i've become really good at accepting things i can't change, and knowing the difference in what i can and can't change. it's the actual changing part i have difficulties with. in example...
i posted before about bubba, the cat who peed and pooed everywhere. i began calling him dumdum the last few weeks. he didn't care. he didn't let me get near him, he wouldn't let me pet him more than once, all he wanted was for me to feed him, and apparently change his shitbox 8x a day. when my mom died, i contacted the breeder she got him from, and said listen, i can't do this. i can't deal with him on top of everything else. we haven't bonded in 3 months, we're not going to. and i also know that his problems are all psychological and while i TOTALLY empathise, let's be blunt - i don't have the money to have a cat who needs a shrink. so i made arrangements to drop him off saturday with a lady who will take him down to the breeder (who lives in tennessee). he didn't cry as much as i thought he would when he was in his carrier, but he was panting like he was hyperventilating, and he pooed AND peed in the carrier. the lady, when i got him to her, said she had NEVER seen a maine coon do that, and wanted me to clean him off before she put him into her soft carrier. she also told me he would live in a cage at her house before going down to tennessee.
ok at this point in the story, you should know, i used to be the press secretary for a really well known animal-activist organisation. and i have a really hard time with anything concerning animals. and i understand bubba was upset his mommy left and never came back, and that people took her away, and she left him here with this strange other human. and then he is shoved into a plastic box and stuck into another box that moves and he can't see what's going on and he's terrified and i just... i lost it when i was driving. i was BAWLING when i was driving because i could SO completely empathise with him. it's a weird talent i have, this empathy thing. and it's really inconvenient in situations like this. and it broke my heart, even though i don't really care about the cat. but as another living creature with feelings and emotions, it really upset me to have done that to him. but i rationalise it with... he's going back to his breeder, who will either find him a well-suited home, or with whom he will live, and she will know what to do with him, and the best way to take care of him, and i clearly DON'T know so in the end, he'll be in the best place possible, whereas here, maybe he was in a familiar place, but he needed help i couldn't give him.
so now it's just me and moose.
i knew (and if you read my twitter or my facebook, you knew i knew) my mom didn't have much time. i knew from the beginning. she never did. she was never told any sort of time frame, which she preferred. when i told the oncologist that she was making plans for next spring, next summer, it broke my heart because he and i both knew she wouldn't live to see my birthday at the end of october, and in the truth of the matter, we both also knew she wouldn't make it until october. and he agreed. and i said, you need to tell her, because it's not my job. and he said, no, well of course not, that's my job. and i just though, well get it fucking done. don't give her false hope because that's a terrible thing.
in the end, he never told her how long she had. he just told her that the chemo didn't appear to be helping in any way, and that they were beyond the point of treatment, and from there out, it would be comfort measures only. i wasn't there for that. she relayed all of this to me later, and she ended it up with, when they said i could fight it, i did, but now that they say there's no use fighting it, i'm not going to fight it anymore. she died two days later.
the hospital staff let me prepare her to go to the morgue. that sounds macabre, but the truth is, it's what i do. what i trained to do. not specifically that, but dealing with people dying, preparing them, easing the burden on the loved ones. but this time, i was also the loved one. and i wasn't about to stand by when i do it for other people, and not do it for my own mother. i laid coins on her eyes to pay the ferryman to cross her over the river styx (something no one at the hospital staff had ever heard of or seen), there was no window to open though. and the palliative case manager gave me two matching carved stone hearts. i wear one on a silk cord, and the other was taped into her hand and went with her into cremation.
she donated her corneas. she'd wanted to donate her entire body, possibly as a medical cadaver, or even if any scientific research could be performed that would be fine. but she never got the information to me, and never did anything with the information she had. but her corneas were the only part of her body that was untouched by the cancer, and so i hope they found a recipient. i might never know if they did.
my mom and i never had a good relationship. because when i was 16 years old, i stayed with my aunt for 2 weeks. my father's sister, that is. she told me that my mother never wanted to be a mom, that she only did it because it was en vogue at the time. as i got older, as i watched her switch from hobby to hobby to hobby with a manic intensity, i began to easily believe. my aunt also told me that my mom was jealous of me. i saw that a lot too, in her sharp comments, her backhanded compliments, the nastiness of her voice. but that jealousy thing was only when i was in my teens. when i was 5, she pulled me out of both ballet and gymnastics because she said i was too fat.
as we lived together, we talked more and more, and especially once we got sick, i would sit next to her hospital bed in the house and we would just talk and talk for hours. during one of those talks, she mentioned how it was funny to her that all the medical staff she'd been encountering was referring to her as a "little lady" or a "slip of a thing," which she was. my mom was totally a little old lady. she said she always tHERhought of herself as fat, and that she was really defencive whenever anyone ever dared called me fat or overweight or anything else unflattering. which made me wonder, was my memory wrong?
then another day, we were going through both of our jewelry boxes and telling about each piece and trying each others' stuff on and she said to me, you know, i could never have a conversation like this with my mother. my mother was never very interested in mothering. she only had doug (my deceased uncle) and i because it was the fashionable thing to do at the time. WORD FOR FUCKING WORD WHAT MY AUNT HAD SAID ABOUT HER. and at that moment, my world changed forever.i knew my grandmother, and that was her to a T. everything changed. my feelings towards mummu, my feelings towards myself, my metal anguish and depressions because of never feeling loved or truly wanted. all of it, gone, in an instant.
i didn't know how to tell her that so much of my depression in my life was because i had believed what my aunt told me about her. i didn't know how to tell her that suddenly everything was gone, and yes, there was so much lost time that could never be made up, but everything was totally okay. it was better than okay, we finally had the mother/daughter relationship i'd longed for my whole life.
the morning i was driving to the hospital, after the called me, i was crying and i promised myself, i promised her, out loud, in the car, passing onto arrowsic from georgetown, i promised, "mummy when i get there i'm telling you what aunt lou said and make everything right and make sure you know everything is right." and when i got there, the darling doctor i love but whose name i forgot.... she told me mummy had died. and i never got to tell her.
i made sure i told her i loved her every time i left the building she was in. i made sure to tell her everything i possibly could except the one thing that really mattered the most. and sure, i've told her since she died, and maybe her spirit hears me an dunderstands and knows how important it was to me that she know, but ....
if you love someone and you have something to tell them - do it. tell them before it's too late.
mummy remarked once that i was certainly handling her cancer better than i handled daddy's death. and it was true. because daddy died very suddenly in the middle of the night. there was no warning. there was no bonding time. there was no preparation. there was none of that. with mummy, i got all of it. with daddy, i got a phone call from my stepmom at 0242 to tell me he was gone.
i miss mummy so much. i miss mummy AND daddy. i talk to them both like they're here, i always did with daddy, and who knows, maybe their spirits are. but just once i wish they could talk back. i wish i'd get an email in my inbox from mummy, and get pissed off because it was yet another anti-obama email. but i feel her everywhere here in the house, and everything i'm doing, i wanted to do while she was still here. i wanted to do it for her, and for her to have this wonderfully built house also beautifully decorated and kept clean. i'm losing myself, and coping with my grief, by doing just that... cleaning the house, fixing, redecorating it to match the finery of the architecture and strength of the house... which leads to my next post.
c1971
Rest In Peace
Milton Richard Bailey (12.27.41 - 5.6.06)
Linda Elizabeth Taylor-Bailey (4.30.40 - 9.7.12)
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