24 April 2002

Obviously, I haven't been writing here. As time goes by, the ways in which her death affects me change in some ways, and in other ways stay exactly the same. Wendey was right when she told me that the pain would get less sharp, but that it would never ever stop sucking. It has, and it hasn't. I'll never stop missing her and wishing she was here for me to talk to. My life has totally changed & I'm making some major changes this year and it's so difficult to accept that she's not here to share them with.

It's hard to believe that it's been over 2 years since I last saw her, since I last hugged her and told her I loved her. Today would have been her 57th birthday, I would have loaded her up with cards and presents, I would have called her when I woke up and sung to her. Not doing any of that is still hard. I bought her a mother's day card yesterday. I know it's silly, but I just desperately wanted to.

Anyhow, even though I am not keeping this journal updated regularly, I am going to leave it online as an archive. Reading it seems to help people. I appreciate all the kind emails I still get from people who know how I feel.

I have been doing very well lately. Until tonight.

There's a book called Kinflicks, by Lisa Alther that I read when I was in 7th grade. At the time I found it a very bewildering and strange novel (definitely a book for adults, not 12 year olds!) and I was haunted by certain images and phrases from it over the years. I think I re-read it a few times in high school.

A few years ago, I thought of it again & aquired a used copy to re-read. Parts of it had stuck with me so strongly through the years, I thought I would see what I could get out of it as an adult. At the time, I think this was early 1999, I enjoyed it as much as ever, but didn't really glean any new insight into it. And the protagonist's mother is in the hospital throughout the book dying of a strange blood disorder, so it made me uncomfortable since at that time, my mom also had a blood disorder with similar symptoms, even though I did not belive she was dying.

A few weeks ago, I happened to mention something about this book on a mailing list I am on, and a friend in Australia said that she had read it as well. We were both so excited to find someone else that we could discuss this weirdly compelling novel with, that we promptly began to re-read it again last week so we could refresh our memories and talk about it.

Well. I finished it tonight.

Like me, Lisa Alther clearly watched her mom die in a hospital of some stupid messed up disease that came from nowhere and made no sense. There is no way someone could know exactly what your mommy is like when she's dying for reasons no one understands and no one can fix, or even has any ideas how to unless they'd been there. And how the relationship changes and how terrible it is when she pushes you away so she can let go.

It has completely and totally unhinged me.

I have been sitting on the couch crying for an hour with Chico laying on me trying to hug me. It's spooky how he knows when I am freaking out over her. Poor baby, she was his mommy too, for real since he was 2 days old, and he doesn't even understand where she went.

Anyhow, I feel terrible and sad and I miss my mommy. I want her back. I need her.

24 April 2001

Happy birthday mommy.

Yeah, it has been awhile. I know a lot of people have been looking for updates, and most of you have probably given up by now. Things kind of went to hell in my life 2 days after I wrote that last entry.

Since then, I have gotten a divorce. A lot of people assumed it might have something to do with my grief, but in actuallity, I think the grief kept us together longer than we would have been otherwise. There were signs that things were not right between us before the wedding even, but with all the stress of planning and changing jobs and moving and my mom being sick, I just pushed my doubts aside and wrote them off as cold feet and stress, etc. And then of course right after the wedding, I lost my mom and became something of a zombie for several months, and then the whole home-building process, etc. There was always something else to blame.

It was a very amicable separation, and we still see each other and talk all the time. There's nothing particularly *wrong* with either of us, we just do not belong together.

So that has been very difficult to go through, particularly without my mother to support me and offer me advice and guidance and reassurance that I have made the right choice, and have not ruined my own life.

She would have been 56 today. I miss her as badly as I have every day since December of 1999. I just can't believe this is my life. I don't understand how I ended up like this.

6 December 2000

Well, I'm starting to have some twinges of Not-Okayness. We were in New Orleans last weekend and I had a lot of memories of my first trip there with mommy. I walked by a store and looked in and just had a breathtakingly clear memory of being in that shop with her. She bought a doll there, which I now have. Well, it's in a box somewhere.

Later at dinner, I mentioned to one of Gus' friends that my mother had really liked him when she met him at our wedding. He said "Well, tell her I said thank you." and my blood just froze. I could see in his face before I managed to blurt out "I can't" that he realized what he'd said. I didn't want to make him feel bad, so I tried to play it off but I came very very close to crying. "I can't" - what a very sad little phrase. I can't ever ask or tell my mommy anything again.

Last night I was talking to myself while I unpacked. Well, actually talking to someone else who wasn't actually there. I do that a lot, instead of talking to me, I have imaginary conversations with a friend. It helps me collect my thoughts. Anyhow, I said something about "blah blah blah after my mom died" and for the first time in a very long time, I felt that statement, and it hurt. A lot. I'd just sort of said it without thinking about the reality of it for so long and last night I stopped and was like "After my mom DIED? What?" - it was pretty bad. So we'll see what the upcoming weeks hold for me.

23 November 2000

Well, we've started the moving process, which is at least distracting. I got through Thanksgiving just fine, I had a nice day overall. We sat in a totally different section of the restaurant than we did last year, and we had good company, and I was really okay.

We have an upcoming trip to New Orleans, next weekend, so there's another distraction. I like this. Just staying busy and being kind of lost in crazy non-mommy related thoughts seems to work for me right now. I'm not in denial, and I'm not stuffing anything, I'm just...disconnected.

I made a new friend in grief support group. She is about my mom's age and has a daughter who is just a bit older than me, and she's just the sweetest thing ever. She is so loving and caring and kind, and she wants to be friends. That's really something I have been hoping a praying for, to find someone to be there for me in that nice mommy sort of way. Obviously, no one can replace my mother, but it is nice to have someone older to talk to.

17 November 2000

Still hanging together, oddly enough. I feel kind of crazy in a disconnected sort of way much of the time though. I just think really weird thoughts much of the time. Once again, I'm told this is "normal".

We still have not moved into our home, which a source of constant stress. We're hoping we might close today. We've hoped that most days for the past 2 weeks though, and on and off for the past 6 months almost. So who knows? I actually think I'll feel better when I have my mom's things out of storage and surrounding me. I miss her stuff.

Thanksgiving is next week, and we're going to the same restaurant we went to last year. It was supposed to be me, and mommy, and Gus and his family and our wedding party, but mommy was in the hospital. It left me quite incapable of enjoying myself. I don't know if going back there is the best idea, but it's where we've gone for Thanksgiving every year for quite some time now. We'll see how it goes. It seems like a lot of things that I expect to upset me don't and when I'm not looking I get broadsided by something that is a surprise.

I realized we're going to be in New York on the 1 year anniversary of mommy's death. It was not intentional, we have a friend doing a performance there that weekend, and we decided to go not even thinking of the date. I don't know if that's good or bad. Again, I guess we'll find out when we get there.

Like I said, I just feel weird, in ways I can't put my finger on. I almost feel like I'm expecting something else terrible to happen, and I'm bracing myself for it. It may just be the impending holidays, or my imagination, or whatever. But I felt this way once before, and it did happen. I guess we'll see.

6 November 2000

I still seem to be doing okay. Quelle surprise.

Well, I guess that's not entirely true. I've been oddly depressed about other things, and just feeling weird and unsure about my life in general. I've been kind of feeling like my life choices are all made now, and questioning if I've made the right ones. Or panicking that I've made the wrong ones. I've been here before, but not this bad. And in the past, I had my mom to talk me out of my tree and convince me that I was in the right place doing the right things, or help me figure out what I needed to do next, or differently, to fix what I was feeling.

I had long ago accepted the fact that I'd never stop needing my mommy, but I didn't think I'd have to live without her this early in life.

A year ago, I was 20 days away from my wedding day. I don't even recognize the girl I was then anymore. My poor husband, I'm definitely not the girl he married a year ago.

28 October 2000

Well, after a battery of tests this week, they find nothing wrong with me. Everyone says that's good, but it'd be nice to have some explanation. Instead of just assuming it's "nothing", I naturally assume it's something they're not finding. My faith in the medical profession has gone way down.

Anyhow, I feel like I have turned a corner. Again, I hate to say this because I seem to always end up putting my foot in my mouth later, but I feel like I am somehow coming to grips with this whole mess. I wasn't able to sleep for much of last night, and I found myself able to turn some things over in my mind and feel like...I guess that if I have lived for ten and a half months without my mommy, I can go on living.

It kind of spooks me how I have adapted and gotten accustomed to not having her to talk to, to driving around in her car and wearing her clothes, and her jewelry. To just casually saying, when complimented on any of these things "Oh, thanks, it was my mom's". I think of it kind of like how an animal will adapt to losing a leg. I kind of feel that way. Like I've readjusted myself around this huge missing piece that I once thought was essential to my survival.

The weather turning cold again has brought up a lot of memories though. I'd forgotten a lot of what happened in the time between my mamma died and when I got back up here to Seattle (about 3 weeks). The other night I was sitting outside in a chilly wind smoking and I remembered sitting outside a hotel room in New Mexico smoking and wondering how I was ever going to take care of all the things that had to be taken care of in the aftermath. I guess I did it, although Gus was certainly instrumental in getting a lot of it done.

I'm still sad a lot, and I still feel strange and incomplete a lot, but I guess I'm healing somewhat. I have some very good friends, that helps. I know God helps too, even though I am still confused as to His ultimate plan. I know He loves me, and I guess that is all I need to know for now.

24 October 2000

I didn't even realize until I wrote that date that this is the 2 year anniversary of the night Gus asked me to marry him. How time has flown.

Well, I didn't end up going to grief counseling last week. By the time I was meant to go, I was feeling so lethargic and depressed that I didn't feel like making the long drive up there and getting home an hour past my normal bedtime. And while I was feeling depressed, it wasn't about anything I felt I could specifically talk about or put a finger on.

So about that depression. It's been coming and going a lot lately. I attributed it to the fact that I got on such an emotional high from my short but truly happy phase, that tcoming back down to "normal" was hard. But since I've found out that it's probably due to the fact that I've stopped taking birth control pills. No, I'm not trying to get pregnant, that's the last thing I want right now, but they were causing me some real health problems so I've had to move onto something else. Anyhow, I'm told it can cause crashing depression. Just what I need, right?

Today was a very hard day for me. We had to lay off a lot of people from my work. I didn't get laid off, nor did I have to do any of the actual laying off, but several of the people let go were my closest friends, both in and outside of work. Since losing my mom, my friends have become my real 'family' and some of the people I look forward to seeing every day aren't going to be there tomorrow. That is really tough, and I was more emotional about it than I would have been before I lost my mom.

At the end of the day, work is work, and my friends are my friends, and I'm grateful that i still have my job at a company I care very deeply about. But it was still really draining, and I feel very emotionally exhausted tonight.

19 October 2000

I should know better than to say this, but I seem to be doing pretty well lately.

I mean, I am definitely dreading the impending holidays, the anniversary of mom's death, and the memories that my 1 year wedding anniversary are going to stir up. But I seem to be having more good days than bad recently.

More importantly, sometimes I feel happy. Not just surface happy, but happy almost all the way through. It creeps up on me when I'm not paying attention. Last week, I went out with a friend, and we had some great talks about family and parents and my mom, and I realized later that I'd felt solidly happy for over 7 hours. Amazing. Medical science has come a long way, but they haven't managed to come up with a better healer than time yet.

I have grief counseling tonight, and for a change I don't really have a lot that I feel like I need to talk about. We'll see though, sometimes I get there and stuff just comes up. I think partially I have had so much going on in my life and in my mind this month that I haven't had time to grieve. Of course, we (hopefully) will be moving into the new house very soon, and going through all of mommy's stuff is going to be difficult.

I got a bunch of her papers and writings out of storage the other day and read them all. It was upsetting because, while I knew a lot about the horrible abuse and events of her childhood and teenage years, I didn't know all of it, in depth. And it was very sad and frightening to realize that it was my mom I was reading about who had had these terrible things done to her. I don't know how she even survived, much less became the incredible amazing person and parent that she was. I already found it an awesome accomplishment, knowing what I did, but now that I know the full story, I am even more humbled and awed by the wonderful person that God chose to be my mamma for 28 years.

28 September 2000

I forgot to mention this.

My mom had quite a few fur coats. I gave away several of them to people I knew she wanted to have something nice from her. And I kept 3 that I knew I would wear. But 2 of them, I wouldn't ever wear however I was unwilling to give them away as they were the two she'd had the longest, and I am reminded of so many memories of her when I see them.

So I looked into having something made from them that I could have around the house to look at all the time. And I found a great place in Canada called Hicks Furs to take on the project for me. They made a pair of sofa throw pillows out of one coat, and a pair of teddy bears out of the other. Sherrie sent me a photo of the bears as a sneak preview before they arrived. They are so beautiful. Click here to see them.

They came a few days ago, and I am so happy with them. The pillows are wonderful, because Sherrie incorportaed the wooden toggle closures from the jacket into the design. I remember sitting in mommy's lap and playing with them when I was a little girl.

26 September 2000

I went to the support group at Evergreen thursday night. It's only once a month, and there usually ends up being so many people, each in so much pain, that the time each person has to share is limited. I didn't get to talk about either of the things I really was hoping to. I am looking into going to see a counselour privately. I just need someone unbiased to listen to me.

And you know, in any grief group I find myself comparing my situation to other people's. I wonder if everyone does that. It makes me angry (irrationally) when people are greiving a parent that died at 70 or 80 and I just want to shake them and tell them I'd do anything to have had my mommy live to be SIXTY. I know in my head their pain is just as valid as mine, but in my heart I'm so mad at the unfairness of it all.

My faith is so damaged, it scares me.

It's not even October yet and I'm dreading the holidays. Piled into one weekend will be Thanksgiving, our 1 year anniversary, and the last time I ever spent with my mom. And then there's Christmas to consider. I just don't know what that's going to be like. What a difficult year 2000 has been. What a way to start off a decade. I can't believe it's october already. This year has gone by in a blur, mostly. A big smudgy tearstain.

18 September 2000

Well, I got through my birthday with a minimum of tears and sadness thanks to my husband and my wonderful friends. Everyone worked hard to make sure I had lots of wonderful surprises and presents to keep me happy through the day. I thought I was doing really well.

Then we went out to eat friday night, and after dinner stopped in a little shop near the restaurant we had never been into before. It was primarily a shop that sold British merchandise, and upstairs they had a section that was all Beatrix Potter, Winnie the Pooh and Paddington things. I was delighted, since those are 3 of my very favourite childhood characters. So we were looking at all the cute things, like baby room decor and stuffed toys and mobiles, and I saw a Beatrix Potter framed art print that said "For a very special mother" on it, and thought that was just the kind of thing my mommy would have bought me when I became a mom, and suddenly the whole store just seemed to cave in on me. Everything I saw was something my mother would have loved to have bought for her grandchildren and it was never going to happen, and I just fell to pieces.

I'm getting upset just writing this. I don't understand why this happened, and there's no one who can explain it to me. I don't know how I'm supposed to have babies without my mom to help me. I just can't figure out how to be happy, knowing that my kids are going to be denied the pleasure of my sweet wonderful mommy as their Nannah Dove. They'll only know her from pictures, and no matter how many stories I tell them, she'll never be real to them, they'll never know how soft her hands were or how comforting her hugs and her love were, and it breaks my damn heart.

7 September 2000

I just haven't had a lot to say for awhile. I am back to feeling just nothingness most of the time. It seems like it's getting easier to trick myself into forgetting for long stretches of time. Is that 'recovery'? I don't know.

My birthday is next week, and I've been very much in a happy manic, "Yay for my birthday" mood for a few days. Last night, the fact that I wouldn't get birthday cards, or presents, or my happy birthday song phonecall from my mommy, for the first time in my life, she wouldn't be here to help me celebrate, entered my mind for the first time. And it doused my good spirits like a firehose. Now I just feel very empty and sad about the upcoming date.

I guess all holidays are going to be like this for awhile.

I just don't understand, still, how this can have happened. I know a lot of people who say their faith in God has helped them to get through their grief, but my grief, and the events that caused it, has really been damaging to my faith. And no one has any answers for me. I'm very confused.

For the past month or so, I've been pretty manic overall, just having fun and being kind of carefree and irresponsible - I feel like I want to be the girl I was when I was 24 again. And I realize that that is mostly because I want to be a girl with a mother again. And neither of those things can happen.

I know I've talked about this before, but the loss of my family history is another thing that has been very difficult for me. I was always realizing things about my early life, or my mom's life as I got older that I would ask her about. Like when I was 26 and saw other girls my age with kids, and thought about my mom being that age and having me, and then raising me alone - there was a lot I talked to her about, like how she felt being a single mom with no one to help her care for me or support me, and I was able to understand her so much more as I got older. I was looking forward to having many more talks like that after I was a mom myself.

It really is like a knife in my heart knowing I'll never get to have them.

It's been 8 months since my mommy walked me down the aisle. *sigh*

I think the thing that's really making me crazy is that our relationship is now totally static. It's never going to change or evolve or grow. I can't thank her for things I want to, I can't talk to her about the changes in my life and in me and get her help and advice and input. The way our relationship was when she died is the way it's going to stay. I hate that.

No matter how many times I replay our last conversations in my head, nothing about them can ever be changed or clarified. I'm not going to suddenly remember something that's going to make a difference. No matter how many times I wish she'd been conscious when I was at the hospital with me, how many times I wish that I'd known she knew I was there with her, or that she'd been able to say good bye, it's never going to happen. The way it was is never going to change. And thinking about it obsessively doesn't do any good. So why can't I stop doing it?

20 July 2000

Last week, I was feeling so terrible and wanting my mom so bad. And thinking about how no one can ever make me feel better when I'm sick like my mommy could, and how she was always so good to me when I didn't feel well, even though I'm sure sometimes she was stressed out, or tired of listening to me whine, or whatever.

And it just hit me that as miserable as I felt for 5 days, I was nowhere near as sick as she had been, and she didn't have anyone to make her feel better or take care of her. For 4 months, she was so very ill and all I could do was listen to her on the phone and try to cheer her up and pray with/for her. She must have been so scared. I feel so guilty for not being more sympathetic and taking time to go down there more. I was so stressed and worried planning my wedding and worrying about her was so hard on me that I didn't do all I could have. I know it's useless to feel guilty now about things I could have done, but I can't help it. She deserved more.

And I've been feeling bad about things I haven't handled very well since she died, and I realized that it's kind of silly to be afraid that she'll be angry with me. It's not like she's going to yell at me when I see her in heaven and I'm not going to see her before then.

I never thought it was possible to miss anyone this much. The pain of never having gotten to talk to her about being married, or even tell her about our honeymoon...it just breaks my heart. Nothing can make up for that.

7 July 2000

Oh it just never ends. I want my mommy. I want my mommy so bad.

I just spent the weekend in the hospital crying and throwing up from what has now been diagnosed at My First Migraine. They did CAT scans and spinal taps and shot me full of all kinds of drugs, and I just kept wishing I could hear my mommy's voice. She always knew what to say or do to make me feel better. She always had advice for whatever was wrong with me. I can't stand this, I can't stand knowing I have to live the whole rest of my life without ever having her here to help me through things again.

I thought I was doing okay. I thought I was "getting used to it" whatever that means. But I was wrong. Every time I think I'm doing better, I get smacked back down again. I can't stand it. I can't. I just don't know how to LIVE without my mommy. She was everything to me. She was so proud of me, and I feel like I'm letting her down by being so totally screwed up over her death. I feel like she would have hoped she'd prepared me better to be independent, she tried so hard to make sure I was. But at the same time, if I'm not feeling bad for being a miserable wreck without her, I'm feeling guilty for not being more upset, for feeling like I'm "getting used to it". I just can't win. I don't know how to win against something this huge and horrible. Or just to live with it. I just can't.

3 June 2000

What a horror this is. We brought William home thursday night. We have the weekend with him. Tomorrow night we're taking him to the vet's and he'll leave us for Heaven.

Planning and preparing for his death is so awful. It makes me feel like I did when we had to make the choice to turn off the drugs to my mommy's body and let her die. I just can't stand it. I feel guilty.

He is so weak and skinny and he can hardly get around. It's scary how fast this happened, a week ago he was fine and running around like usual. Now he's so tired and old. He loves us so much, as soon as he came in the door thursday night he started purring. I feel so bad, to be taking him to his death tomorrow, I feel so guilty and wrong, but he is suffering.

I will miss him so much. Here's some pictures of him as he was in health.

1 June 2000

Oh God, make it stop. I can't handle anymore, I can't hurt anymore, I can't take anymore.

When I was 12, my mommy was going out one horribly rainy night and on her way to the car she heard a horrible yowling. She found a tiny little starved 3 week old grey kitten and brought him in.

Well, he is 16 now and he came back to Seattle with us after she died. He's always been perfectly healthy. Until now. He stopped eating this week, and last night we took him to the vet. He has kidney disease, and it's really bad. He spent the night there on an i.v and is still not eating this morning. He'll probably have to be there until tomorrow. At this point, it looks like the best we can hope for is that they get him stable enough to come home and spend the weekend with us. And that will be that.

I didn't think I could grieve any deeper than I already am, I didn't think the hurt could go deeper. Well guess what? It can. I want my little grey kitty back. He loves to play with pens, and he gives little love bites when you pet him. I can't lose anymore. I can't get through this. I can't be any stronger than I already am being forced to be. Why is this happening?

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