A Two Martini Knotty Grrl

Grief and Breakdowns.

I finally broke down and seriously cried about my mom last week.  It was certainly not a convenient time as I was going to the full dress rehearsal for the play I was in, but I credit the play with being able to break down the wall that I had built to dam in my anger and pain.  I miss her.  It sounds simplistic, even to me, but that's the long and the short of it.  There's a little bit of self-pity thrown in because I feel like 28 is way too young to be left motherless, regardless of what our relationship may have been.  Then I remember that lots of people, including some of my best friends, have lost parents at earlier ages and I realize that I'm being a bit of an ass.  The play I was in was the first one that my mom didn't come to see.  She even came to see me last year in The Vagina Monologues, and she was really sick from chemo and kept having to duck into the bathroom.  She stayed all the way through my parts and then had to go home but she was there supporting me. 

It's fucked up when I think about how my mom would be the best person to help me get through this, and she's the one person that I can't have anymore.

I went out last night for a "Girl's Night Out."  It was really fun.  I kind of screwed the pooch on one part of the evening but I won't make that mistake again.  I did get to meet Steve McNair though, and have my picture taken with him, so that was pretty cool.  But the women that went last night are all so smart, and funny, and just damn good company that it was just what I needed.  Still weird that my BABYSITTER got in trouble for being out so late.  Long story but it's just odd.

I'm trying to get my life back into some sort of order because I realized last night that mom had only been dead about two weeks when I leaped into the play.  I wanted to do the play and I loved it.  I didn't realize that it would be so helpful to me personally though.  I can cry now when I think about my mom and I feel sad.  Not the wracking sobs of last week, just tears that are healthy and cleansing.  That's a huge step for me right now.  I'm still having trouble when I run into random objects though.  That's the hardest part, when I find something of hers and I feel like I've been punched in the gut.  I found her glasses yesterday and I actually hid them away.  I don't know if that's healthy or not but my mom's glasses were just as much a part of her as her hair or her nose or her legs.  She literally could not see when she didn't have glasses on, as she was legally blind without them.  And I cried at an on-ramp that we used to have to take to get her to her treatments.  This particular on-ramp has been under construction the entire four years that we have lived here.  It was always taking weird turns, that put horrible pressure on my mom and caused her pain, it was never the same for than a month at a time, and she hated it.  The just finished it last month.  I cried because now it's perfect.  Smooth asphalt, no huge pits, smooth gentle curves, and I was sad that my mom never got to ride on it and feel no pain.  Weird.  On ramps and eyeglasses.  I never know what will trigger the sadness.

I don't know that I'll ever stop missing her.

Bean did the sweetest thing tonight.  He came over to me on the couch and asked me if I was his best friend.  I replied that of course he was and I was rewarded with the sweetest sounds I can imagine.  He looked me full in the eyes and said "Mama, you're my best friend too and I love you."  Then he gave me a big kiss and went back to watching the Smurfs.  Oh, how fickle three can be.

Bug is walking full time now and babbling like small woodland creature.  She's always so emphatic and even throws in head nods after some of her "sentences."  I have no idea what she's saying but she's telling me something for sure!  She is getting much more confident when being left with babysitters, and that's a comfort to me especially since my mom isn't around to watch them anymore.

Something else random, I found a picture that I took of Bean at the hospice residence and he still had his long hair.  I cut it all off two days after my mom died.  I just realized that I did it for her just as much for me.  She was always saying how he has such beautiful eyes and we couldn't see them for the hair.  I wish I had done it for her before she died.

Everything else at Chez Knotty is a bit haywire, as usual, but we'll muddle though . . . or we won't.  Part of me wants to run far, far away, and curl into a ball and just thrash and sob for a few days.  It won't happen but I really wish that I could do it.

Jumble, Jumble.

Frog told me yesterday that he thinks that I'm "lazy," and that I'm "milking" my mother's death to avoid housework.  The honest truth is that I don't want to clean right now.  I don't want to worry about the stupid 65 gallon aquarium, and the community within it.  I don't want to pare down our belongings for when the IRS takes our house.  I don't want to balance the checkbook.  What I want, and am unable to have, is to curl into a fetal position and heave myself about, with soul-wracking sobs and screams for the loss of my mother. 

No matter how complicated my relationship with my mother, and it surely was complicated, she was my mom.  I'm only 29.  I will have questions for what could be 60 years that I will want to ask my mom.  She wasn't the same since she got sick, but she was still smart.  And even if I didn't take the "advice,"  there was something in the asking that could soothe my soul about my own, albeit very different, answer.

It also turns out that my mom was one of the few people in my life who could redirect me when I freaked out over the big picture.  She could give me one simple task to complete, I would complete it, and it would calm me.  If I got wound up again after that task, she would give me the next task that needed to be done, and I would complete it, and usually that was enough to get me going.  Now I have to beg friends, and even pay people, to help me with the tasks that Frog wants completed.  This is because I am freaking out over the big pictures, and I can't see the trees for the forest.  The pressure I feel is so huge that I have contemplated being hospitalized, even without insurance!!, to get some time away to grieve.  I figure that's probably a sign that it's pretty bad.  I really need to consider asking the doc to up my meds dosage for at least a while.

A big shout out to B., and her entire family, for having me and the kids over today for a lovely time in the country, where Bean could run wild, Bug could pretend to be shy, and I could talk.  I needed that tranquil spot, and it's so very appreciated.  I didn't even know how much I needed it until we were there and overstaying our welcome.

Another very personal thanks to B. for helping me with my part in my latest play.  Listening to my lines as they are meant to be said is proving so helpful that I think the director will be ecstatic!