On the Kitchen Counter

If Bette Davis were here, she'd put one hand on her hip, survey the place and declare: "What a dump!"

The state of my apartment always has reflected the state of my mind.  It's as if someone raised the volume on my "YOU'RE A MESS" knob.  How's THAT for a mirror?!  Wherever I go, there I am.  CRAP! 
 
During such times, I also tend not to feed myself properly. It's only after returning from my weekly visit to the Inwood Farmers' Market that I realize how I've not been nourishing myself quite the way I had been before August 17.

Even doing the laundry feels like an effort.

All this lack (no clean clothes, no food other than science experiments in the fridge, no order) is a constant reminder that I'm in pain, I don't know what to do with myself, everything feels like an effort, and my Mom isn't here to make it better.

Oh, goody - an opportunity to delve deeper. 

Nourish and nurture derive from the Old French and Latin word "to feed, nurse, foster, support, preserve," "to suckle".  How apt, then, that the death of my Mom would result in a self-nourishment crisis.  No surprise that nursery is also a derivative since I feel like a big fat baby!  I simply do not want to take care of myself ... myself.

Some of my best memories of my Mom and I are of days when she'd be cooking in our little galley kitchen in Douglaston and I'd hop up on the counter (which I did through my forties and probably still do with friends when I get the chance).  She'd cook dinner for us and we'd talk about everything.  I'd tell her about school, ballet class; she'd tell me about work and what she had planned for us for the weekend.  I'd ask what her favorite color was, she'd ask what I wanted to be when I grew up.  Both questions of equal importance.    Thus, nurturing and nourishment are inextricably linked forever for me. 

Maybe the lesson for me now is tenderness and self-nurturance; to take everything I learned from her about how to do that and learn to do it for myself or go visit a friend's kitchen (consider yourselves forewarned). 

So I find that I begin returning to my kitchen to cook the things Mom made for me that would make me feel better.  Chopping onions, I can still talk to her as the smells of comfort fill my home.   

Yes, Mom, I know . . . browning the meat before putting it in the crock pot makes a better pot roast (just please don't make me make those PEAS!).  I'll do that while the laundry's in the dryer.

What to say when you don't know what to say

Many people hesitate to offer comfort to those who are grieving because they think they don't know what to say and are afraid of saying "the wrong thing."  You are not expected to - nor can you (unfortunately) - "fix it".  Don't let this fear ultimatey prevent you from saying anything at all or keep you from offering what the grieving person needs most - YOU! 

So, here are some guaranteed, sure-fire, no fail, could-never-be-the-wrong thing suggestions:

• Open your arms. Hug person. Listen. Repeat.
  
• I'm so sorry for your loss; I don't know what to say. How can I support you?
  
• Open your arms.  Hug person.  Listen.  Repeat.
  
• How are you? 
  
• Open your arms. Hug person. Listen. Repeat.
  
• Just sit down next to them.  Be there.
  
• Open your arms. Hug person. Listen. Repeat.

It's that simple.

SUCK IT UP and other condolences

"Try Google". There's another good one.

You'd think it'd be obvious . . . in the handbook somewhere:  SUCK IT UP is not an expression of sympathy.

Monday of Week Four, I was overcome with grief in the middle of my work day; sobbing behind my office door. For the past week, I was increasingly overcome by grief, uncontrollable crying "out of nowhere, and felt as if I couldn’t function, debilitated.

All I knew to do was something that's very uncomfortable for me - especially when my mood is dark - ask for help.  It was about to become a feral survival cry.

I turned to a few trusted friends who I thought might know of some bereavement groups. I called my former shrink (referred me to someone for $200/hour). A therapist acquaintance didn't know of any groups but asked if I tried Google (what's the best search string for that? "so sad I can't function" or maybe just "HELP ME!"). Nothing I was looking for.

When I got home from work one night, I received a mailing from the hospice service telling me about their "bereavement team," outlining the services it provided: bereavement support telephone calls and visits by professional staff and volunteers, support groups, community resource referrals to grief therapists and support groups. It was exactly the lifeline for which I'd been desperately praying. I could get help at last. There was a place for me that actually invited me to turn to them.

I called and left a message. No one returned my call. Truly concerned about my own wellbeing, I called the social worker from the hospice service that took such beautiful care of my Mom and I in those last two weeks. Surely, she would understand and put me in touch with bereveament team.

Sobbing and barely able to breathe, I told her I was at work and the grief that was increasingly overcoming me. "You're just going to have to SUCK IT UP." "It dishonors your Mother's legacy to be falling apart this way." "I have to go," I said; "thank you." 

Perhaps she thought a verbal slap across the face would snap me out of my hysteria. It did not. I was not simply looking for puerile indulgence. After only three weeks since my Mom died, I needed a tether to sanity - not Fellini's Satyricon.

It's now Week Six. No one from the "bereavement team" has called. 

I have, however, formed my own team.  Apparently, I'm the charter member and team captain.  Other members of the team?  My treasured friends, the Center for Loss and Renewal and Center for Bereavement (support groups I found through GOOGLE!), and this space.

Miscellaneous (the first trip to the house since . . . )

It's had to happen sooner or later, right?  That first mecca up to Mom's after she died.  Seems I'll never stop underestimating the ninja qualities of this entire experience.  I did not, however, make this trip without reinforcements; my friend Denys and her fiance bravely volunteered to drive me up this weekend.  I can never thank them enough for that.

That's my first tip:  DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS ALONE!  If people volunteer to go with you, take them up on it.  If you can squeak out a request that someone accompany you, do it.  This is particularly so for only children.

The grief ninjas struck the moment I cracked the door open.  My entire body remembered what it's done reflexively for the lsat 27 years:  door opens, "HI, MOMMY!"  I instinctively expected her to come out of the kitchen or down the hall and waited the usual moment for her to appear.  I waited a microsecond.  All is well, the house smells like her.  She must be in the bathroom.  Silence.  Emptiness.  The miliseconds of happy expectation into stunned comprehension.  Denys caught me and I sobbed.  I didn't expect to get walloped by it so immediately.  I'd foolishly girded myself for something . . . as if I could prepare.  HA!

Well, at least I got that over with first thing!

I steeled myself and we started looking through the file cabinets.  We were on a mission to find Mom's life insurance policy, policy number, information so that I could run (fund) things while waiting for Letters of Adminisration to be issued.  OK, I'll tell the truth . . . I've not done a thing about the will and was hoping finding the life insurance would buy me a little more avoidance time before having to deal with that and probate court.  Yes, I realize I have a law degree, but when it comes to this stuff, I'm a functional 3 year old whose Mommy died.

Thank God my Mom can always be counted on for funny and thank God we always teased each other about our idiosyncracies.  Heck, thank God I can always be counted on for funny!

Mom's filing "system" . . . wasn't.  The woman who began her career as a secretary for New York Telephone Company had many mislabeled files.  Most of the really important stuff was in a folder labeled "MISC" . . . about 25 folders labeled "MISC".  ARE YOU KIDDING ME???!!!

TIP TWO:  Make sure your "important papers" are all together, in one place, accurately marked.  If you put them in one folder or envelope, make an accurate table of contents on the outside.

I guess she figured I'd figure it out . . . just as soon as I stopped shaking my head and laughing.

Denys and I were in the kitchen and Dave in the adjoining den when I said, "You know, she always told me she left me a letter, with instructions about what to do, where everything is . . . "  I looked up at Mom (the ceiling has become Heaven) and said, "COME ON, WORK WITH ME HERE!!"  The next moment Dave padded into the kitchen looking like he'd seen a ghost, holding some yellow sheets of paper: "Is this that letter?"  He'd just picked it up the moment I'd "yelled at" my Mom.  It was the letter.

I guess her miscellaneous system worked.

You Are My Sunshine

My mother died a month ago today. How is that possible? It feels like 10 minutes. Those last days and moments with her are still fresh, as is the aftermath of doing and numbness.  I am flooded with memories.

For Mom and me, memories and music went together.

Most summers when I was a kid (late 60's/early 70's), I spent a month in Florida with Aunt Marie and Uncle Jack. Mom got to save a little money on child care, give my nanny a vacation, relax herself a bit, and I'd get to have a month by the pool! At the end of my stay in Florida, Marie, Jack and I would take a scenic drive to New York to pick up my Mom and most of my family to continue up "Up North" to Saranac Lake or Lake George for a few days together.

We'd travel in 2 cars, making funny faces at each other as we passed each other on the highway along the way: Uncle Walter, Aunt Fran, Uncle Joe and Aunt Kay in one car; Aunt Marie, Uncle Jack, Mom and me in the other.

The cabin on Lake George had no television and barely any electricity. It had a deep back yard, a wooden dock and a canoe.

I always knew it was time to come in when I'd hear the singing start.  I'd run up the hill while someone started the barbecue. By the time I got up to the house, the grown-ups were singing all sorts of show tunes, songs from the 30's, 40's and 50's (cocktails apparently hasten the heating of the coals or at least make the wait more interesting).

My Mom, her four siblings and Aunt Fran grew up together in Witherbee, New York and had known each other since the beginning of time; after dinner clean-up always included more laughing over all the "old stories."

We'd all upstairs at bedtime . . . me and Mom in one room, Marie and Jack in another. One large dorm-type room had 2 bunk beds: Joe and Kay took one, Fran and Walt the other. Just like a bunch of kids, giggling would start up in some corner. Then "good night John-Boy" . . . then the singing . . . "Irene, good niiiiiiiight . . . . Irene, good-night . . ."

Today, my family and I will remember my Mom with music.  I've asked everyone to sing one of my Mom's favorite songs - You Are My Sunshine; from wherever we are, we'll be together singing (perhaps silently) and remembering Carmen today at 12:35 p.m. EDT.  It will connect us to each other and to her, with music, with shared memories and love.

Funeral arrangements are like peas??

I didn't listen, but the information got through anyway.

Just like with my Mom's peas. God, they were AWFUL. I mean A-W-F-U-L. They were so bad that even she would have to laugh . . . I'm sorry, they just smelled like . . . FEET. She'd claim they only smelled funny (it was NOT funny) because she "fancied 'em up" with minced onions. Ohboy.

She'd make the peas. I'd torment her. We'd crack up. I'd refuse to eat them. She'd start a conversation about something over dinner to distract me and, sooner or later, I'd eat those peas without even realizing it. Guess she had the last laugh!

Same way with her funeral arrangements. She'd insist on telling me, "you know, Connie, when I'm gone, there's a family plot in Huntington" or "I want to be cremated with my ashes sprinkled over my mother's grave."

I'd refuse to engage in this conversation. Like a little kid (all the way through my thirties and into my forties, mind you) it was like I'd squeeze my eyes shut, stick my fingers in my ears and go "blahblahblahblahblah" so I didn't have to hear about her stupid funeral arrangements or think about her dying, which was never going to happen any way so why are we even talking about it.

Just like those peas, it got in. When the time came, I knew exactly what did she and did not want. It was actually comforting to be so confident that I was doing exactly what she'd want and didn't have to fret or perseverate over anything. I knew I was doing the right thing. Making the arrangements was as easy as it could possibly be because she made sure it would be.

I didn't like it . . . any more than I liked those peas.

To you parents, my advice is: don't give up on the peas or making sure your kids know what to do and what you want. They may not like it, but they'll thank you for it.

Lost My Mom & Lost My Voice - The Update

My Mother died on Monday, August 17, 2009, at 12:35 p.m.

For the preceding week, I sang almost every Rodgers & Hammerstein show tune to her in her hospice room at the Lutheran Home in Southbury, CT accompanied by my iPod played through a little iHome speaker. In fact, when the priest came to "administer the benediction" (euphemism for last rites or, as we Catholic school kids of-a-certain-age may recall Extreme Unction), I was in the middle of singing "Shall We Dance" from the King & I.

After she died, I was driven by making arrangements and notifying everyone . . . call after call after call. I'm an only child, so there was no one to whom I could "delegate" this task. "Keep it together," I kept telling myself to get through another call or another interaction without falling apart. I'm good at that . . . the soldiering on thing. My Mom was, too.

I was amazed at how little I actually sobbed. I'm still not sure whether I consciously suppressed it because I couldn't bear to hear the sound of my own grief or that it somehow made my Mom's death all the more real or whether the automatic coping skill of numbness was kicking in. I do know that whenever I've held back crying throughout my life, I get a terrible sore throat.

By the day of my Mom's second funeral mass on Saturday, I was getting hoarse and starting to lose my voice. By Sunday, only little wisps of sound came out. I was completely "choked up."

In her book You Can Heal Your Life, Louise Hay says that "[t]he energy center in the throat . . . is the place in the body where change takes place. When we are resisting change or are in the middle of change or are trying to change, we often have a lot of activity in our throats." When one has a sore throat, it may reflect "[f]eeling unable to express the self." We even say that flower beds get choked by weeds.

I'd used my voice to soothe and comfort my Mom that last week and to sing the soundtrack of our life together, which had been so much about music. A particular song always triggers a very specific memory. Then I used my voice to carry out the funeral arrangements as she'd taught me (despite my persistent refusal to listen), to tell friends and family.

This voicelessness persisted for nearly a week until it became so annoying, physically painful and such a continual reminder of the cause, that I felt I had to do something. Unfortunately, the only thing to do was to "let it out" and cry. That scared the bejesus out of me. I could get on with it and bawl or continue sounding like a pathetic Brenda Vaccaro (there's got to be someone else for that analogy already!).

I was going to have to deal with it one way or the other. Thus, I "sounded my barbaric yawp" and have begun to speak. Like this whole process, my voice these days is sometimes fine (like when I recount something about my Mom or am loving the life she gave me) and sometimes wobbly.

There's nothing else to say.

UPDATE: I had my singing lesson last night with the brilliant Jane Kennedy I told her about my experiences lately with my quavering, unreliable voice. She lovingly explained the cause and effect upon the vocal chords. She reminded me of the expression, "having a lump in your throat."

What I most wanted to share with regard to the discussion in this original posting about change and the effect on the throat/voice is that, after we began our warm up last night, my vocal range has expanded since my last lesson (taken before my Mom died) . . . My three octave range is now an octave and a third! I suppose with change also comes expansion if we allow it and a whole new voice begins to emerge.