I hope that she doesn't stop talking to me. I hope that she isn't looking to not talk about it and I am just always a reminder. I hope I am a help to her and not painful. In any case, we ended up talking about IT again, as always.
I was rather shocked to find myself getting a little teary as we talked. This is wildly unusual. I cry about my mom sometimes but never in public. Not that I work hard not to cry in public or something. Just that I never feel like it. I don't tear up every time I talk about her. I can talk about her easily and with humor and I can tell stories and feel fine and good. It's just not such a big thing, having a dead mom.
Except when it suddenly is. Like, when you are talking about how the dying person feels about the afterlife and how the movie "Contact" offered this bizarrely good level of comfort, only the comfort was half-assed because it came out after Mom died and she TOTALLY would have loved that movie and I have it on tape and watch it every year or so and always think about how much she would have liked it and whenever I come across something she would have liked, a song, a movie, a book, a TV show, I am always WILDLY pissed that she didn't live fucking long enough.
My mother died at age 49 in 1996.
She died before the movies, "Titanic," "Pay It Forward," "Little Miss Sunshine," "The Squid and the Whale," "Running with Scissors," "American Beauty," "Lost in Translation" or "The Object of My Affection" came out. And she would have motherfucking loved them.
Really, all this movie listing is just a stall tactic. If I keep thinking of movies and keep looking them up on IMDB to factcheck myself, I won't have time to write about the fact that she died before I graduated college or graduate school or became a librarian or met my Wessie or got married or bought a house or gave birth to her red-headed grandson.
Oh, look at that. It's 4 o'clock. I have to go home now.
Those kinds of things are so fucking hard.
I can’t even imagine the depth of this giant, epic loss. Beaming the love and wishing there was something to say to help…
xo
It’s horrible.
ohh bri. i was so there with you in this, last night.
i attended the capping and pinning ceremony for two fo my friends who are in the same nursing program as me. and i stood in the aisle, and i cried intermittently thru the entire thing. i kept thinking how fucking unfair it is that my dad died before i finished (even started) nursing school. and i kept having these flashes of images that he never saw. of stories i never got to tell him, in person. of photos of my friends i cant email him. of how i wont get to let him hold the ultra-starched cap after the ceremony and how he would have this smile and tears in his eyes and i would be worried he might explode from the pride. how he would look at our beautiful pins and really look at each detail of it…
all these things he missed. all these things i missed getting to share with him here on earth. i know he sees me, and i do honestly feel him with me every step of the way. but goddammit. i just wish he was going to be here in a year to see me up on that stage.
i am sorry for your loss, honey.
it is hard to write about, but i am glad you shared some with us here…i needed to have a bit of a kindred spirit today after last night…
much love,
gypsy
it is just bloody unfair. and so very many things in life must be regrieved regularly, who set up that plan?
Yeah it sucks, and thats an understatement.
The feelings were so raw here it made me cry and must of been very good for you to write down
Glad your mother has someone who misses her so and one day you’ll meet again and that’s not just some malarkey(?) I believe it:)
this post resonates with me so much. my dad died in 1998 when he was 49 also. it sometimes seems unfathomable that he did not know me as an adult, did not know me through grad school, never met penny, never visited me in ca so we could do the touristy sf thing, and never got the chance to meet his twin grandbabies. oh, how he would have loved being a grandpa! and i think of family weddings and graduations and just so so much. how could he have missed all that? how can he not be here when my brother who is bipolar is giving us all a run for our money and we really need my dad’s help? i feel like if he showed up today, he would not even recognize our family. we are so different now than we were in 1998. sometimes the tears creep up on me. like, whoa, i was not expecting that. where did that even come from? it is like the sadness is right there, down deep, but ready to rise up at any moment and remind you that the immense loss and sadness is still there and will never really go away. hugs, my friend. i feel ya.
I know. My mom died at 56 in 2002 (has it been that long?) and my dad died 18 months later. I often think of things that my mom would have liked or have imaginary conversations with my dad about who’s going to win the superbowl this year. I wish that they both got to see my beautiful daughters, my husband graduate medical school and his residency and the start of our lives in NYC. I wish, I wish, I wish. Just for 5 more minutes. What I wouldn’t give for 5 more minutes.