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I am still enjoying reading all that you have written. I think you are very insightful/honest about yourself, which isn't always an easy thing to do.
Posts: 697 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Believe me, you've still got a loyal reader here--I just didn't have anything interesting to say after the last entry! Definitely looking forward to the next installment after spring break.
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I'm still reading loyally. I just can't think of anything to say that would at all fit the level of emotion you're putting into this. So I'm keeping quiet.
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I've been reading every one of your posts and have enjoyed them all! You certainly are a great storyteller. I doubt I could write about my life and have it be half as interesting as what you write.
Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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I thank you all for the ego-stroking, though I have sort of embarrassed myself. I really didn't mean to beg for feedback... I just wondered if people were avoiding saying anything for reasons of discomfort. *wince*
The kiddies are back in school, and figure I'm within five posts of the end, and that is a liberal estimate.
I don't think it's going to last until July.
My mother didn’t like my Beloved. I think she sensed that he was the first guy I was ever really myself with. I was relaxed with him. He was gorgeous and smart. He met all of the conditions except one – he was not as devout as me. Okay, all of my conditions except two, but that was the only obvious one.
He was a Presbyterian by habit, but a devotee of Taoist philosophy in practice. He insisted that Taoist thinking did not preclude Christian belief, and I accepted this. Actually, I think it is true, though a lot of Christian practices seem odd from a Taoist point of view.
Anyway, mom had always imagined me marrying a missionary, or something. As a child and even as a young adult, I saw myself in the hazy future, surrounded by children that were not my own. I cannot say if that was vision of where my true, righteous path lay or if it was merely the best I could hope for back in the days when I assumed I was too homely for true love.
I know that sounds insane, but it was true, to me. I blindly accepted that I was … that something was wrong enough with me that real love was not a possibility. The thought of marriage without love sickened me, so I thought, hey, I’ll take care of the orphans. Even in college when it became clear that I had quite a pretty face and a slender frame with nice legs, I truly believed I might not be able to have children. I didn’t think I was really a woman, in some insidious way that didn’t show. It wasn’t just the flat chest. I didn’t think I was a “real” woman, and part of it was because I didn’t understand the way “real” women act.
I know how crazy that sounds.
I’m not sure what mom had against him, other than that she could see I loved him. See, girls are supposed to fall for men that are like their fathers, right? My sister had fallen for a handsome man with an addictive personality. I had fallen for a handsome man who was exceedingly smart. Mom could only see ways he was like my father. Smart, and manipulative.
Don’t get me wrong – she was right about that. My Beloved was at least as smart as my father, with his 180 IQ famously underappreciated by the Army, and (in the interest of fairness) probably better at talking people into things than my father ever was.
He had been carefully using his persuasion me concerning religious beliefs, using logic and my own assertion that true faith should withstand the scrutiny of reason (thank you, C.S. Lewis! Heh). He did it ever so gently. It was a dialogue, give and take, and I began the passage from what I had always believed to what I have found to be true.
It’s still happening. If I ever arrive, you can shoot me.
This upset my mother. She showed it in many ways. The first time he came home with me, she made stuffed peppers for dinner. It was one of her things she fixed for company more often than for just the family. I never cared for it – always, always gave me heartburn. I want an antacid just thinking about it.
Afterward, she asked me how he liked dinner, and I mentioned, as softly as possible, that he had issues with bell peppers (much as I do). She felt bad. I told her liked it anyway, but that she didn’t need to worry about being fancy for him – he was brought up on country cooking just like me.
The next time he came over, we had stuffed bell peppers. Again.
Also, my mom had a habit of teasing my friends – tickling them, joking around and whatnot. She tickled my husband-to-be until he was well and truly frightened of her. She had him down on the floor, and he was horrified when he realized he might actually have to overpower her to get her to stop. O_O I finally managed to drag her off of him, and I felt bad because I had kind of started it by tickling him. Tickling was kind of a family sport, at my house, but we never carried it past the person’s tolerance.
It was the very first time I understood the claims people made about excessive tickling being abuse. It had never been abusive in my family, but seeing the horror of my mother unleashed on a suitor she didn’t quite approve of (but would never openly admit this) was eye-opening.
My Beloved admitted that my mother frightened him. Even more than my church did, with its hand-clapping hymns and behind-grabbing tongue-talkers.
Mom also got to hear the bad stuff, you know? When I was upset about something, I tended to talk to her. When things were smooth between my beau and me, she didn’t hear it so much. This was also true of my Beloved and his mother, and may lie at the root of many mother-in-law problems of people in general.
The first time his family came to campus, he asked if I could meet him at the cafeteria and have dinner with them. I met them and had a great time, but a group of people had asked me if I wanted to tag along to see a movie, and I had jumped at the chance. David (he of the spreading rumors fame) had asked if I wanted to go along ‘with a bunch of us’ and I had been glad of the olive branch, hoping we could be buddies again.
I realize now that he didn’t want to be buddies. The “bunch” included my friend Scotty R__ (who later used my photos of Grady to make a poster for which I was blamed), Grady, Scott H___ (another fellowship group friend since my Freshman year) and a mutual friend named David (a different one from the one who asked me - everyone I knew at school was named David or Scott, see).
My future mother-in-law happened to be walking past as we left. Seeing her son’s girlfriend get into a car with a bunch of boys didn’t help her opinion of me. She also had to point it out, jokingly, to Ron. *sigh* Yes, I’m running off to have sex with all these guys (at least one of them was gay, I think – nobody on campus was really ‘out’). It never occurred to me how that looked.
Mom brooded and hoped I’d drop him, I think. She also seemed to be of two minds on the subject. After all, my Papa liked him, and my biological father didn’t – two points in his favor as far as she was concerned. My sister and brother-in-law also liked him.
The thing about my husband is that it takes him time to warm up to people. He’s pretty plain vanilla until he accepts you and relaxes. My sister and her husband had seen the real guy. My mother had managed to horrify him to the point that… well, his elbows could have been stapled to his ribs when she was around. His anti-tickle stance.
I graduated and started working for the government. I stayed with my brother a while (he had been a Captain in the National Guard, called up to Desert Storm, and his wife had left him for his best friend… He got a discharge just before Christmas, and I moved in to keep an eye on him more than anything) and then got my own place.
Mom was mixing her signals about Ron, big time. I’d mention his good points, she’d counter with “Your father was also [whatever I had said].” It was infuriating. Then one day she gave me a pink satin corset she’d had before she had children. “It’s too small for me – has been for years – but you’ll look so cute in it.” O_O
He graduated and went to Atlanta. He was working for a temp agency at IBM. The idea was that he would find permanent work and I would transfer down. The downside was that he had to live with his family. His mother and his mother’s mother were constantly on his case about one thing or another. He was so smart – they had sent him to gifted school and everything – so why didn’t he have a real job yet? His cousin Billy had worked fast food in High School and was now managing two stores without ever going to college… yadda yadda.
He couldn't wait to get the heck away from them.
This actually improved my mother’s opinion of him, oddly enough. My folks and I attended his graduation, but I had to leave before it was over in order to catch a flight back up to Wilkes-Barre, PA. where I was in training. His honors were announced when he crossed the stage. He had graduated with a four year degree in three years, cum laude. Afterward his grandmother asked him to explain the Latin honors, and when she understood them she said, “So why were you the low man on the totem pole, then?”
Mom told me about it later, on the phone. She said she’d seen my Beloved’s face fall, and wanted to smack the ancient queen of the harpies on his behalf. “How could she say such a thing to her own flesh and blood? How could she treat that beautiful child that way?”
Mom had a really over-developed mothering instinct. She still had misgivings about the two of us together, though.
During the preparation for our wedding, mom and I went wedding dress shopping. I was trying to make it a nice atmosphere, but she still made it clear what she thought.
“Don’t you think we’ll have pretty babies? Maybe even a redhead!” She had always wanted a red-haired baby.
“I think it’s more important to have happy babies.” It was June, but I had the urge to turn on the heater in my car.
I later learned that she had said to my sister, “Well, I’ll be there to help her pick up the pieces.” This enraged my sister. She tried to tell my mom she was wrong about my fella, but mom wouldn’t listen.
Even my brother tried to talk me out of “marrying so young”. I was twenty-three, and he married a nineteen-year-old that spring. But I was too young.
Papa gave me away. My father walked out of the hospital to be there at my wedding. I mean, he pulled the IVs out of his arm, put his clothes on and sneaked home to put on a suit and come to the church. I didn’t know he was there until I saw him in the last pew as I walked down the isle on my stepdad’s arm. My father was not a good man, and not a super father, but he never intentionally hurt me. Just like I didn’t intend to hurt him. He was one of the gods of my childhood, but he didn’t know how to be a father. I loved him, and I knew he loved me, too.
I owe it to Papa that I was ever able to have a remotely healthy relationship with a man, but my father gave me things, too. Both them were given to me by god/fate/the universe, and I’m grateful for them both.
After my Beloved and I married, we would occasionally meet mom and papa for dinner occasionally. She’d always tell my husband to drive carefully. “You have precious cargo.” It was sweet, but carried a certain subtext. *wry laugh*
On those little get-togethers, mom began to see how we really were together. How he would help me with my coat and open doors for me and such. She could see that he really cared for me. It helped a little.
We moved to Chicago. While we were there, we told them they should come visit. She wanted me to give my brother my old car that I had overpaid another relative for, but I told her to sell it to him for enough to buy the tickets. They made the plans six months in advance.
We planned to visit both our families in April. My mom called a week or two before the trip. She said she had a surprise for us. We talked a bit and she asked, rather cryptically, to speak to my husband. O_O They talked a long time. His side of the conversation was full of, “Oh, that’s okay. No, I understand…” types of things.
When they hung up, he told me she had apologized to him for thinking ill of him. She had come to realize that she had been wrong about him, and she wanted to ask his forgiveness for being so stubborn. O_O
See, this is another amazingly cool thing about my mother. I think she had the normal human reluctance to admit when she was wrong, but she still never failed to do it explicitly. She liked spelling things out, admitting her wrongdoing and asking forgiveness.
I just never hoped… I had come to think of our relationship as distant, because I just couldn’t share with her about my love for my husband. It had been awkward for more than a year, at least.
After that, every time she talked to Ron, she repeated the apology, and how glad she was that I had a man who loved me so much. O_O It is perhaps not surprising that my mother was a talker.
On our visit, the ‘surprise’ became clear. She had some guests from church over for dinner with us. They turned out to be Bobby Boston and his wife Cindy. Bobby had been at King with me, a commuter who was already married. He didn’t spend much time on campus, but he went with me on the summer mission trip to Brazil, where we got on famously.
Bobby was a talker, too.
They had moved to my family’s home town and joined their church. Mom and papa had helped them move their stuff, and had them over for dinner. Bobby saw a picture of me and my husband on the wall, and asked about me because I looked familiar. He had not recognized my name, because my family always called me by a nickname.
When mom used my given name, though, it clicked into place for him. Bobby and I had had long talks about marriage and stuff, and I had talked to him quite a bit about Ron, while we were on the mission. He was safe to talk to because he was married and obviously in love, you know? I wondered what it was like to be married, and all that.
I mentioned that Bobby was talker, right? Well, he held forth to my mother about what a great relationship Ron and I had, how he could just see his love for me in the care and attention he gave me. How he started sending me letters to Brazil before I had even left, so that they would be there for me shortly after I arrived, etc.
There is no doubt in my mind that his speech was passionate and all-inclusive.
Mother had been forced to see My Love from a new, outside perspective. Once that had happened, she could see it for herself.
I admit, she may have gone a bit overboard. Ron now walked on water. He was her favorite son-in-law. If I griped about something he’d done, she’d say, “You know he only does that because he wants to take care of you” or some such. Ron was the golden-haired hope of the family, and I was Blessed by God.
That was all true, of course. Still, it was a bit unnerving to have it put that way. *giggle*
Their visit to Chicago was a blast for all of us. My husband's little brother Mark was visiting us that summer, and their visits overlapped by a few days. It was a great time. I could see that my mother's entire attitude toward my husband had truly changed. He was even able to relax and enjoy their company.
Mom always kept us up on thing sgoing on back home. Ronnie Ellis had gone to film school in Wilmington.
My father died that August, and when we visited for the funeral, we were ready to move back to the area. My mother was about to go on dialysis, and I was the only child without children to care for, so it made sense that I would be the one to help her. There's always a child who will do those things for parents that the others won't ot can't. I don't know if they are usually as happyto do it as we were. My transfer came through by Thanksgiving. We were two years married by then.
This is hard. I may be rushing it, but I'm so close. Thank you for listening.
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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I'm enjoying reading your installments. You really are a great story teller.
quote:I assumed I was too homely for true love. I know that sounds insane, but it was true, to me. I blindly accepted that I was … that something was wrong enough with me that real love was not a possibility.
I know exactly what you mean. It's how I felt (and still do sometimes). Posts: 5879 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:I know that sounds insane, but it was true, to me. I blindly accepted that I was … that something was wrong enough with me that real love was not a possibility. The thought of marriage without love sickened me, so I thought, hey, I’ll take care of the orphans. Even in college when it became clear that I had quite a pretty face and a slender frame with nice legs, I truly believed I might not be able to have children. I didn’t think I was really a woman, in some insidious way that didn’t show. It wasn’t just the flat chest. I didn’t think I was a “real” woman, and part of it was because I didn’t understand the way “real” women act.
I know how crazy that sounds.
I so much don't think that sounds crazy. Not because it's accurate (it's not), but because I suspect that only female meglomaniacs fail to go through this doubting-of-womanhood. Maybe I'm wrong, but I know I did. I was well into 30 before I really felt like a woman, feminine and pretty, no matter how anyone else defined those words. Secure in my femininity, I guess, might be a better way to put it. It took that long to really internalize that who I was was really okay, even though I wasn't particularly 'girly', as in wearing dresses a lot, knowing what to do with makeup, or how to dress my hair. I think it really helped that I learned to cook. Strange, that.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote: Anyway, mom had always imagined me marrying a missionary, or something. As a child and even as a young adult, I saw myself in the hazy future, surrounded by children that were not my own. I cannot say if that was vision of where my true, righteous path lay or if it was merely the best I could hope for back in the days when I assumed I was too homely for true love.
I know that sounds insane, but it was true, to me. I blindly accepted that I was … that something was wrong enough with me that real love was not a possibility. The thought of marriage without love sickened me, so I thought, hey, I’ll take care of the orphans. Even in college when it became clear that I had quite a pretty face and a slender frame with nice legs, I truly believed I might not be able to have children. I didn’t think I was really a woman, in some insidious way that didn’t show. It wasn’t just the flat chest. I didn’t think I was a “real” woman, and part of it was because I didn’t understand the way “real” women act.
I know how crazy that sounds.
Replace "Orphans" with "animals" and it is me. Not crazy at all.
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For the longest time, I was for some reason terrified that people would mistake me for a boy. And of course, I was taller than just about every boy I dated until I got to college, so I felt big and hulking and not dainty or feminine at all.
In fact, even now, I still joke around about how I have the body of a twelve-year-old boy. So I, too, can sort of understand doubting womanhood.
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I'll never forget walking down the hall as a freshman in high school and hearing some hall monitor lady behind me yelling "young man, young man" and nearly becoming apoplectic about it--I finally realized she was yelling at me to show her my hall pass. (I had short hair at the time, a Dorothy Hamill cut, and was wearing the teenage uniform of those years--straight leg jeans, button-front oxford type shirt, earth shoes.) Umm, from the front it was fairly obvious to the poor lady that I was a girl when I turned around, but that incident did wonders for my sense of femininity.
What I wouldn't trade to be that skinny now! No one would mistake me for a guy at any angle.
Posts: 3149 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Even at my thinnest, I had a very feminine backside and shapely legs. I was physically... pretty obviously female.
I just didn't think so at the time, I guess. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who felt that way.
The weirdest thing, for me, was that I was almost always a male in my dreams. I still remember dreams I had from when I was five of or six. Once I dreamed I was wearing those kneepants and stockings and a cravat (I didn't even know what those things were, then). Kind of 17th century. My brother, or a close friend, threw a piosonous snake at me, and I died thinking that no one would know I was murdered. I had another where I was obviously a Native American brave. A bunch of us were attacking a cabin. I entered and was shot in the chest by woman with a shotgun.
The first time I ever kissed someone in a dream, I was aware of being a woman but I was in disguise as man and another guy kissed me.
I was never unambiguously female in my own freaking dreams until after I'd had a baby. O_O
When you add to that that the first of my agemates to show interest in me was a female, I was sure I was a freak. Always been attracted to men, though.
Was it Madonna who said, "I'm a gay man trapped in a woman's body"? Bwhahahahahah-snort-hahaha
pH- I'm not as tall as you, but I remember being a head taller than everyone my age. It sucked.
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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This is a beautiful intallment, and I love how you call him your "Beloved". I agree with Jeniwren - it's probably true that every woman doubts that she measures up to the standard of "Womanhood". At least I did, until I became a mother - that's so empowering.
quote: When I was upset about something, I tended to talk to {Mom}. When things were smooth between my beau and me, she didn’t hear it so much. This ... may lie at the root of many mother-in-law problems of people in general.
I think you're totally right there. One of the best pieces of advice I got was to not spill my marital troubles to my mom - because when I'd forgiven and forgotten, she would still remember who had offended her "baby". It's saved me more than once.
Posts: 1522 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Sometimes I'm male in my dreams. I can kind of understand how you feel, because I don't see myself as all that feminine. However, it's somewhat deliberate in my case. Oddly enough, I don't want to be very feminine (I don't want to be very masculine either). I guess I'm just weird that way.
Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Shig, from the one time I met you and granted it was quite a while ago, honestly, I thought you were lovely. Feminine in your own way. I'm not just saying that...my impression was that you were a strong, smart young woman. Lovely with a femininity all your own. (Repeating myself...) Graceful.
Personally, I would rather we defined femininity on someone like you than on the Paris Hiltons of the world.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Some women don't need make-up and frilly clothes to be feminine, Shig. I haven't met you, but from your pictures I'd have to agree that you are one of those.
Me, I just need falsies and a bucket of spackle.
In all seriousness, though, I think it's a matter of coming to terms with womanhood as each of us defines it for ourselves vs. the Oppression of Barbie, or whatever we are led to believe it means to be a "woman."
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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I always thought it meant you couldn't be "one of the guys." And also you had to be megacurvy and spend ten hours a day making your hair and makeup perfect, even if you were going to school, and then you had to bring your makeup bag with you to touch up throughout the day. I also have never had pin straight hair, which was devastating during the years of the "Friends"-inspired Rachel hair.
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*also agrees with jeniwrens assessment of Shigosei, but understands the desire not to be very feminine*
I do that myself. Weirdly, I think I could use a little more femininity as of late. Being a mother has sucked some of the femininity out of me even though it has encouraged some of the girlyness.
Posts: 1777 | Registered: Jan 2003
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I hate doing this, because I just wrote it and really haven't gone over it at all... But. I have to get this out. I want it to be over, yet I still hesitate.
Also, I hated to interrupt the cool discussion going on. It pleases me to see us all taking about being feminine or not, and what we think that means. So feel free to carry on.
This next bit is raw and fairly unedited. I'm just a pull-the-bandaid-off-fast kind of person, so I'm sticking it up the way it is.
#
In August of that year (1994), my father died. They found him sitting on the side of his bed when they came to check on him because he hadn’t shown up for dialysis that morning. We arranged for a pet sitter and drove back to my hometown, from Chicago.
While we were in town for the funeral, we realized that we liked living in the mountains. That part of it was more my Beloved than me (I really enjoyed the city), but I had to admit that I would like to be closer to my family. Especially under the circumstances.
My sister’s husband had had an affair with my brother’s second wife (remember the one years younger than me, back when I was "too young" to marry?). Although they had decided to stick with their respective spouses and try to work it out, it caused a lot of tension. Suddenly, my brother didn’t want my sister to buy one of his houses (where they had been living on a lease-purchase agreement, but were having trouble securing financing), and began eviction proceedings. My mother was about to go on dialysis, and I was the only child of hers with their emotional [poo] together enough to be of any help at all.
So I put in for a hardship transfer and we moved 700 miles back to, essentially, where we had been before. Only this time, we bought a house (shortly after my sister and her husband bought a different home). This is as good a place as any to note that I have a personal horror of doing business with family or close friends. The thought of buying a car or house from a relative makes me want to curl up under a table and hum with my fingers in my ears.
I was sort of the “Black Sheep” of my family, but I have come to believe this is a tremendous positive in this case. I had certain advantages growing up, is all. Anyway, I was the one child my mother never had to worry about for whatever reason, and I was glad to not be having any personal traumas when she needed me.
She didn’t really need me. I mean, she did the home dialysis herself. She was an RN, and could handle it just fine, but in another way she did need me. She needed to feel a little looked-after and cared about. I could do that.
One of our family friends from church was a lady we called Miss Tressie. She usually handled communion at church, and I had worked with her when they had me doing it. Also, she and mom just did stuff together, even though Tressie was a widow old enough to be her mother. They got on well, and when ever Tressie’s daughters visited, we’d all have dinner or whatever. I remember Peggy Ann and my brother and I had a “wine and cheese” type of thing (with no actual wine, as I recal) where we read stories and poems and such. It was on a New Year’s Eve, which was also a blue moon. We went outside afterward and watched how the full moon made such deep shadows and silvered everything all at once. It had been impressive.
Tressie also had a daughter named Donna, and Mom and Donna got on famously. At first it was just that Donna was so glad that her mother had my mom around to look after a bit, even though she wasn’t under any obligation to do so. Mom just liked being with Tressie.
Anyway, mom and Donna soon became the best of friends. Two wild, outgoing alpha-femmes in their forties, who should have been like oil and water, actually mixed quite well.
One morning around six am, Donna called my mother. She didn’t say, “hello” or “good morning” or anything. Her first words were, “What is your blood type?”
She said she had been praying for her, and that the Holy Spirit woke her up and told her she should give mom a kidney. Well, now. Donna was not much of a churchgoer, but she had prayed for mom anyway because she liked her a lot and knew she was sick. Donna lived in Kentucky.
She pressed mom for details about what she needed to do to give her kidney. Mom didn’t know, but said she’d pick up a brochure or something. Then she forgot about it.
Donna didn’t give up, and started to get a little angry at being put off about it. Mom knew that the operation would tough, and was just as happy to wait for a kidney through the usual channels. Donna finally took time off work and went with her to the Dialysis Center, where she got all kinds of looks from people.
She was adamant. She made them do the preliminary blood work, even though they kept telling her the chances of a match were not great. (It was a hereditary disease, and all of her children had the early signs of it, so we were a wash.)
Donna never doubted. She said, “We will be a match. God wouldn’t tell me to do this if we wouldn’t be a match.”
They were a match.
We had a cook-out at our place a few months before the surgery. Donna stayed out on the deck to smoke, and I went out to talk with her. I told her that I appreciated what she was doing for my mother, but that I would understand if she backed out. “It won’t be easy for you, and… I just wanted you to know I’d understand.”
She laughed at me. Threw her head back and let out a big, braying belly-laugh. “Listen, hon. God has never asked me to do anything in my whole life. Never. How could I not do this one thing He ever asked of me?”
I asked her how she was sure she had heard the voice of God. She said, “When He tells you something, you just know.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
The surgery went smoothly, and soon my mom was feeling very good. She was pinkish again where she had been a bit gray-green. Donna sat in her hospital bed and joked about how she wished the doctors had saved her floating rib so she could make bone meal for her plants. O_O
They remained close. Donna even moved to be close to Tressie and my mom. My boys were ring bearers at her wedding. Their relationship was a funny one, though. I remember when they came to visit me when I was pregnant. I heard them talking back and forth animatedly, and when I walked into the room with their tea, I heard one of them say, “Oh, shut up, you old sea hag!”
“At least I don’t dress like whore. Is that skirt or belt?”
I was mortified.
The looked up and saw me standing in the doorway, pale as paper, looking back and forth between them, and laughed. “It’s okay, hon.” Evidently, this was friendly banter. I had never heard my mother speak that way to anybody, or anybody talk that way to her, and it meant they were friends. O_O
In 1995, she had the transplant. In 1997, I had Robert. Mom told me she had not thought she would live to know my children, so we all felt that it was a blessing. She loved my boys so much.
She worked for a while as an RN, but her leg problems (see below) became an issue after a while. She helped me with Robert quite a bit, even though it wasn’t as easy for her as it had been when my sister’s children were small.
One day, she brought me a business card that Ronnie Ellis had given her. It said Firesong Productions, but the number on it was one I recognized as his mother’s number. He’d finished film school. I called him and we chatted. We decided to have dinner with him partway between the towns where we lived.
He was older and heavier, and had a beard. It looked good on him. He talked to us about his fiancé (who he’d met in film school). She had gone back to Hong Kong after graduation, but he hoped she would be back soon. He never mentioned her again in the years after that, so I don’t think anything came of it. I was too chicken to ask. He told us about the horror movie he was making, and told us to call him if we wanted to watch the filming. I thought that sounded fun, but we never got around to it.
I wondered what he thought of my Beloved, with his reddish hair and having the name “Ron” and all. I wondered if he thought I had merely found a stand-in for him, the way he had said he’d been dating “tall, skinny brunettes” in college, like he was trying to find me in another form.
Though I know in my heart that I love my Beloved in a way that was not possible for Ron Ellis and me, I have to admit you could make a case for the “substitution” argument. It could easily be interpreted that way from the outside. My Beloved and I talked about it after we met him for dinner, and I’m happy to say he could not have been less threatened by Mr. Ellis. Whatever Ronnie wanted to think was fine with my Beloved, because we knew the truth.
In 1999, my Beloved and I moved to Georgia. It was a promotion and a pay raise for him, plus, no more constant travel. His old job had him out of town 3 to 5 days a week, every week, sometimes weekends, too. We had looked for non-traveling work for him, even looked at buying businesses in the area, but the truth was that there was nothing in his field locally that would allow one of us to stay home with the wee ones. So we moved. In September, I had William. Mom came down and stayed a bit, but she had trouble on the stairs.
See, the drug therapies that they use to suppress the immune system also break down connective tissues after long exposure. She had spontaneously torn both hamstrings and had several other muscle tears since the transplant. Because of her compromised immune system, they had casted them and let her heal without surgery. It took a very long time.
Another side effect of the steroids was what they sometimes call “pie face”. Mom retained a lot of fluid and it made her look round-faced. She also happened to gain a bit of weight where she had always tended to be slim. It was very hard for her. She had always been beautiful, outside and inside, but now she didn’t recognize the face in the mirror. She began to have to wax her face.
She took all these side-effects with grace, but I know it was hard. We were separated by distance, but we still talked on the phone regularly. I’d tell her about the boys, and she’d tell me about the happenings at church and what was going on with her friends.
We visited frequently, but I didn’t run into Ronnie Ellis. We were too busy with the kids, who were both under school age at the time. I did once happen to meet the Physician’s son who had asked me out in High School, now a pudgy, balding Family Physician sharing his father’s practice. Liam had an ear ache or something. Time, she doth fly, ne?
I didn’t see Ron Ellis again until my mother’s funeral. I will tell you about next time, which will be whenever I work up the courage to open this document again. Pray for me, friends. This part kind of hurts.
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote: I have a personal horror of doing business with family or close friends. The thought of buying a car or house from a relative makes me want to curl up under a table and hum with my fingers in my ears.
Once upon a time, I would not have understood this. But now I do!!!
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It’s time. Been almost two years, so you’d think this would be easier. It isn’t. I’m just going to push through this. It is hard for me, so I’m going to ask a favor of you guys. If I happen to have a funny typo or something in this post through the end of the story, please resist the urge to make a joke of it. I’m digging through wounds here, so if my proof-reading is sloppy… all I’m asking is for you to cut me some slack.(I readily admit that I'm overly sensitive where this story is concerned; rest assured my sense of humor should return soon )
I should also tell you that many of the events I will describe did not happen in the exact order presented. I talk a little about post-partum depression and a bit about my mother’s health separately, but much of it happened at times relative to each other. It was just easier for me to talk about it by topic rather than timing.
Thanks for listening.
#
About three years before my mother died, her brother (who had a kidney transplant about a month before her) died suddenly of a heart attack. He had not been doing very well. His colon had ruptured due to long exposure to the meds, and he’d had to have an emergency colostomy. He was almost well enough for them to attempt a colostomy repair. I went up for the funeral and stayed a week so the boys and I could be around for her birthday. It was summer and they were out of school.
December 18th of that year (just before the opening of LotR:FotR – I remember because I had talked to mom about how I wanted to take her to see it when we came up for Christmas), she had a similar problem with her colon, and was in the hospital with a colostomy.
She made a fuss and forced them to release her so she could be home for Christmas. She wanted to be with us, see the boys open their presents (Mom was always big on picking the perfect gifts for everyone). By lunchtime on Christmas Day we had to call an ambulance to take her back to the hospital; she couldn’t sit up to be taken in a car.
I had tried to help her with the colostomy care, but she insisted on doing it herself. Something went wrong and she fell. I helped her to bed and cleaned up, but when I went to her she said, “Don’t look at me.”
Now, my mom was a beautiful, vivacious woman. I think the word “formidable” also fits. The drug therapy had been hard on her, hardest because of how it distorted her body and her face. She had to take diuretics to lessen the fluid the other drugs caused her to retain, but she couldn’t take enough to be rid of it because of concerns they had for the kidney. Her nice clothes didn’t fit right because the donated kidney was put in the front of her abdomen, not in place of one of her non-functioning ones. They were all in there together, and her non-functioning kidneys were enlarged to more that twice the normal size.
She was on anti-depressants for a while, but she kept up her good humor and tried to put a bold face on it. She was quite a joker, sometimes.
Six times a day she took a handful of pills, about every four hours. This worked okay in later years because she didn’t sleep much. What sleep she did get was sitting in her recliner in the family room, toward the end.
Most of the time, she could fool me when I called. Over the phone, she sounded cheerful enough, but she had stopped volunteering stories about people from church and what all she had been doing. I had to pry stuff out of her, mostly because she didn’t take a lot of interest in things. Also, she wanted to spare me, I think.
I was glad that I was the one child of hers she didn’t worry about. She told me she knew I was going to be okay, and she was so glad I had such a loving husband and two beautiful sons. She told me (and I only later began to wonder if this was kindness or unintentional cruelty) that I was her favorite; she knew I could so anything I set my mind to do.
I would call her and talk about the funny things the boys had done, or when one of my chapters was runner-up for an editor’s choice award on an online workshop I had joined.
I couldn’t tell her I was in trouble. I was. About the time I weaned my youngest, my hormones went wacky and I fell into the grip of a crushing depression. My life was good. My family loved me. I lacked nothing.
But everything was hard, and I was miserable. I did everything people say to do. I exercised. I took my kids to the playground. I cleaned house and did everything that was expected of me. I joined the baby-sitting co-op and co-chaired the neighborhood Halloween party.
Yet, I was physically incapable of finding joy in any of it.
That’s the part that people who have never experienced that sort of depression don’t seem to get – that even I didn’t get. I thought if I just did something different - if I found the magic combination of activities – I could pull myself out of it. I was wrong.
I don’t know if it is different for people whose depression has environmental triggers, all I know is what happened to me. I had no environmental triggers. I had adjusted to being a stay-at-home mom and made friends in the neighborhood well before the onset of my symptoms.
I still searched for reasons. I went to counselors of various kinds. I took herbal supplements. I exercised until I was exhausted. I basically tried everything except meds.
One day, my husband was home sick, and I three people to take care of (he was the only one who could use the bathroom by himself). My hair kept falling in my face. I was frustrated; I was angry, angry that I couldn’t seem to fix the elusive thing that was wrong with my seemingly perfect life. I had begun to think that my kids might be better off without me, because I knew they could sense my unhappiness, even when I forced myself to laugh and tickle and play with them. I knew it was fake, and I knew they weren’t stupid. I was afraid I was harming them by just being around them, even though I hid my secret misery pretty well.
My hair kept falling in my face, and I ran up to my room and started opening drawers, looking for something to hold it back. I happened to open a drawer and see a shiny pair of scissors. I grabbed them and started cutting hunks out of my hair. My husband saw and grabbed my hands to stop me, but it was largely too late. One trip to Supercuts later, and my eldest uttered the (now infamous) line, “Mommy has Daddy hair!”
That little act of self-loathing also got me in to see my OB/GYN, who was very sympathetic. He told me sometimes pregnancy alters your hormones permanently, and that I should try some medication (50mg Zoloft) to see if it helped.
Now, my first pregnancy had changed me. I knew that. I had always been high strung and emotional, but after the big boy was born (and even during the pregnancy) I was calm, happy and unflappable. I had a brief, six-week bout of the baby blues about the time I weaned him, but it had passed without any real intervention other some weight loss and exercise. It didn’t come back.
I had expected that to happen with baby number two, but it didn’t go away no matter how hard I worked at it. So, I figured my doctor might be right and I had just been reset to a different level.
The meds made me calm, kind of indifferent at first. Thoughts of hopelessness left almost immediately, but I felt out of touch with everything. I didn’t like that, but I kept taking them.
It was months before the magic started to creep back into my life, but it did. I was once again able to feel the joy, the love that life had always offered me.
Being a stay-at-home with two wild boys was still tough, but it was fun tough again. Only then did I tell any of it to my mother. I couldn’t bear to have her be worried about me, too. My sister was divorced, her husband having left her just after their bankruptcy was discharged (for a crazy woman he met on the internet, who later (non-fatally) stabbed him). She was struggling to pay her bills and raise her children now that their father had evaporated. My brother… was considering bigamy at the time, I think. (Both of them have straightened things out quite a bit, and are leading normal, happy lives now.)
I kept up the go-go-go lifestyle, devoted entirely to my kids and my husband. I think it was my perfectionistic tendencies coming out. I was trying to be the perfect mom and wife, to make up for everything we’d suffered because of my illness.
And make no mistake, that depression I fought was as real and as physical as any illness. My chemistry was off, and as hard as I fought it -- as hard as I tried to everything exactly the way it was expected of me -- I still needed the medication to help me in that fight. People have different opinions about these things, and I confess my situation was unique. I can only tell you how it was for me, and that is the truth of it.
Even with the meds, I was a little off. Happy, yes, but I felt a bit like my emotions were wrapped in bubble wrap. The better I felt, the more I hated the meds, which is fairly typical, I’m told. I knew there was a chance that I could come off them and be fine, but I also knew that maybe I would be on them for the rest of my life.
And, you know, I was really okay with that. My boys needed a mom capable of feeling the love she showed them, and that, my friends, was worth it.
I was so focused on taking care of everyone else that I neglected myself. I lived on the crusts of my kids' sandwiches. I got so worn down that I got viral meningitis and had to be hospitalized for a week and on bed rest for at least two more. I only managed one more week of bed rest, because my mother-in-law was fed up with the boys and my Beloved didn’t have anymore vacation time until the end of the year. My mother was unwell, and couldn’t be around sick people with her compromised immune system. I lied to her and said I was better. I trudged through a week or so, still in quite a lot of pain, but the hubby took over and let me go to bed when he got home.
I still remember the first morning I woke up and felt no pain. I was afraid to move, afraid the pain was hiding somewhere, waiting for me to wake it up. I finally moved and found that I still felt well. It was the week of our anniversary. I made a big dinner and baked a cake, even went to the grocery store with a preschooler and an over-active toddler to get some candles (it was also very close to the hubby’s birthday). I walked on clouds for at least a week – the absence of pain left me euphoric.
After that euphoria passed, everything settled into a better over-all outlook. My fouled brain chemistry seemed to clear away, but I was afraid to even consider quitting the meds.
I didn’t know which Olivia would walk out the other side of SRI treatment. I mean, I had had a suicide plan, down to how much to tip the maid. I did not want to see that part of myself again, ever.
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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I don't know what to say in response to something so obviously deeply felt, open and exposed and vulnerable. Thank you, Olivet for having the guts to write all that down and share it. I don't think I'm capable of writing so honestly, so I doubly respect what you've done here. And triply respect that you've shared it here. Thank you.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Card has said a number of times that stories are what make us who we are, what make us human, and that shared stories are what make a community. I agree with that. Strong, personal stories like yours are what make Hatrack such a special place.
I'm glad you made it through. Posts: 2149 | Registered: Aug 2000
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I can imagine how hard it was for you to write that. I admire your strength and I really appreciate that you wrote it - a lot of what you said about depression resonnated with me, as my experience has been similar. Posts: 5879 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Thank you guys. As much as I needed to do this, I'm not sure I'd have done it without your kindness. Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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It's a class of depression medication - it stands for "Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors". Basically, it reduces the amount that serotonin that is reabsorbed by the nerve cells in your brain. Here's an article about how they work.
Posts: 5879 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Yeah, they call them SSRIs, but I never could remember the "selective" part. *blush*
I just remembered what the infectious disease specialist said to me while I was in the hospital with viral meningitis. It was something along the lines of "You young mothers don't take care of yourselves. I get about 40 cases of viral meningitis a year, and most of them are run-down young mothers of small children."
I wanted to ask him who was going to take of everybody else while I was taking care of myself, but I didn't. Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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I missed my mother, long before she was gone. I had to wheedle to get her talk to me on the phone, even. She didn’t seem interested in much after the colostomy repair failed.
She had worked so hard to be healthy, to walk without a walker or assistance. To prove she was well enough to be put back together. It was her goal, and she fought for it. She hated the colostomy worse than anything. I hate to say it, but my papa didn’t make that any better.
Don’t get me wrong, he helped her and worked with her selflessly. It’s just that he couldn’t keep himself from commenting on how the bathroom smelled afterwards, and stuff like that. Mom never said anything, but I know how deeply she hated the colostomy and I think Papa’s attitude was part of it.
After the colostomy repair failed, she had the same recovery ahead of her as she had some 18 months before, but no goal. They wouldn’t risk it again.
I would ask her if she’d done her exercises, and she’d hedge. “Not yet, but I will.”
When we visited, I noticed she made a point of doing her exercises when I was in the room. She couldn’t really be left alone, though. Soon, Papa took early retirement to care for her.
I regretted living so far away, and told her so. She’d just smile and tell me that I had to a family to take care of now, and I had to do what was best for them. On these visits she started giving me jewelry or little mementos. (She'd divided up anything of value among the three of us kids almost ten years before. Stuff like china, crystal, an antique clock and an antique pump organ... not a lot, really.) One thing in particular, that both my sister and I had coveted for some years, was a dried edelweiss strung on a velvet choker. She had acquired it one of the times we had lived in Germany.
The first time I wore it where my sister could see, she said, “Oh! Mom let you borrow the edelweiss?”
I just nodded, because, despite being a big fat liar, I couldn’t say the lie out loud. I still have the stupid dried flower, and I still wear it, even though I think my sister’s claim to it is the better one. Mom let her wear it to her 8th grade graduation, when I was nearly seven. That was when I began to covet it, and I know my sister had loved it long before that. It’s such a fragile thing – mashed and kind of ugly, as flowers go – but it has lasted a very long time. To my mind it is a symbol of my mother, the quintessential alpha-femme, and in that sense I feel it belongs with me, at least for now.
I wear it when I need to feel close to her, or when it goes.
Mom could still fool me on the phone, a little, but in person, she was very obviously ill. Her mouth hung open and she didn’t even realize it. Her face was often like a mask with no expression, but she could make faces when she thought about it. Her hands would shake very badly until you asked her about it, then she could hold them as still as a rock.
The fluid retention had made her skin very thin, very easy to tear. My baby’s infant grasp reflex had made her arm bleed. I had been horrified, but she brushed it off. The side effects were just part of still being alive, she said.
She was very glad to be alive to know my babies – without the kidney transplant she wouldn’t have lived to see them. I was glad of that, too, though they never recognize pictures of her the way she was before the transplant. She aged at least two decades in less than one.
Her mother, my grandmother, began losing her mind after my uncle died. She would ask where her husband was, meaning her first husband, Hannibal (my biological grandfather), who died when he was barely forty. She would call my mother “mama” sometimes.
Sometimes she would recognize all of us, sometimes not. My grandfather took care of her, but occasionally she had to go to the lockdown part of the hospital. She’d actually been violent on occasion, not understanding what was going on, or who he was. I went to see her a few times and she always knew me, though sometimes she’d ask me how school was going and sometimes she’d remember that she had great-grandchildren. They even let us all visit her occassionally, including the kids. She remembered them then, or at least acted like it.
She became really ill just after Christmas. We were in town, and I had been to visit her. My grandfather was in the hospital to have some tests prior to a hernia repair. It was an odd coincidence, because mom had given us my grandmother’s room number, but when we got there she had been released to a nursing home and they had put my grandfather in the room that had been hers.
Anyway, she stopped eating and they wanted to put in a feeding tube. It was explained to her in a moment of apparent clarity, and she refused. The decision was still my Grandfather’s but he abided by her wishes. She was back in the hospital by then, and he was out. This all happened in the week between Christmas and New Years.
We all gathered for a death watch. Even in the final hours, she knew me. She opened her big, caramel-colored eyes and she said, “Libby.” That is what she always called me. My brother and sister and everybody came, all the cousins and their kids, too. Except my sister’s daughters were visiting their other great-grandmother, and she wouldn’t bring them back early. When they came home, she was dead already, but they made the funeral. They were crushed that they didn’t get to say goodbye one last time.
Their other great-grandmother is not in the best of health right now, and that is all I have to say about that.
Mom went to her mother’s funeral in a wheelchair. She was obviously upset, but my mother was always the type to be quiet when she was hurting or angry. In most of her life, she had not been quiet overmuch.
After the funeral, she told me she’d had a dream where she saw her brother. He was sitting by the edge of a stream, dangling his bare feet in the water. She told him she missed him, and he said, “Don’t worry, little sis. I’ll see you before too long.”
The dream had pleased her, but it upset me. When she realized that I was upset, she said, “You never know how long ‘before too long’ might be, honey. I’m not planning on dying.”
But I think she was. I think she knew she couldn’t last very much longer, and I think she was much calmer about that idea than I could be. She’d just lost her mother, and she knew I didn’t want to lose mine. We both knew it was a selfish thing.
The whole family was together for the fourth of July. Ron and I bought fireworks, and he and my brother and step-brother Jeff set them off together for us all to see. They’d stop and give the kids and the rest of us sparklers, and a good time was had by all. They were fabulous. The food was good. Mom was healthier than she had been in a long time, and the happiest I’d seen her since my grandmother died.
She hadn’t even needed the bug repellant – mosquitoes had stopped biting her years before, because of the meds, I can only assume. Think about that – mosquitoes wouldn’t bit her. They’d fly by, turn up their wee proboscises and move along. She would joke that there were more drugs in her blood than there was blood.
Allow me a selfish digression. I won’t harp on the point, but I need to state it clearly. I have the same disease that she had, and it scares the hell out of me. I don’t want to go like that. I could not help but see her and think I was seeing my own future. She would tsk and assure me that, as her nephrologists had told her to ease her mind about her children's futures, “By the time you need help, things will be better. There will be artificial kidneys and new treatments.”
I knew she was right. Her own father had died a mere two years before dialysis was available, and I had seen his sister’s dialysis machine myself as a tiny girl -- it took up a whole wall in her bedroom.
My mother had done her own dialysis through a fluid port in her abdomen, not even needing to have blood removed from her body to clean it. A few years after her transplant, it became common practice to do a bone marrow transplant first in cases where you had a living donor. That reduced or eliminated the need for the drugs that had both kept her alive and slowly killed her.
So, see, this is about my mortality as much as hers, and about my kids as much as it is about me.
In mid-July, she was back in the hospital. This time there was abdominal pain, and they found another abscess in her digestive tract. Over the nine years since her transplant, the steroids and other drugs had turned her insides into cheese cloth, more or less. A new hole wasn’t a huge surprise, but it was a challenge because she was weak. They did surgery right away, and she improved quickly.
By the time we could get up for a visit less than a week later, she was out of ICU and in a private room. We chatted and let the boys come in for a few visits, but mostly the hubby took them to play with their cousins while I stayed in the room with Mom and Papa. I gave her a manicure and a pedicure. I drew a picture of my papa while he sat watching a ball game on the TV.
After a few days, I had to go back home. Ron and the boys had been planning a camping trip for weeks, and summer break was almost over. We packed and headed out.
In the hustle, I left my Zoloft behind.
The place we go camping is at a lake high up in the North Georgia mountains. It has camping pads, bear-resistant trash cans and flush toilets, but no showers. We take a canoe and paddle around; we swim in the lake; we hike around the nature trails. It’s always fun, but consistently stressful for me, what with my need for personal cleanliness and attachments to technology.
We were up there almost two weeks. It was great fun. A wilderness Ranger came through, a kid all of 22 I’m sure, who immediately became the boys’ hero. He gave them a glossy hand-out about black bears, and sat by our fire and talked about his job. Hiking through the wilderness for months at a time seemed like the best job ever to my boys. They wanted his autograph.
On the way back to civilization, I turned on my cell phone (doesn’t work on the mountain). I had a message from my papa. “Your mama ain’t doin’ too good. She had some pain and trouble breathing, and they have her back in ICU. You might want to come back up when you can.”
His country patois, much like mine, gets worse when he’s upset. I’d never, ever gotten a call like that from him. He said he’d called my sister, but I was the only one who knew how to get hold of my brother. I called him and he went by on his way between Colorado Springs and Greensboro (he was being transferred, but still holding down both jobs until his replacement could be found in Colorado). He told me to let him know when or if he needed to ask for family leave. I told him I didn’t know all the details but I would let him know as soon as I did.
My Beloved made plans to get the kids ready for school, and try to keep on top of his work and still get home in time to get them off the bus. I drove up alone, with several cds I had burned with favorite songs and a few songs I hadn’t heard much from various soundtracks we had.
I told the hubby I was off the Zoloft, that I hadn’t taken it since before we went camping. We both agreed that I was not spiraling, or showing any bad signs. Zoloft doesn’t stay in your body as long as some of the SSRIs, and my dose had been pretty darn low, anyway. Maybe the timing was bad, what with my mother being ill and all, but I figured the least I could do, if my mother was going to die, was to feel my grief.
I suppose I was going through Knoxville when “Into the West” played. I’m no musician, and I’m no singer (despite the vocal training I've had). It just isn't my gift. But music moves me – listening to music is often a spiritual experience for me. Sometimes not, but I am usually subject to the power of music.
I…just had a feeling this was it. It was her time to go. I brushed off the feeling and arrived without mishap. I went directly to the hospital, and they let me in the ICU. Papa was there.
Mom knew me but couldn’t talk because of the respirator. They had put these weird, over-stuffed mittens on her, and she tried to get me to take them off. I thought they were there because her hands had been trying to draw up, but really they were there to keep her from pulling the respirator out.
They even told me the readings said she was breathing fine on her own, but the respirator needed to stay in “just in case” she had another episode. I didn’t take the mittens off, and I still think I should have. She was an RN, for crying out loud. I think she knew this was it, and she wanted to talk to me.
But I was hoping this wasn’t the end, so I obeyed the rules. It’s not that there were things we hadn’t said – mom and I are both talkers, and never hesitated about the important things – it was just that she wanted to say them again.
Maybe I didn’t help her take out the respirator because I didn’t want to hear her say goodbye.
That’s all I can stand for now. It is awkward to cry in a public library.
I know how hard it is to share things like that. Thank you.
About the disease: it's true that there are new advances all the time, but I know that doesn't make it any less scary. My husband's aunt has the same kind of breast cancer that killed her mother 25 years ago. She was just a little girl at the time. Even though she KNOWS that treatment has made huge strides, it still scares the living daylights out of her and all her sibs, because they saw what her mother went through, only to die anyway, very painfully and very young. All I can say is, I'm glad you're strong enough to handle it, but it's okay to have those fears, and I think it's good that you can acknowledge them.
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There's a line from Scrubs that really struck me when I first heard it. Dr. Cox tells JD, "Listen. Everything we do here, everything, is a stall. That's it."
I thought that was a shocking perspective to put on modern medicine. I have the same fear as you; going out like my grandmother went out: Alzheimers. Losing my mind is a terrifying thought. I can totally sympathize with what you are going through.
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quote:So, see, this is about my mortality as much as hers, and about my kids as much as it is about me.
I understand how true that is, after now having to face my own mortality. It's a very scary thing.
This has been hard to read, maybe because I care so much for you, so I have trouble reading about the raw emotions that I see coming through the words you've written, but I'm glad you wrote it.
I love you to death, sweetie. Never forget that.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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That afternoon, the Internist came by and told us he was hoping to use some sort of imaging equipment in connection with an injection to see if he could locate an abscess in her abdomen. They couldn’t risk cutting into her again to look for the problem, because she was still so weak. He sounded fairly hopeful.
Then another doctor came by and told us that her blood cultures had bacteria from her digestive tract in them, indicating a source of infection in the area. They would keep her on the strong antibiotics to keep the infection in check, but that in her condition – compromised immune system and all that – it was unlikely that the antibiotics alone could cure the infection in her blood. If they could find and drain an internal abscess – if there was a localized source for the infection – then maybe…
I didn’t know what to say to my brother and sister, except to tell them what I’d heard. She was breathing on her own, but they wouldn’t take her of the respirator. She had an infection, but they didn’t know where it was coming from or how to treat it without opening her up again.
I spent my days and evenings either in her room or waiting in the ICU waiting area while other people visited her (there was a limit of two family members at a time). Starr, my step-sister and her daughter Joy (who has a little girl, Mindy, a month or so younger than Robert) came by a lot. Joy’s fiancé worked at the hospital, and he visited, too. Jeff (my step-brother) came by almost every day after work. He had always been there for both mom and papa, and I was glad they had him. He’s good man.
Joy came by to clean papa’s house and she and Starr were with me a lot. They are great people, my papa’s blood kin.
They would run us out of the room around 8pm, and sometimes I wouldn’t go back to Papa’s house right away. I’d go see my sister sometimes. One night I went to the movies. Did you know that you can buy a movie ticket and coke, watch your movie and leave a theater without speaking a word? You can.
I think, maybe this is part of why I’ve never really been a singer. Different people carry tension in different parts of their bodies, you know? I carry mine in the shoulders and the throat. Swear to God. Remember how I said that music moves me? I almost always have an emotional reaction to music, and when I do, more often than not, this little drawstring in my throat clenches tight and nothing much gets out.
The only songs I ever got to sing at recitals were lullabies in languages I don’t speak. Heck, I even choked up on Guten Abend, because when I was wee (and my dad was stationed in Germany) my German nanny sang it to me. A freakin’ lot of good the voice lessons did me; when I could feel the music, it throttled me. *sigh*
Driving back that night, pondering what the heck happened to M. Night Shyamalan, my phone rang. I pulled off the road, coughed like a cat hacking up a fur ball, and answered. It was CT.
I don’t know how long we talked, but I remember she said, “Sometimes all we can do for those we love is to bear witness to their suffering.” Something along those lines, anyway. It was a message I needed to hear. I wanted to hope. I wanted my mother back, but I knew that the woman I had known as my mother had been mostly gone for over a year.
See, I had been keeping my troubles from her, but I knew something was afoot when my sister started calling me when she was upset about stuff. I found I was almost as good as mom in helping to talk her down from one of her blood-sugar rants. She’d forget to eat and every tiny inconvenience would become part of a global conspiracy to do her ill. I’d sympathize for a bit, tell her how much I loved her and talk her into eating some crackers. Because you can’t come at a blood-sugar bitch-fit head on. You can’t just say, “Geez, sis, eat some cheetos!” If you do, you get screamed insistence that she is NOT having a low blood sugar crisis – her life just SUCKS and she wishes she could just DIE and THEN everybody would have to clean up their own &^%%$##% messes! Of course, a handful of cheetos later she is so very embarrassed when she admits, “Gee, I was having blood sugar crisis, wasn’t I?”
It’s still better to go at it sideways. Sometimes you have to call her daughter on her cell phone and say, “Please go fix your mom a sandwich – and don’t skimp on the protein.”
See, even in her low blood-sugar psychosis, my sister knew that mom couldn’t help her anymore. I wonder if she’ll kill me for saying that, but I think it’s true. We had already learned how to live without her – it was just that we didn’t want to.
CT came to visit me. Seriously. She flew into Knoxville and drove to the hospital on Saturday morning, even though she knew she’d have to leave Sunday afternoon. Hatrack was a big part of that whole experience, for me.
You guys prayed for me, encouraged me. If it hadn’t been for Hatrack, I wouldn’t have known Sara, or the grace she brought into my life when I needed it so badly. I am still humbled by the idea that anyone, even my very best friend, would go that thoroughly out of her way for me. Yes, I had tried to offer her support when she was going through the loss of her mother, but I knew I didn’t deserve this.
I guess that’s the thing about friendship – it gets its power from the fact that it doesn’t have to be deserved.
We had lunch at the hospital, and they let me take her in to meet my mom. She was pretty heavily sedated – something they had started to keep her from pulling out the respirator – but she opened her eyes and seemed to know we were there.
My whole family loves Sara, by the way. She impressed Papa in a lot of ways, and even surprised him with the gift of a nice wooden chess set – he and Jeff played a couple times while I was there. He had not expected a Host Gift. I think my brother was smitten, too. (He made a point to come through every weekend and every time he could as he passed between Colorado Springs and Greensboro, so he happened to be there when she was visiting.)
I took her to a place called the Blue Hole, an old swimming hole near my folk’s house that is maintained by the National Park system. It was clear and sunny that day, and we had it to ourselves. We didn’t swim, but we enjoyed the beauty of it and the roar of the falls. Being able to share a place like that with Sara, when everything around me seemed so unstable and so full of pain, was a true blessing. Difficult to describe, I guess.
You feel the stones under you, hear the falls and the sun warms you. It's like something says, "This is the world, and you're in it. Whatever happens is part of it, too, and part of you." I know it sounds dumb to say it like that, but there is something comforting about moments of stillness in a beautiful place.
Afterwards, my step-brother Jeff expressed concern that we had gone there by ourselves on a Sunday morning. He was concerned about "girls" going there alone. (It's something of a 'party' spot in warm weather.) But we were fine, and it was good.
It was hard to say goodbye, even though I knew she had to go. I was still kind of stunned she had come at all. Such is the grace of friendship.
The following week, the internist finally realized that the procedure he wanted to do wouldn’t work because her recent surgery would show up as a hot spot regardless of infection. They found a new infection in her blood, this one caused by a fungal agent of some kind. That brought the blood infection total up to three. The long-term care doctor called us out into the hall, to tell us what the future looked like.
Soon, they would need to put in a port for the respirator, probably a feeding tube and a few other things related to long term care. Decisions had to be made soon.
“Gather your family together, if you can, and we will meet with them all,” he said.
“I think everyone can be here by Monday morning,” I said. It was Thursday, I think.
The smallish Indian doctor nodded, and his two residents stood behind him, looking uncomfortable. “You need to involved everyone in the decision, and begin talking together about what your Grandmother would want.”
“She’s her daughter,” Papa said. “Her youngest.”
The doctor’s female resident seemed a little surprised, and gave me a look of sympathy. We scheduled the meeting with the doctor for Monday at 9am. I made the calls and my brother scheduled an indefinite family leave. His employer was understanding; I hoped they were close to finding a replacement for him in Colorado. Colorado to N.C is one heck of a commute.
Papa and I talked. He said she had a living will. Some of the ICU nurses agreed to look through her chart and her older charts (they stacked up almost 4 feet high) for the Living Will, but told us that in Tennessee it was still up to the family. We trashed the house looking for a copy.
I knew she had a living will. She was an R.N. and had occasionally worked Home Health for hospice patients before her own illness made her leave nursing. Everyone in the family knew that she had said many times that she wouldn’t want to be kept alive on a feeding tube and respirator. Heck, my mom was a talker – anyone who had ever been stuck in a line with her at the Post Office probably knew her thoughts on the subject
But, dammit, I wanted that piece of paper. I didn’t want the burden of the decision. What if there was hope? Mom had always believed in miracles, after all.
*shakes head* I knew in my heart what was going to happen. I could see it when I closed my eyes. No one would want to say it. My step-siblings, even my papa would feel that it was up to us, her blood kin. They wouldn’t want us to feel like they had been the ones to force the issue, you know? We all knew what Mom’s choice would be, but the “steps” wouldn’t feel it was their place to say.
She loved them and they loved her, but I knew the family culture. I knew they would not speak. I also sensed that my older brother and sister wouldn’t either. There was still some bad blood between them, though it was mostly in the past – neither one would want the other to intimate that they did not love mom as well as the other did.
Okay. I know that sounds crazy, and I could be way off on the why, but I was certain neither one of them could say it. I knew it like I know the sun will rise in the morning. I knew it would fall to me.
And it pissed me off. Just a little, but it did. How could I speak for my mother? But… how could I not?
See, no one would ever say I had it in for mom, or that mom and I weren’t as close as mom and whoever. I was the only one who could say it without someone having a visceral reaction. Not that it would be said aloud, mind you.
If my sister spoke up, my brother might not think “Well, she has to be the drama queen…” but my sister would probably believe he thought so. And vice versa.
Papa as much as told me that he wouldn’t say what had to be said.
“We all know what she wanted to happen in this situation, but I don’t want you kids to think I took the choice away from you. She’s your mama.”
I called Sara from papa’s phone. I cried to her like a baby. “In the morning, I’m gonna open my mouth and kill my mama. How can I do that? How can I?”
“Sometimes we have to be an advocate for people we love. Speak for her.”
She was right. I could speak for my mother. I would speak for my mother; I was strong enough. I was my mother’s daughter.
It happened just as I had seen it in my head during that long dark night. We followed the doctor and his residents to a meeting room. It was packed with my siblings and mom’s adult grandchildren, step and otherwise.
The doctor explained that they could prolong mom’s life, possibly for months, but the chances of her beating the triple blood infections were worse than slim. He laid it all out. Our options were to stay the course, begin much more aggressive treatments (feeding tube, etc.) or withdraw invasive measures and let her go. None of the options had much different chances of her survival, and if we stayed at the same level of treatment she would need a tracheotomy soon because of the risk of infection with the respirator running through her mouth. He would commit wholeheartedly to whatever course the family chose, but there was little hope of a meaningful recovery.
When he stopped talking, for a long time there was no sound in that over-packed room but our breathing and sniffles. I waited.
Papa and most of the steps looked at me (I was the only one of mom’s kids still at home when she married papa, so they knew me more than my brother and sister – all of them had been out on their own before the marriage, too); my sister and brother didn’t look at anybody, heads down.
Finally, I spoke. I could breathe and all, but my vocal chords were tight. I didn’t think I could make a sound, but I did. “We all know what she wanted, don’t we? Is there anyone who didn’t hear her say she didn’t want to be kept alive on a respirator? She threatened to haunt me if I ever let them put in a feeding tube.”
People giggled. It was true; we’d all heard her say it. It was just something mom would say, and when she said it -- instead of being horrified -- we'd laugh. It was just the way she said those things, with a giggle in her voice that made you laugh along. Others spoke up, too, and we started talking, all of us. After a few minutes, the doctor asked what our decision was.
I said it through tears, but I said it. “She would want us to let her go, so that is what I think we should do.” Once I had said it, everyone voiced agreement. The doctors left, and we hugged each other and cried. I know it was the choice she would have wanted, but I was glad we were all in agreement.
That’s why I told the “Spirit of Inappropriate Laughter” story. See, from a certain point of view, the Holy Rollers were right. I mean,when they said I had a “Spirit of Matricide”. Maybe they knew something I didn't, in some twisted version of the future. I certainly hadn't thought I could do what I did, but I was wrong.
I did kill my mother. Not with my hands, but with my mouth and with my heart.
It was the most loving and the most horrible thing I have ever done.
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Oh my - I shouldn't have read it at work, now I'm on the verge of tears and I can't cry. I just feel like hugging you really tight. Mom used to say the exact same thing your Mom did - that she would haunt me if I ever asked her to be put on reanimation past hope of recovery. And it used to make me laugh, too. ((((Olivet))))
Posts: 3526 | Registered: Oct 2001
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Thank you all. I'm a little overwhelmed. I guess I just want to be honest, and when I get to the end be able to say that I told the whole truth as best I could. I don't want to make you feel sad; I just want to tell it like it was and hope those who read it understand. Thank you for hearing me.
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Still, it was a bit unnerving to have it put that way. *giggle*![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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Thank you guys. As much as I needed to do this, I'm not sure I'd have done it without your kindness.![[Kiss]](graemlins/kiss.gif)
