15. CRY

• Tears are a natural cleansing and healing mechanism. It’s OK to cry. In fact, it’s good to cry when you feel like it. What’s more, tears are a form of mourning. They are sacred! 

CARPE DIEM:  If you feel like it, have a good cry today. Find a safe place to embrace your pain and cry as long and as hard as you want to.  (HEALING A PARENT’S GRIEVING HEART: 100 PRACTICAL IDEAS AFTER YOUR CHILD DIES, Alan D. Wolfelt, PhD, 2005)

I don’t feel like it today. I’m okay. I’m a little tired. Just enjoying being in the house on this cold, damp, dreary day. Doing laundry and a little cleaning. Mostly reading. Some meditating. I’m aware that my heart is healing. It’s only taken eleven plus years. 

The night I found my son, I don’t know if I cried. I remember screaming. My heart, my soul, my very self, split in two. It is only now that I feel some mending happening. I’m coming back to myself, acknowledging that my son is indeed dead and gone. My son. The child I raised. The boy who felt things so strongly. I described him as wearing his nerves, as a child, on the outside of his body. My beautiful boy.

Wednesday was the first anniversary of the death of my mother. Not by suicide, like my son. I do believe she gave up though. She was 87 and a half. She’d survived all the members of her family, except for some in-laws, as well as the loss of her best friend. The last loss, the final straw, was her younger sister. Until the last few days, she continued to be active in her assisted living community. Then she was having difficulty breathing, her pulse-ox was very low, but she wouldn’t keep the oxygen on. 

When my sister called to say she was gone, I was shocked. We’d just gotten her on to hospice services because she was refusing to go to the hospital and she needed more care than the facility could provide for her. I told her it didn’t mean she was going to die, that some people graduate from hospice. (I’d worked as a hospice social worker.) Apparently, she decided otherwise.

I had a Mass celebrated for her yesterday at my parish church. Before Mass, I thought about telling the priest the correct pronunciation of her name, but he was running late and I decided not to interrupt him as he got ready. He mispronounced it. Many people do. Obviously not an English major. A vowel followed by double consonants carries the short sound, no? He said it with the long sound. 

I reposted her eulogy, photos, and stories. I felt guilty when I saw my sister posted, “we miss you”. I don’t miss her. Not really. She wasn’t the easiest person to be around. All my life her anxiety took first priority. I remember, even as a child, trying to manage her anxiety. Once, she left the window by the stove open after she hung out some laundry (NY apartment living). The curtain blew into the flame and caught fire. The flame blew across the window shade and it dropped. I called her, in a monotone, “Mo-om, the curtains are on fire.”  I was maybe 10 years old.

I visited her grave yesterday. Afterward, I went to my sister’s. We went out to lunch and then spent time together at her apartment. I got to see my niece too. It was a lovely visit. We are really just getting to know each other. Enjoy each other. 

We agreed that, growing up, we were just a bunch of people living in the same house. Mom was a switchboard operator when I was young, later a receptionist. She operated that way in life as well. She talked about each of us, her four kids, to each of us. In a way, it kept us separate. I remember, having started communicating directly with my sister. Mom told me something about her; and, when I said I already knew, she was surprised…like how dare I already know that. So…looking back, I think it was intentional. Sad to say.

I always knew anxiety was an issue for her. She started taking Valium, Mother’s Little Helper, in the “60s and continued through old age. Later she had Xanax. She didn’t drink a lot, but she’d hobble to the liquor store down the block from her Senior apartment. She spent some time in 12 Step meetings, Al-Anon Adult Children, and talked about getting the best therapy for $1 (donation).

Everybody loved her. Well, there were a few that told my poor sister she was a saint for dealing with her. She had the major care-taking duties. 

On the anniversary, my daughter, granddaughter and I went out to an Irish pub for dinner. Mom loved all things Irish. We would sometimes take her out to an Irish pub, where she would order a quesadilla. I’m not kidding. 

Now she’s with my son. I hope they’re enjoying each other’s company.