Grateful

Many years ago my mom bought me a KitchenAid stand mixer because she wanted me to have one, and I was really excited because it felt like adulting. Then she died. Every time I thought about using it my grief was too heavy to get it out of the box, read the instructions, and figure out which beater to use.

Last year I bought a pricey attachment and vowed to start using it. It didn't work.

Today I tackled the mixer.

Thank you, Mom.

Remembering Nana

When my Dad first got a digital camera he had this totally annoying habit of pointing it at people and just letting it run, something you definitely can't appreciate in the moment, and cherish once it's too late.

Today my mom is six years gone.

Video from Olive's birth, April 16, 2008. Going to Baby Gap? So very my mom, exactly the way I love to remember her.

Death with Dignity

She has my mom's cancer, and my unwavering support.

Bittersweet

There was a new car, purchased for a new baby. We adopted new furry friends, old ones passed away from illness and age. We celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary with almost an entire house full of new furniture, then the majority of the appliances replaced with new ones within the last year.

I've spent a lot of time the last few months looking at the spot where my mom always sat in our home. The table is falling apart, the chairs now only brought out for overflow for our biggest gatherings. We moved our meals into the formal dinning room years ago. If there was one thing I could take with me from this house it's that spot, red wall in the background and crappy flooring I've always hated but never got around to replacing.

That chair on the end, where Olive's hand is resting? That was my mom's spot. When things moved from the kitchen to the living room she simply picked up her chair and turned it around.



Next week we move into our new home in a (not really) new city. We probably won't bring the table. We've been shopping for a new one.

Even before the next family moves in and starts making it their own it is already not the same house it was in 2008. You know what's weird? To think of you mom, living or not, showing up at your home and not recognizing it, or your car as you drive down the street. Even crazier, not living there anymore.

But much to my surprise that's not what knocked the wind out of me, that moment came when the nice person setting up internet service and the new landline told me to grab a pen and write down our new number. Last year we got new mobile numbers, and now the landline is changing, too.

Wow. I don't even care, it's just...mindblowing.

Thinking of You

Mom,

It was a perfect spring day here, exactly the kind you loved so much. Thinking of you, this morning I dressed Callum in one of the t-shirts we bought for G on our last trip to New England together, and wondered where the heck that little Red Sox baseball cap might be that we later decided was good luck since they went on to win the World Series that year. I smiled a lot, remembering that crappy little rental car and how you made me drive every time we left Aquidneck Island, our crazy adventures road tripping up and down the insanity that is I-95, and getting stuck on the Tappan Zee Bridge, nearly breaking out the Pampers because we had to pee so freakin' bad. Remember the joy of being naughty as we broke Poppy's number one rule (never drive into, or even in the vicinity of, Boston and NYC!) over and over?  Hard to believe it was nine years ago next month.

Last night I thought of you as Jason and I were talking vacations, remembering Boston two years ago, because omg why do I always get stuck driving in circles in Charlestown? Even then, with my best big city driving skills and crazy pregnancy hormones in your zippy car with GPS and a gazillion paper maps Jason would like to know how you can "keep making turns and get absolutely nowhere!"  Probably because we couldn't stop belly-laughing and crying, just like Ganna.  I'm not sure why driving in NE is so funny, but it really is, isn't it?  You'd probably say it's a yankee thing I got from her, but she gave it to you, too.  I really wish you could watch Jason's version.  It's a lot like his telling of our '97 trip, when he thought we'd spent the day driving around Rhode Island and Massachusetts and was flabbergasted to learn he'd been all the way up to Freeport, Maine and back.  Good times.

It's always something, and it's not just me, it's even the people you'd least expect.  During the playoffs, when Poppy's Pats had a chance of going to the Superbowl, I thought of you two slapping bets on top of the tv, trying so hard not to bust out laughing as you talked smack about each other's teams.  From the eyes of a little kid, adults pretending to behave badly over football with money was the funniest thing ever.  And when the Pats didn't make it this year but your beloved 49ers did, Jen reached out to let me know she remembers, too.  "Thinking of your mom today.  I feel like I should be singling, 'We love you Niners, oh yes we do! :) '"  Yes, your emotionless niece Jen!  I know!  Right?

And everyone you'd expect, too.  We all think of you, all the time.

It still feels like home away from home, and I'm so glad that there's so much more than bad things happening there to make me think of you.  Thank you.

Love,
Heidi

Lucky

Oh March, you emotional bastard, you.

Tomorrow I will celebrate my mom on the two year anniversary of her death. The very next day I will celebrate my son as he turns nine.

Two years.

Time moves faster now. I laugh more, I laugh harder. I save less for rainy days, I eat way too much dessert. I am quieter, a better listener. I internalize more, I am less argumentative, and I do not want to talk politics with you. I try not to say "I don't know how you do it" because I know you don't know either.

I love more.

Most days I know I'm lucky to have had my mom as long as I did.

Because on Monday, a friend who'd already lost her mom to cancer, lost her dad, too.

Because two weeks ago marked the 4 year anniversary of my former brother-in-law taking his own life, leaving behind my then 8 year old nephew.

Because another of my son's friends, 8 years old with a 6 year old brother, just lost his dad to kidney failure, joining three more of his peers and their siblings who already lost their dads to cancer, all in the very small circle of people we know.

I am grateful for the thirty-two years we had.

On the hard days I look at my two youngest and I am ungraciously jealous.

There's the enchantingly feisty granddaughter she so badly wanted and didn't really get to know, who has doubled in age and has hair on her head and opinions and says something brilliant every day; my little girl, who dreams out loud about how wonderful it would be to have a grandma, just like Max & Ruby on tv. The baby, and oh did she looove babies, especially mine, who uses his security blanket and smiling eyes to drag random strangers in games of peek-a-boo from 25 feet away, who is so charmingly himself that admitted non-baby-loving people are constantly stopping to tell us that for him they'd convert. And for my almost nine year old, who told me again recently that he can no longer remember her voice, but remembers how she made him feel.


I am so very lucky for all that I have, but tonight my heart wants more.

Like Grandmother, Like Granddaughter

Sometimes, when her hair is down, a little of her curl lost at preschool, the profile of her cheeks, her nose... Just for a split second, from the side, she is my mom.

A Sorta Epilogue

When I look back at my life over the last year all I can say is "Wow, I didn't see that coming."

In September 2010 I was preparing to mark six months since my mom's death. Slowly I was shedding all the stress and tension that came along with cancer, the stuff that had changed me into a person that I didn't recognize or like. Have you ever been 100% conscience of your bad behavior but unable or unwilling to stop yourself? That was me. And while the journey back continues to be longer than I ever would have expected, one year ago I was on the road and headed in the right direction. Approaching six months down without her I patted myself on the back for a job well done. That was until I realized that all the big firsts, like her birthday, my birthday, my dad's birthday, their wedding anniversary, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, blah blah blah were all going to be back-loaded into the second six months. Fuck.

So I started getting myself all worked up, because of all the firsts that had not yet passed. I was back to counting exactly how long it had been, though honestly, I'd never really stopped.

The plan was to give myself a year to grieve and breathe and recover, to find a new normal before plunging back into fertility treatments. I did not want to jeopardize a pregnancy with fresh grief -- I knew it would be hard enough to have a baby my mom would never hold.

And then one year ago today, the day before the six month anniversary of my mom's death, I found myself pregnant by surprise, from baby-making the good old fashioned way. It wasn't that getting pregnant on our own was impossible, just not very likely. Thirteen married years without birth control + an active sex life + lots of figurative standing on our heads trying to make a baby and here I was with an unplanned pregnancy. It was as funny as it was welcome.

And in the moments that followed the stick screaming pregnant I heard my mom saying she'd given me my silly six months and enough already! You want something to count? I'll give you something to count! Count how pregnant you are, and then when that's done, count how old he is.


This is Callum. Today he is 4 months, 2 weeks, and 5 days old.



He has blue eyes that everyone agrees look like the kind that will stay blue, the blue eyes that my mom always teased about.

"Why don't my grandchildren have blue eyes? Our family all has blue eyes!"

"I married a redhead! Okay, a redhead with brown eyes, but still...what do you want me to do? He's English, he's Irish, maybe even Scottish. Hell, we're practically inbreeding here."

Fourteen pounds of delicious blue-eyed baby love. Funny how you make plans only to have them tossed right out the window, and the life you didn't orchestrate turns out so much better.


For those of you trying to figure out the math he was born straddling the prematurity line amidst mucho drama. But that's a story for another day.

Hey Asshole, Get Over Yourself

"Half the bloody world is going through a divorce, more than that are having children. All of us have parents who are dying, or have died. It's just the life cycle."

-- Sarah McLachlan in the L.A. Times

I recently learned that the parent of a friend has been diagnosed with early-onset dementia. My friend packed up her husband and kids, sold her house, left a job she loves in her chosen field, and moved 2,000+ miles back into her childhood home.

Brain cancer and dementia are two very different diagnoses, but they have a lot in common, among them loss of function, personality changes, and having to take the car keys away from a parent against their will. And death. Almost like brain cancer, but without the radiation and chemo.

...

I spent a long time trying to wrap my head around the fact that my grandmother, my mom's mom, had died at the very early age of 74, but my mom? 59 at diagnosis. If 74 was young, what the hell was 60 or 61? Here I was in my very early 30s and my friends were now losing their grandparents. What the fuck?

And then I read the above excerpt and it hit me. My college roommate lost her dad from a sudden heart attack our freshman year. At least four girlfriends, all a few years older than me, lost their moms to breast cancer a few years back. Plus my old Jazzercise instructor, and another woman from our class, who is now losing her dad, too.

I wasn't that young, and neither was my mom. I was not alone, just temporarily blinded by grief.

...

I can look back now at the seventeen months on that damn emotional roller coaster knowing that the hard part is over. With the stress of my mom's illness gone only the sadness remains. I cannot begin to put into words how much easier and uncomplicated my life is now vs. a year ago.

I think of my friend. Her mom's expected life expectancy? Six to ten years. Forget the uncertainty of will it be six years, or ten, or maybe just four? How much time will they have? My friend has an average of six to ten years of slow moving hell in front of her. All of it, for years, and the majority of her children's childhood.

As it turns out we got off easy. Who knew?

Day One: Trying to Use My Words

What I really wanted and needed today was have some quiet time to myself. Quiet time, by myself, uninterrupted.

Strike one, husband had to work. Strike two, my little guy's birthday. Strike three, stay at home mom of an easily angered 23.5 month old. Strike four, I don't want to turn off my phone because there are people I want to be able to reach me: my kid's school, my husband, and my dad.

First thing first, after being told explicitly by her brother last night that I wanted a day without phones, and then reading on Facebook this morning that I wanted to have a day without phones, my sister-in-law, who last year didn't call, didn't send a present, or even a frickin card for either of my kid's birthdays, sends me a Facebook message wanting to know if it's okay for her to call. Right, because when your brother said, "The one and only thing you can do for Heidi right now is NOT CALL" he totally didn't mean it. It's opposite day, y'all!

In the 35 minutes that I was in the Cracker's classroom this afternoon I received 7 unsolicited text messages. The kids actually stopped singing happy birthday to my child to yell out "YOUR PHONE IS BEEPING AGAIN!" I don't have a text plan because I am a stay at home mom. If I can't talk then I can't text either. Seriously, if it isn't need-to-know-right-now-or-the-universe-explodes information fucking e-mail it to me. I promise I will enjoy your non-time-sensitive messages a few minutes (or, gasp, hours!) later when they don't cost me a quarter each. Really, seven BEEP!BEEP!BEEP! texts during a 35 minute party? No, not disruptive at all.

BUT HERE'S THE CAKE!

Scene: The Cracker's classroom. Enter Carmen's mom.

"How is your mom?"
Whispering. "She's gone. (Gulp.) But I'm here to celebrate the Cracker's birthday and he doesn't know."
"HIS ACTUAL BIRTHDAY IS TODAY?"
"It is."
"When?"
"What?"
"When did she die?"
"Yesterday. But the Cracker doesn't know. I can't talk about it right now." And the kid is 5 feet away. Pretty sure this was the point at which I put my sunglasses on, cause you know, welling up now.
"When yesterday?"
Lady, I don't even know your first name. Fuck, I don't even know your your last name.
"Early afternoon. Excuse me, I need to go set up."
She follows. The Cracker comes over and attaches himself to my leg.
"Oh I think he knows. He was so sad yesterday. When are you going home?"
"We're not."
"Is she being cremated?"

What the fuck is wrong with people?! I am using my big girl words. Why can't they listen?

Rest In Peace

1948-2010

The End of the End

When we first had to tell my son that his beloved grandmother was dying he was 5 and a half years old. The only way I could think of to express maybe months, maybe a year, was to tell him that while she would probably live to see him be 6, we didn't have much hope that she'd make it to see him turn 7.

When Christmas 2009 passed March 30th became her new goal.

We never told my mom about what we'd told him, though I suspected she knew. More than once he broke down and tried to get her to promise that she'd come to his 7th birthday party. It was obviously more to him than regular birthday milestone.

After she made it past the hurdles of mid-February, the days where we thought she wouldn't make it through the night, I found myself worrying about the worst case scenario.

Please not near his birthday. A two week cushion, minimum, is not too much to ask for, right?

On Saturday the hospice nurses volunteered that my mom has taken a final turn, one that suggests she has reached her final 48-72 hours.

On Tuesday my little boy turns 7.

Please let them be wrong.

Life Interrupted

It's been a month since I returned home from saying goodbye to my mom. It gets harder every day.

People call constantly -- they want to know how she's doing. When I don't call back instantly they call more. Ring, ring, ring, leave a message on my home phone. Ten seconds later ring, ring, ring, leave the same message on my cell phone. Repeat. People I hardly know ask me at school. Everyone wants to be informed. What's the latest? Do you want to spill your guts to me?

Thank you, but no.

How about now?

Nothing like trying to calm your mom down while you are both crying during yet another seizure or changing her diaper. AND THE FUCKING PHONE IS RINGING THROUGH IT ALL.

It's a lot like having a newborn for the first time. The needs are basic: clean, diaper, and feed. They sleep constantly but there's too much laundry, always an errand that needs running, and no time to shower let alone catch up on the sleep you didn't get the night before.

...


I feel like I've been honest with people all along, and it's just biting me in the ass. The more I give the more they want. "This is a death sentence." I told them that it would be a year or so. "There is no hope." I continue to give details like the fact that she's bedridden, sleeps 23+ hours/day, can no longer communicate, can't drink, can barely eat, etc, that I am waiting for "the" phone call. I tell them that I'll let them know when she's gone. I tell them that we think days, maybe a week, maybe two, but we don't know. I tell them we were 100% she wasn't going to make it through the night on February 17th. Then again on the 18th. We don't know, but I promise I will let you know when it happens.

And then they ask again, they call again. "How is your mom?"

Same as yesterday. Still dying. Thanks for asking.

She is so young! I really need to express to you how hard it is on me that you are losing her. I don't know what I'd do if it were my mom. Do you want to talk about it because I want to talk about it.

...

The truth is I lost my mom some time ago. Life is moving forward without her. I did not choose this, I am not ready for it, nor would I have been 20 years from now, but I am powerless to stop it. For more than a year I was consumed by cancer and death. And now, even though she is still here, she is gone. She can't talk, she can't respond, she can't swallow, she can't anything.

Ready or not, I am already having to find my way in the world without her.

The sadness? It's there, it's always there. There are times, like right now, when it's overwhelming and I do need a shoulder to cry on. Thank you for your offers, I will come to you when I need to, like I am now. But when I'm laughing and having a great time please stop interrupting to ask again. To tell me again. To remind me again.

Ring, ring, ring.

...

While I was gone my two best girlfriends ran into each other. They shared what they knew, had a good cry in the middle of a public library, and then made a pact to go home to call their own moms. They both told me about it later, each in their own ways, when the time was right.

I cannot even begin to express how much I loved hearing it.

I need you to talk about it with others. I need you to call your own mom. I have a whole lifetime ahead of me; there will be so many opportunities for you to be there, and I will need you.

I also need to be Heidi again, more than your friend with the mom who is dying of cancer way too young.

Saying Goodbye

The Middle of the End

When my parents left 3 weeks ago I found so much comfort in the fact that I knew it wasn't goodbye. Not yet. Because my dad had asked me again to come, and I agreed.

On Wednesday I got the call I'd been expecting, the one that said start thinking about making your goodbye trip.

Soon.

***

I saw a dress recently that I really wanted for my girl Olive. It was way above my price range, but something I knew I could sew, and in a fabric I actually already possesed.

(How I deal with my mom's pending death? By buying way too much fabric. Not sure it's cheaper than Crack. Or any less addictive.)

My mom and I talked about the dress I was hoping to make. I sent her a picture of the inspiration, modeled by a 4ish year old girl. A girl with blond big girl hair.

Thursday morning, before coffee, I got a message from my dad.

"She thinks the model in the picture is Olive. I cannot convince her otherwise."

(Light but still) brown haired, short haired, petite 22 month old Olive? The same girl who just last week started sporting her very first pig tails? It was almost all we talked about the week before. Yay! Pigtails! Almost two and she finally has pigtails! There had been pictures emailed, discussions over how to best harness them, and a ridiculous amount celebration.

Maybe she meant that the dress itself was "so Olive"?

Later that night when we talked on the phone she brought it up. "I am so mad at your father. Can you belive he doesn't even know his own granddaughter in a picture when he sees her?!"

Remember last week Mom? The pigtails? Do you remember?

And to then hear her voice at the other end of the line... Heartbreaking.

Cancer is cruel.



***

So I'm making plans to make plans. With every day that passes she seems two days closer to death.

But when? If I go too late it will be like I'm not even there. If I go too soon she knows that we've given up on her. I don't have the answers and I don't know how or where to find them.

But soon.

Nana

I don't have it in me to lay it all out right now, but the news on my mom -- it's complicated, it's bad.

Olive has a lot of words, the majority of which we don't understand, but her newest favorite, one of a select few which even a complete stranger would understand is "Nana."

I'm so grateful that my mom got to hear her say it.

2010

A few weeks back I got a voice mail from my mom. Her voice was all wrong, her words made no sense. She talked until the system cut her off, about what I’ll never know. I saved it so Jason could listen to it, tell me that I was mistaken, because maybe it was subtle and only I would know because we share 32 years of mother-daughter history, versus their 12 years as in-laws.

But it was wrong. Even he could not deny it.

My fight-or-flight response kicked in. Lala lala la...I can’t hear you. And for a few days it actually worked. I can honestly say that I forgot about it.

...

A box arrived. Two pairs of Hanna Andersson tights for Olive, purchased in a brick and mortar HA store, unreturnable by me, mailed USPS by my mom. Two tiny pairs of tights that might have fit my daughter a year ago, but certainly not now, from a woman who always buys everything two sizes too big. Two tiny pairs of tights sent all alone in the biggest flat rate priority box money can buy, completely missing the point and any savings alltogether.

I called my dad. I’m not sure really why, probably so he could help run interference when she asked to see they way too small tights on my daughter. Mistake. The flood gates open, he immediately began ticking off a long list of all of her new not-quite-right brain tumor behavior. And there's been a lot.

...

She does chemo every two weeks now, until a scan shows that she is no longer responding. Yesterday she had a scan, with the results expected next week.

Seriously, you will be able to knock us over with a feather if she's allowed to go on.

I know I'm not looking for it, it's just there. While she is not nearly as angry as before, more like seriously annoyed, she grabs hold of a topic and won't. let. go. This last month it centers around air travel, airports, the TSA, x-rays, pat-downs, taking off your shoes at security, pets on planes, pets in the luggage claim, overhead bins, and why luggage with wheels are destroying our once civilized society. In 10 days she is due to fly here. She is convinced that she will not be allowed to board the plane, detained as a suspicious person of interest, because she doesn't look "alert" enough. Huh. The more I think about it, maybe that last one isn't all that out-there after all.

...

2010. It's everywhere today, yesterday, last week. Hope, change, possibility...

And the year my mom is going to die.

Three Strikes We're Out

Once upon a time there was a family, a small family, but a close-knit family.

The family was made up of a grandfather, a grandmother, two daughters, two son-in-laws, and three grandchildren. The family agreed on very little: not money, not politics, not religion, and certainly not on a definition of family values. But it didn't matter. They bit their tongues and kept most of their opinions to themselves, and so despite their vast differences and great geographical distance, they loved and cared for each other very much.

One winter's night, when the grandchildren were still little, the beloved grandmother died quite unexpectedly in her sleep. The family never really recovered from her death, certainly not her sons(-in-law), to whom she'd been more of a mother than any other woman. Her death left a void that time would never be able to fill.

Years later, just as the grandchildren were entering adulthood, the grandfather fell ill. Liver cancer came on hard and fast and ugly. Diagnosis to death was measured in a handful of long, cruel weeks. The grandchildren were still too young to have children of their own, but old enough to understand and witness the immense physical pain and suffering of a death by cancer. The family relived it over and over again in their nightmares.

Years passed. Eventually it was the youngest daughter who was the first to become a grandmother. Mother to one miracle daughter, fulfilling her new role as a grandmother became her life. Five years later she was ecstatic to become a grandmother again, as the family welcomed the first and only female of the newest generation. It was when her granddaughter was only seven months old that the youngest daughter was diagnosed with stage IV of the most aggressive form of brain cancer. Treatment would be palliative. She would endure radiation and chemo just to have more time with her grandchildren. When six months and six rounds of one chemo drug failed she bravely embraced starting over with a new one. Last week the family found out that after four months of the newest aggressive chemo treatments the youngest daughter's tumors had shrunk a little. Not much, only a little. The family hopes that a little is enough that the youngest daughter will be allowed to continue treatment for just a little while longer. The family waits.

The oldest daughter and her husband would become grandparents of four boys, the oldest of which just turned five, and the youngest of which was only four months old as of yesterday. Yesterday, when the family found out that the oldest daughter's husband has prostate cancer, and there is reason to suspect that the cancer is elsewhere. The family waits.

We wait.

(PS Please do not mention anything on my fb profile, as my cousins do not yet know.)

Drowning in Bad Memories

My parents arrived last Wednesday for a week long visit, most likely my mom's last. She is suddenly going downhill so quickly that even my dad has been left somewhat stunned.

The worse she gets the more I find myself pulling away, and I truly hate myself for it. I so badly want to have a few more good laughs, a few more real moments, but what she needs is a daughter who can listen endlessly to her every grievance. I wish I could just be there for her and listen, but every prick and every jab drives me right to the edge. When J is around I simply get up and leave the room when I can't take it anymore.

Eight weeks ago, when it was time to say goodbye at the airport after Olive's birthday, she couldn't stop hissing in my ear about how much she hates my dad long enough to say goodbye, or tell me she loves me. I finally took her on like I would a tantrumming three year old. "Mom, I know you're mad. I understand your anger. But I love you, and I'm going to miss you." It didn't work.

I'm 31 years old, with nearly 30 years of normal memories, yet this is all I can remember anymore. When I close my eyes I never see her once full head of hair or a smile, just my mom as she is today.

When they get back my mom will try 3 quick rounds of a different type of chemo, Ava.stin, which has a positive response rate of 40%. 20% of the 40% make it to a year. Last month it was given accelerated approval for patients with progressive disease despite treatment of other therapies, which is huge considering it is the first new drug approved for this type of cancer in more than a decade.

But honestly I'm pretty much out of hope.

Six Months, One Week

I planned all last week to make a six month update. I was going to write about how my mom had decided to continue on with chemo despite her earlier plans, how her terrible allergic skin reactions had become somewhat manageable, or at least tolerable compared to the alternative of stopping treatment.

Six months. Six months. I couldn't stop trying to wrap my head around it. Six months ago we'd all begun planning for her to be gone by now. We never thought she had six months. But her she is! I suddenly felt like I'd been given the gift of time all over again. Time to start fresh, forget what I thought I knew, and just enjoy. Invincible.

Six months, one day brought a big scan. No one expected the results until this week, because that's the drill.

Except that her Neuro-oncologist called within a few hours. And he canceled her chemo 36 hours before she was to start. And he told her to get an appointment asap @ UCSF. And while he didn't mention the two shiny spots that appeared last time, he did say that there is regrowth at the original site. And that he was leaving for vacation the following day and he'd see her when he got back.

She told him that she wanted to continue with chemo, that she'd made plans around it, that she didn't want to just sit around doing nothing, that she had a lot of fight left in her.

No.

And so now for a week I've been walking around in a daze. I'm trying to process it, but my mind can't wrap around it. I was energized. I had a new game plan. And now that's all gone.

I'm lost.