It's another wednesday (are wednesdays writer's days?), nearing 9pm. I'm alone in the house for the first time in what feels like a long time. Ian is off in Ashland with his parents, and Cristina is at an outdoor concert with her sister and the-boy-that-makes-her-smile. I get texts periodically about how giddy she is, and it puts a smile right on my face... that girl is my antidepressant, I swear. Living with her has been one of the best gifts I stumbled across in the last year (thanks to craigslist and Brian Benson). But I didn't come here to vamp about how amazing my housemate is, though I could go on for ages.
I'm here for another dose of writing because tonight I ignored a call from my mom.
And just about one year ago, I ignored a call from my dad, telling me that my mother had broken her femur, simply walking into her bedroom... and I didn't get the message till nearly 24 hours later. And I felt simultaneously horrible for not knowing sooner... and relieved that my peaceful and productive Sunday hadn't been interrupted by the news when my dad did call. That I could be blissfully ignorant for 24 hours beyond the moment when it became obvious our family's world was changing for good.
Steve had just left for Central America that morning, early, and I had had a really nice day. I can't remember what was so nice about it, but I do remember that it was early evening and I was in a similar spot as I was tonight, alone in the house, cleaning my room, catching up on the "me" time I rarely give myself. I saw my dad's call and chose to let it go to voicemail, thinking I'd call him the next day. He didn't call back and I didn't check the message until the next day. I was standing in front of the grocery store near work, and could feel knots begin to form in my gut, tugging at me from the inside, as I heard my dad's recorded voice recount the story and explain that they'd been at the hospital since 2pm and would be there through the night.
After that night, I no longer ignored calls from my parents. And for six months, I didn't even receive calls from my mom... she was too weak, too morphine-hazy, too busy getting ready to die. It dawned on me one day last winter that I may never receive a phone call from her again, and I quickly googled "how to record voicemail messages of your phone." I'd saved some past messages from both her and my dad -- mundane messages, calling to check in, calling to say hi, letting me know when I should call back -- because of a low-grade fear that the day would come that those would be the closest I could get to a real phone call.
Those messages are still on my phone, un-extracted, waiting to be immortalized in an mp3 track one day, when I have the time, the foresight, and the courage to sit down and get them from my phone to my computer. My mom's voice sounds so strong on the birthday message she left me in 2010. It's like a blast from the past.
The day I received my first phone call from my mom since September was sometime around February. I'd missed the call (not intentionally) and listening to the message was like a gift. There was my mom's voice, proactively calling to check in, saying it had been awhile. It was small and feeble and she slurred some words, but there it was. Not a memory, but something in the present. I still had my mother.
Now, six months later, I feel like I've adjusted to a new normal. And returned to moments of selfishness, where, in a given moment, somehow being alone and cleaning my room feels more important than picking up the phone when my feeble-voiced mom calls. But more than that, I've found myself returning to a bit of the denial I worked so subconsciously hard to shroud myself in during much of my life. The denial that has allowed me to be selfish, to do things for me, to ignore, to make excuses, and to put off... to put off feeling, thinking, acting on anything that had to do with my mom having terminal cancer.
After an entire year stepping into a role of trying to be proactive on behalf of this whole situation (and getting mightily rewarded for it with praise from all directions and a true sense of feeling useful and instrumental), I think I've burnt out a bit. And allowed myself to slip back into a "my life for me" mindset, such that I have blissfully... *blissfully*... forgotten for days, weeks at a time, that my mother is actively dying. That life is in the process of turning our family on its head and shaking us free of all our loose change, our emotions, our reserves.
I have been a straight-up hedonist for the past month. Always chasing fun and good-time and adventures with friends -- bike touring, camping, volunteering, laughing with housemates till late, compulsively cleaning if I do find myself alone, going out for dinners, seeing live shows, spending money -- doing-doing-doing-doing-doing such that I barely have time to think. To reflect. To spend a moment alone, even. I spend my life chasing happy moments so that I don't have to feel the sad ones. I smile and I laugh and I don't always know how to let those go for a moment and feel the other range of emotions burbling below the surface. Sadness. Anger. Fear, to some extent, although I think that one is easier to tap into. Sadness and anger? So hard to find, to sit with. So hard.
The last time my mother called and I did pick up, the main thing she wanted to talk about was the fact that the donations had dried up and we needed to make another ask (another plea) and ask our friends to "renew their pledge" to help us through this, so if I could update the blog with another ask in the next couple days...
God, her nonprofit fundraiser's jargon just irked me. I could feel myself digging in my metaphorical heels as she talked. As my dad said the last time I was down there, "we're the biggest charity case on the block!"... and not only is it true, but it's become such a normal part of our circumstance that my mom talks about it using the same language she would when talking about fundraising campaigns for her music nonprofit. That's just been our schtick... for years.
It's harder to want to be proactively engaged when you feel like you're being needled from the sidelines. And that your dying mom wants to talk "business" with you and has expectations about the role you play. But that's my mom for you. She's got so many friends thanks to her amazing networking and, in many ways, big heart... but she's also got a fair number of folks who found it very hard to work for her because of her expectations, her (sometimes) tunnel vision, her strong beliefs in what is right and correct. And having that conversation with her suddenly made me feel like I was in those shoes, feeling pushed to meet her agenda, rather than feeling inspired to write an update from my heart, for her, for the purpose of expressing gratitude to the community, reflecting on how things have been going, pausing a moment to paint a picture of a lovely moment shared...
So I dug in those heels and stuck my head in the sand and haven't written any update since we talked two weeks ago. I've conveniently pushed it aside, forgotten about it, made excuses to myself and to my dad, who felt compelled to check in with me about it because... hey, the reality is, we are running out of reserve money and it's scary as shit to imagine what happens when we finally hit financial bottom. And the only thing we know how to do is ask for help.
I finally decided on a compromise within the last week, because I know a) I can't avoid writing another update all together, but b) it needs to be something I write for a reason... and that reason can't just be "we need money, help!" I can't do that. I refuse.
So this Sunday, I will write and post the next update on the one-year anniversary of my mom's femur snapping into two pieces. The one-year anniversary of the fall that she's never been able to get up from. One year of being confined to her bed, wasting away to the size and weight of a child, trying to sift through the pieces of her life and wondering when she will die. And the post will be about how lucky we have been to have had this year with her. And how thankful we have been to have everyone by our side as this roller-coaster has continued, for longer than any of us imagined. It'll probably sound a lot like my last posts, but hell, it'll be real. It'll be from the heart. And, while it'll include a link the pledgie, it won't be a frickin "ask" for folks to "renew their pledge." It will be a thank you. A reflection. A tribute. And hopefully that will be enough.
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Funny enough my mom did call back partway through my writing this, so I took a 30 minute interlude to talk to her. And while we talked business for awhile, I also had the chance to fill her in on happenings in my life and feel like a daughter again. Which is always nice. It's something I know I am going to miss a whole lot when it's gone.
I realize, too, that so much of what's happening with my mom right now is her desire to regain some sense of control... so her asking me exactly what I'm going to write and when I'm going to post and wanting to know all of the details in advance it isn't so much a judgement on me or her trying to micromanage as it is her desire to anticipate and feel in control of her situation... in whatever tiny small ways she can. And I need to be -- want to be -- sensitive to that. And shrug off some of that irksome feeling and frustration, knowing that she's damn well as frustrated as I am by this whole circumstance.
This has been a bit more stream-of-consciousness lengthy than I'd anticipated, but I guess that's my default. Hopefully getting some of this out will help me regain some of my awareness, empathy, motivation, and drive to pick my head out of the sand and be present and proactive again.
(but a little bit of hedonism is okay, I guess... I'm not exactly planning to stop having fun this summer...)
