This is my first blog since what seemed like a nuclear torpedo crashed into my life as I had known it. Nothing could have prepared me for this. Because, as I now realize, nothing can prepare for the death of your mother. Especially a sudden death. Where one day she is just gone. No goodbye, no final words, no hugs, no "I love you" nothing. You are just left there, and she is gone.
My mother died suddenly, in her home in Santa Rosa, California on Monday March 7, 2011. The police declared the time of death 8:18 am. The Autopsy called it "Sudden Cardiac Death" She was 68 years old. The last words anyone heard were heard by her friend who she called for help. All her friend heard over the phone was a faint, out of breath, child-like voice struggling out the words..."help, help me, help." Her friend called 911 but by the time the police and the paramedics got there, she was gone. Incidentally, she lives right across the street from Police and Fire Station so we are all very perplexed at how long it took them to get there. But that's another blog.
That morning, I was in my flat in San Francisco just waking up when I heard my partner open my front door and enter. He pulled up a chair to the side of the bed, held my hand and said. "I love you very much. It's going to be a hard day, sweet, a very hard day. It's your mother." I slowly and clumsily tried to sit myself up looking confused and lost. He said "She had an episode this morning and was taken to the hospital." My face turned to a look of panic and concern. Then the words that you'll never forget for the rest of your life came out of his mouth. "She didn't make it."
At that moment the world literally stopped and I went white and numb. No emotion really, just stunned. I said "No, no , no" in a stilted and droned tone. The rest of the day is bleary and blurred. I threw the most haphazard, non sensical things into a bag. Jeans, hairspray, a dress, a luna bar, a hat...I don't even remember the rest. My incredibly supportive and helpful partner guided me to his car where he shuffled me into the passenger seat. We got coffee at Angelina's Cafe down the block, water from a convenient store and began the race up to Santa Rosa. That hour long drive is when it all just began kicking in. I started making the calls. It is in that process that it really becomes real. I called my dad, pertinent friends, anyone else I could think of.
We went straight to the hospital where one of her best friends with her husband was waiting for me. I walked into the lobby of the Emergency Room and she and I crashed into each other arms in a hug that was like clinging to life. We stood there hugging, shaking and sobbing. When we finally released the desperate embrace to take in the situation around us I was led into a little, tiny, sterile, cold room to be given further information. The priest, told me that they had already taken her body away so I couldn't see her. Everyone told me that was probably better. I explained that she was not a Christian so we didn't need any of his formal services. He began giving me information about Funeral Homes and such...all I heard was words, words, words. Nothing could be put together to make sense.
What then began is my first experience with the deep, muggy, murky, prickly, empty, lonely, swirling world of what they call "Grief." I've never had anyone close to me die before so this was my first time. What a way to start.
I'm an only child and my parents divorced when I was 13. I lived with my mother from that point on so needless to say we were as close as a mother and daughter could be. We locked arms and took the world on together. We were a system. A survival team. We were enmeshed. A word I came to understand later when I started reading literature on Co-Dependency. My mother and I definitely qualified. This only added to the complicated myriad of emotions I was about to experience. After doing some reading on "Greif" I've realized that I fall under the category of "Complicated Grief." The mother/daughter intertwining brings it all out. The good, the bad and the ugly.
The death seemed cruel and confusing. Not how it happened but "Why??" The only medical condition she had was COPD- Chronic Obtrusive Pulmonary Disease. It's essentially a form of emphysema. She smoked most of her life and her lungs had suffered some irreversible damage. We called it compromised breathing. It mainly meant she couldn't go up hills, lift heavy things, or do anything that would strain her lungs. She had inhalers she used to help her pathways. We never thought this would cause a sudden fatality. Especially at this stage in her life. I'm continually investigating how COPD might have contributed to her death.
She went very quickly and many say that's better, I'm still not sure. The death was cruel because it just didn't seem like her time. She was in mid stride, happier than she's ever been, more self-expressed and self-empowered than she had been her whole life. She was making great money working part-time as a Special Ed Teacher. A job that she LOVED and was extremely gifted at. Everyone at her school LOVED her - teachers, faculty and students alike. She was in that glorious place where she got to work with the kids but without the crushing overload that full time teachers experience. That she had experienced for so many years.
She was a very gifted artist. She actually got her BA in Fine Arts but when the divorce hit she had to put her art dreams on the back burner and find a job that would support her and her daughter. But the art was always prominent. Our house was bursting with all her work. Her paintings, etchings, prints and potteries. She had moved to more arts and crafts working on her newest creation "Plant Bling." Little sticks with sparkly beads boinging out on the top. You put the stick in the soil of the plant and the beads boing out around the leaves giving your plants some "bling." They are delightful and everyone took note of them. Teachers, friends and neighbors all marveled at her "Plant Bling"
This "life" that was illuminating from her made her death even more nonsensical to all of us who knew her well. It's been over a month and we are all still fighting our frustration. Our irritation. Our anger that she was taken too soon. You can absolutely bury yourself in the quicksand of "Why?" if you let yourself.
But then we turn to me. The change of color I was about to experience that rocked me to my core. It was like the etherial umbilical chord was being ripped from me bit by bit causing me to lose all sense of myself.
I got through the first day of death with copious amounts of white wine. White wine became a pal of rescue for most of the month of March and well into April. I don't know if that is the right way to handle it but I simply couldn't stand the pain in my abdomen and the relentless, self -critical voices in my head convincing me that her death was all my fault. I really believed that. One hundred percent. I went over all of the things I did, the choices I had made in the last few months, not being there enough. Every road led to it's all my fault.
The bomb really hit me on the third day. She died on a Monday. Tuesday was a blurry mush of disbelief. Just keeping up with the stuff. Feeding her cats, breaking the news of her death the the closest people, managing everyone's utter shock. It wasn't until Wednesday that I started melting down. The day we went to the Mortuary to arrange to have her Cremated.
It was a notably gloomy day. Grey sky, grey air, grey, grey, grey. All I could see was grey. Luckily my partner was protecting and helping me. He drove the car to the Funeral Home. There's no way I could have driven through the tears. The parking lot was sad and empty and the building was droll and dull. Walking in the door to the sterile room, beige floor, beige wall, cold and stark had a chill that stiffened me. We sat on a sad, uncomfortable little flowered couch that looked like it came from the Good Will while we waited to go back into the little room to handle the paperwork. Signing the papers to have her cremated seemed like the most complicated, confusing paperwork I'd ever done in my life. And the tears wouldn't stop. I could barely maintain. I asked the same questions over and over again and couldn't even see where to print my name. We had to stop several times. Carmen, the gentle, older man who ran the Funeral Home just surrendered and got up to get me kleenex. We had to just wait until the emotional storm passed. I finally managed to sign the papers, I wrote the check, and then I slowly rose to walk back out to the car. Carmen put his hands on my shoulders, looked at me with loving grandpa eyes and said " I'm so sorry about your mother" and he gave me the longest most sincere hug I had ever had from a stranger.
My partner and I walked back out into the grey world, got into the car and I fell apart. Every part of me. I had this overwhelming, oppressive cloud come over me and I was convinced that I was nothing. That she was the spark in me. She was the light and without her I'm a complete nothing. I'm a dark, drab, failure. Dizzy dismay spelled that day. I had to call my father in a state of emergency. A frantic search for who I was.
Thank god my father and I have the relationship that we have. He has been outstanding. Keeping his cell phone on him in an "on call" status at all hours. Whether at work or asleep, he picks up and is there for me. I'm extraordinarily lucky to have him. I would need him as the hardest part of this journey was just beginning.
When someone dies, whether you want to or not, you inevitably start finding out things about them that you didn't know. This was very disorienting for me because, of course, I thought I knew everything about my mother. Well apparently there were many things I didn't know about her. She loved to eat at a fried fish taco stand when she would go to Estate Sales with her friend, she would bring all the teachers into faculty room to eat Fritos when things got too stressful at school, her students called her "Mommy" she put a smiley face in her checkbook when she balanced it to the penny, and she was working on delightful new art projects, making jewelry, and she had planned to put new dark curtains in my room. I'm sure it's so that I knew I could sleep well in there so I would come there more often. It's a lonely feeling to find these things out after she's gone because it makes me feel even farther away from her.
The next and most powerful form of grief for me was just about to hit. The complete self-loathing, self-blaming, self-criticizing, self-rejection basically a complete lack of self-worth. My mother and I had a dynamic that had a very strong pull on me. I found myself constantly trying to protect, take care, assist and lift her. At times it was as if, if i walked away from her she would fall down, make a mistake, hurt herself, break something. That if I didn't monitor her all the time, something would go wrong.
One Christmas Eve, I was at her house with my partner. We all were having quite a roaring time. The wine was a flowing, the music was playing, laughter was rolling through the evening. For one minute, I left to go into the kitchen while she was alone in the living room. Almost the minute I walked out of the room I heard this unsettling bang/ thump in the living room. I ran into see that my mother had fallen face down by the wall by the tv. I guess she was trying to plug something into the wall. She looked up and her face was completely bloody. She had slammed her upper lip on the side of a chair. I immediately thought it was my fault. "I never should have left the room, " I thought.
The next day my mother woke up looking like a cross between the Elephant Woman and Rocky. Her face was extremely swollen, bloody and black and blue. We were supposed to all go to a friend's house for Christmas dinner. We were supposed to go to this beautiful mansion in the elegant neighborhood in Santa Rosa. Needless to say, my mother decided not to go. I felt so guilty leaving her alone on Christmas day. She seemed ok with it but I know she would have loved it if I had stayed. And to this day, I still feel like I should have stayed with her and not gone to the dinner.
I have countless examples of this dynamic in our history. So it's not hard to imagine what I was absolutely pummeled with when she died alone in her house and I wan't there to save her. It's all my fault. I literally thought I "killed" her. I "killed her because I wasn't there enough, she was resisting my current partner, I didn't live with her, I didn't call her the day before just to say hi and see how she was doing. I lived in this cloud of regret and self blame constantly for the first two weeks after her death.
Another lovely dynamic to add to this complicated grief was that she did not like my current partner. She had dozens of reasons why she wanted me away from him. The problem was he was incredibly supportive to ME. Maybe he wasn't all about her, but he was a rock of support for ME. This caused palpable tension in our relationship.
After her death, I found myself hovering closely to her community of friends. They hovered close to me too. We were all hovering close to each other to soothe the big empty hole where my mother used to be. We were each grasping for her in each other. As we all started to break down our barriers it started to come out that my mother had been shall we say, quite publicly opinionated about my how she felt about my partner. She had been complaining to all of them about him and basically trashing him in the process. How was I supposed to explain to them that they were only hearing a "version" of him through my mother's clouded filter.
The despondency that followed was a new planet of dark for me. I have never felt more worthless, useless, and like I was a complete failure and disappointment. That I had wasted my life. I was struggling with my partner for my own reasons and this just pushed me over the edge. I almost broke up with him everyday for 3 weeks. Everyone told me not to make any big changes while grieving but I woke up every day with paralyzing anxiety that if I didn't break up with my partner I would always be living an ignoble life that my mother would and will disapprove of.
It was in the blackest moments that I realized that it was time for professional help. A recommendation from a dear friend led me to an incredible woman who we'll call Dr P. She goes deep into the subconscious and psychological root causes of your current condition, block, or pain. It's like having an emotional root canal. We got to a very key place: I am not responsible for my mother's pain. Something clicked for me in this session. I have never had one of those therapy sessions where you have a "breakthrough." All of my talk therapy sessions in the past have left me with a hoarse tired voice and still feeling crappy. Just "talking, talking, talking" about all the intellectual reasons for my feelings have never led me to that ever desired "breakthrough." My experience with Dr P. was a whole new world for me. It was literally the turning point.
So now I am at least able to get back on my feet without feeling completely worthless so that I can deal with her affairs. Her friends and my friends have been outstanding. I am so blessed to have beautiful helpers fluttering around me at all times helping me out. They have really been the unsung heroes.
Her "Celebration of Life" Memorial Service that we had was exqusitely beautiful. It couldn't have gone more perfect. We had it at the most beautiful house of her dear friend. Many people showed up, it was a beautiful day, I gave a speech and we presented some DVD's of photos that we put together for the event. I had her artwork displayed all over the house. And all my musician friends came up and we played music in her honor to close the day. Many said it was the best Service they had ever been to. I am so grateful.
I am still in mid grief. There are many emotions running in and out of me. This blog is just the first of many to come on this topic I'm sure. I'm digging deeper into the cause of her death and I have a feeling a blog on the prescription inhalers used by COPD patients is in the near future. But for now, at least I pulled out of the murky muck enough to write again. And that's the first start. Thanks for reading, listening and sharing this experience. P.S. No matter how you feel about your mother, call her and tell her you love her. You'll be glad you did later.
