Archive for the 'Familia' Category

Newness

March 8, 2009 | Filed under: Familia, Just asking, The year on the edge

“There’s nothing that cleanses your soul like getting the hell kicked out of you.”  ~Woody Hayes

How about starting this year over? Or maybe using the last two months of extraordinary heartache as a jumping off point for bettering myself and my surroundings? Or maybe I’ll just enjoy some Malbec and give The Universe the middle finger.

Tomorrow we’ll have some champagne and begin again but the year will be a little rough around the edges.

Onward

February 28, 2009 | Filed under: Familia, The year on the edge

“A man’s dying is more the survivors’ affair than his own.”  ~Thomas Mann

When someone dies it’s hard not to sit down and meticulously go over each bit of your own life. It’s like being a child and finding a rock; we start to examine every surface, running our hands over the smooth edges and the rough bits, looking over and under wanting to figure it out. The little things in life feel new again.

I took a trip for vacation and a little inspiration. To enjoy Vitamin D and wear flip flops for just a few days. And the week that I decide to throw caution to the wind and dig my heels into something new and something I have always found far bigger than myself or what I could ever be capable of…well…that week is met with a bit of heartache and sorrow.

My mother’s sister died yesterday while I was busy relishing in the ideas that Helen Jane and I had bounced between each other the evening before, my aunt died in her sleep just as she wanted to. With my mother sitting next to her and because after six years of waging war against breast cancer she grew tired or so my mother said.

I could go on and on about how my mother is living a life quite similar to that of Joan Didion’s ‘year of magical thinking’. And that I am trying my damndest to think of what, if anything I can do for her, but really I’m just a kid inspecting my life in response to this death. Even though we knew that it was coming just like the death before, it is still difficult. You’re heart still tugs a little especially because it’s breast cancer; that disease that we talk and talk and talk about and I will run a 5K for come May and it has now come to kick me in the ass as well. But instead of giving a big fuck you to February for being just as terrible as January, I suddenly feel a little bit more inspired. I want to be more positive, to try a little harder, to be a better me and hell, I want to just be. I don’t want to think too much about the what if’s and the failures but at least make a bit of a leap in hopes of hitting success.

Death fills me with cliches but really it is just a reminder that we only get a chance to do this once. So now I feel that much more compelled to make it count.

Seven days

February 2, 2009 | Filed under: Familia, The year on the edge

“Tears are the safety valve of the heart when too much pressure is laid on it.”  ~Albert Smith

Whenever there’s a death in a coworker’s family or a serious illness a mass email is sent out to all 300 plus employees detailing our colleague’s struggles and where condolecses and cards can be sent. A few months ago my friend Paul (who reads this site and likes to quote it back to me on a regular basis which is AWESOME when he’s reminding me of that time I wrote about puking in my bathtub) had surgery and a mass email went out. So The Roommate and I joked that if that were ever the case – if either of us found ourselves in some awful predicament – the world need not know about it. I don’t want my entire office getting an email detailing my successful bunion removal surgery. Though knowing me it would be something like “Heather Barmore is at home recovering from successful liposuction. Cards and well wishes can be sent to…”

When my grandmother died a week ago Friday, my mother and I were both adamant about who should know. When two days later my mother’s sister happened to have emergency heart surgery and my mother fled the building? The entire office knew. There is nothing more awkward then going to get sugar for your coffee while people give you the pity look and start to approach you with outstretched arms because surely an awkward hug will do in a time of grief.

I don’t do sympathy well and I’m not from a group of people that generally are into expressing love and devotion by touching one another. Then again, I’m from a family who thinks that alcohol is the Devil’s water, believes that they brought me into this world and will gladly take me out,  and swearing will easily get you beaten with a belt and yet I haven’t been kicked out yet! Holy fuck!

Last week has disabled my witty gene. The part of me that thinks it’s really funny to make jokes about that time that January bent me over and pulled my hair. Last week fucking sucked. But I do that a lot. I’m good with hyperbolic claims of how awful something is and it’s usually something stupid that can be remedied but this past week wasn’t. When you feel like your family is going to be picked off one by one and you’re living in a poor woman’s Joan Didion novel and you wish there was a Great Big Book of Bereavement to get you through 72 hours of family time, your mother crying, you making your mother cry, swearing at your family, and bonus points for your inordinarily large uncle having the audacity to call you fat while your mother sits by and laughs. My God, I wish there were a how to guide for not tossing yourself off the highest precipice in the New York metropolitan area.

I’m fucking exhausted and still not willing to start doling out blow jobs to February for being superb for a whole 25 hours. I’m still too deflated from pessimism and that horrible feeling that comes from sitting in the first pew during a funeral and knowing that there is strong possibility of it happening again before the year ends, to even remotely high five anyone for getting me through January. Perhaps next week or the week after. Or maybe the one where I’m in California drinking tequila with a few of my favorites. But for now it’s a limp ‘Hey. How are ya’ to February even if it keeps nudging me on the shoulder telling me to cheer up. Right now my heart’s just not in it.

Someday

January 28, 2009 | Filed under: Familia, Growing up is optional

“Sadness is almost never anything but a form of fatigue.” ~Andre Gide

Someday I would like for someone to tell me that staying home would be OK. That it’s shitty outside and the drive will be treacherous and you’re completely emotionally unavailable. Never mind that you’ve been able to get through things with your eyes closed because you have to just do them but you should just sit back and relax and not think about voting records and proper car placement during a snowstorm. That will all be taken care of for you. Instead you should just sit back and relax, everything that needs to be done will be done and when you wake up in the morning, there will be one less thing for you to worry about. One less something tugging intently at your sleeve, begging you for attention. Instead when you wake up, you won’t think about how your mother cried and people who are trying to be helpful but are more annoying than helpful. Because in the morning, when you wake up, things will be better.

Lacking grace

January 23, 2009 | Filed under: Familia, La Madre, Sucks like a vacuum, The year on the edge

“Those who do not know how to weep with their whole heart don’t know how to laugh either.”  ~Golda Meir

January has been a bitch. Correction, I have been January’s bitch and feel free to insert any insinuation of bending over and grabbing one’s ankles. That’s how January has been to me and I don’t think that January knows the meaning of the word ‘gentle’. Or ‘lubrication’ for that matter.

In the middle of putting on my earrings this morning my mother called and then texted. With one earring in and only one sock in sight, she informed me that my grandmother – her mother – is dying. “She’s taken a turn for the worse”, were the exact words. Phrasing like that makes me think that we’re trapped in Ma and Pa Ingalls kitchen while Mary battles scarlet fever. But there I was half dressed and discombobulated when my lip started to tremble and again…the tears.

Though at least it was something tangible as opposed to the tears of yore that were due to a dip in the bipolar spectrum. This time there was something I could put my finger on; the possible death of a grandparent which inevitably tosses me in the murky water of contemplating mortality. That of my parents and then of my mother’s sister. My mother’s sister who was reading “Peaceful Dying” on Christmas Eve. When I brought the choice of literature up to my mother she answered matter of factly, “Well she’s dying, Heather.”

She’s a stoic one, my mother. While I have to allow every feeling in, circulate, process and then dispel in a very elaborate way she seems to just take things as they are. These things happen she says and she tells me that I should feel lucky to have had grandparents for as long as I did. It’s just words and doesn’t mask that feeling of heartbreak which thrusts every memory so that it presses against my forehead. It gives me a headache to know that she is hurting; her sister is dying, her mother is dying and she still needs to take care of me.

A little over a month ago my older brothers’ mother died. It was unfathomable that their mother died and yet they were ok. Able to walk and talk and function. When I called our father he said that very soon we would go over what to do in the event of his death. And it made me angry – this all makes me so angry – how matter of fact both of my parents can be. It makes me feel like maybe I’m not theirs because of how deeply I feel. But even more, I’m just livid that it happens; that our parents will leave and no one tells you that the mere thought will make your heart tighten and ache and the pain will radiate to every limb but all you can do is cry.