As the time passes (10 years)

As the time passes, it gets easier, and harder. Easier because there's less pain. Harder because you've been gone longer. Why does grieving get easier, anyway? (This is a lie, by the way, I'm not sure it ever gets easier.) Is it only because we forget? Or because we're more used to it? Like the initial shock has worn off, and the gnawing hole of you being gone is now just a hole, like a piercing, once red and raw and swollen, now flesh formed in a circle, smoothed over. When I cry over you now, I no longer feel like I'm going to vomit. It may hurt less to miss you, this forgetting, but in a way it hurts more, realizing I'm losing the feel of you, the what it was like to have a mom, more and more year after year. The feel of what you were like as a person. Did I ever know? Or did you die right when I was at that border between needing you as a guide and learning to love you as a friend?


If we hadn't forgotten the you of you, would it hurt more? The dream I had about you the other night, that best, saddest dream, it was like the prick of a needle. I felt the grief that's been dormant all this time. I remembered you as you were. I remembered the hurt like a searing, branding pain. And you weren't sick! You haven't been sick in a while, I think. I just realized it. Though I don't suppose you'll ever stop being rail thin in my dreams, the thin you got when you got sick, though not the bundle of bones you were at the end. At least you're not sick anymore. For years I dreamt of you that way, slowed down, clutching at furniture. Resting. Or worse, coming back to tell me you had to die again.


When it happened, it was so hard to absorb everything. How frail you were, how we knew what was coming, all the memories of you in pain that didn't go away just because your pain went away. The more years that pass, the more I'm able to remember without shying away and shutting down. The more I can handle. Now I think of your parents' beautiful home in the hills without remembering how sick you were when Grandfather died, how you were barely keeping it together, borrowing your stepmom's skirt and suddenly seeming like an old woman, hunched over with pain, your abdomen swollen. I remember small moments, like the time we saw two tiny sweet little owls perched on the dogwood just beside our driveway at dusk, just minutes from full night. I don't remember what we talked about, just that we talked all the time.

Last night, I was thinking about you in the last month, how chemo is a monster that makes cancer pretty by comparison. I came home for a visit, too late. I should have known. You didn't tell me. Stupidly selfless till the end. Was this after you called to say you had only months left, and I cried into the sink and felt like that moment was forever, that that ugly yellow rental sink was the rest of my life? It must have been. You rocked back and forth like you could rock yourself out of the moment. Your head was too large for your body, your temples and your jaw so pronounced, your diaper visible through your cotton pants. The pain was your world then, we were peripheral. I didn't even stay. I went back to Chicago and came home again a few weeks later, when your doctor said come home now, come home for the last time. You were too tired, too fuzzy to talk. You lay in the hospital bed in our living room with a blue blanket. I played the guitar, a piece of you I could hold onto. The leaves outside were such a bright, vivid green, the days flawless and blue one after the other.

You ate graham crackers by the halves. You cradled a little blue tub for when you got sick. Your insulin machine fell away from your body, got tangled in the sheets. Hospice came and went. Your last night came and you were crying because your tongue hurt. We had medicine for that, but it didn't work. We had morphine, but it didn't work. We slept in sleepless shifts, full of twitchy dreams. My brother woke me to tell me you were worse, calling out. I sent him to sleep on the couch. You kept crying out, help, Mia. I felt so bad for you, not just that you were in pain, but that it must have been a horrible, morphine dream pain, that you didn't know what was happening or why, or possibly even where you were, just that it hurt. I called Hospice and said, I don't know what to do. They told me to give you more morphine, so I did. Your cries calmed into whimpers then into little grunts. Your eyes fell to little slits. Your breathing was ragged and slow. Then slower.


I woke up my brother and told him to come, that it might be time. We sat on the couch and watched you, not knowing what to expect. Death, I guess, is something you learn, just like everything else. The one thing the passage of time has done is dull the memory of those final moments, when black bile came out of your mouth, like a tide rushing forward, like it wasn't even you, but something else hurrying to try to get out of your body. Muddy water poured out of your mouth, hit the sheets, splashed onto the carpet below in big round stain that made me think of cliches of detective shows. We sat there openmouthed and horrified. More liquid came out of you than could possibly be in you. We knew this was probably the end, so we went upstairs to get Dad. What a blessing that he didn't have to see that happen. He came down with us. The night was just beginning to end, the house was a blue-gray color, peaceful, like day would never come. I was content to stay in the in between time, for over to be the future, for us all to be still like you. You were so still. For every moment that passed, we didn't know if you'd gone or not. 

You would have appreciated those last few moments, not just for how we banded together as a family, but the humor of it. We took one another's hands and watched you, saying, is she dead? Is she dead? How about now? Wait, I think she'd dead now. No, now she's definitely dead. Wait, no, I see her breathe. (Laughter.) No, now she's definitely dead. Your breathing slowed like a coin spinning on a countertop. We weren't sure until the moment it actually happened, and then we were sure.


I'd say most young Catholics have a complicated relationship with God, and my spiritual sensibilities stray more toward the pagan and theist than in the direction of moldy old men in marble halls, but we all wonder about the human soul, what connects us to our bodies, what makes us alive. The moment you died, it was like that animating force evaporated instantaneously. What was left, it wasn't you, it was just a wax sculpture. Before you began that inevitable march toward decay, in the second you died, your skin was already different. I realized how when you were alive, even in total stillness, you were still animated, still producing light, still moving. The second you left, the stillness was different, fake. There was no you. I had to believe that you'd been inside your body and then gone, swooping up toward some celestial after party (which would hopefully have aspects of Maine and all your favorite cities, rolled into one).


I guess it's weird that all this time has passed, a year and a half since I started this blog, and this is the first time I'm talking about you actually dying, instead of what happened after. I hope that's a good thing. Half the reason to do this is hoping that writing to you and about you strains out some of the muddled bits in my heart so that I can live stronger and better. It sucks that you suffered. I hate that it happened, but thank god it already happened. You're okay now. You're safe. Do you remember that song I wrote and played for you? I said, I think it might break me when you're gone, but I know that if I sing your song, someday you'll come back to me, radiant and new, and you'll reach out your hand and tell me that I'm coming home with you.


Well, it did break me. It broke me until I thought I wouldn't survive. I'm not the same person I was before. I don't know whether that's good or bad, I'm just here. But I still love you. And if you're out there, you know, hanging out with all the cool dead people you've met, I know you still love me too. As long as there's love, the sun will keep shining. I'll keep trying to do the right thing. To live my life. And you enjoy yourself, but don't forget to come get me when I'm ready to go. I'll be waiting.

I had the best, saddest dream about you last night

I had the best, saddest dream about you last night

You had shorter hair
You were in town just for the day
I said, please don't go, a year is too long, and cried
Everyone wore holiday garb, dorky seasonal earrings
Susan and Betty were there, and Jim, and Dad and Bro
I knew you would be there,
I felt you when I walked in the door

Earlier in the dream,
I had a Groupon for trees to climb--I guess the company was going under or just starting out; not many purveyors of climbing trees out there (a damn shame in my view).

The man brought a selection; redwoods, birches, trees I'd never seen. They were all taller than my field of vision and all the width of a telephone pole, I was supposed to pick three to climb. They'd planted them all though; they'd take away the ones I didn't want, but I wanted them all, they were growing in a lush green backyard, tall and straight and lovely in a line and I wanted to keep them. I attached a tire swing and you came to the yard and sat by a criss cross fence draped with white flowers and watched me make huge parabolas in the air. We were happy, but we wondered if the trees were too close together, that when they grew, their roots would intertwine and they would strangle each other.

Later, I left the trees and was walking through the city, pushing against a great wind. People were cupping their hands around birds, gathering them to safety indoors so they didn't get blown away, gathering them from ledges on buildings and cafe sun decks. It was slow going and strange, a strange hilly city I've dreamed about before. Dusk was falling, the sidewalks were turning grey. I lifted my feet from the pavement and floated forward, thinking flying might be faster. I knew I had to get home, that you'd be at dinner. It was Thanksgiving, I think. I don't know how I knew you'd come, I just felt it.

Your hair was so much shorter--it was cute, manageable I guess. When you were alive, you always refused to grow it out even though I always wanted you to. Back to your old tricks! I felt your presence like you can feel someone watching you on the back of your neck, and I walked into the dining room, and there you were. I walked across the room and we hugged. Everyone there knew what it meant, that you'd been gone for so long, that this was a reunion. We were sitting at the table, about to start our meal, people saying things they were thankful for, little blessings. Sam said, does anyone want to add something? I looked up and met your eyes, your hair still black, poking out from under your ears in little tufts, your red and white sweater, your broad shoulders and big dark eyes. I thought about how much I missed you, how the time spent not seeing you was a killing time, a reaping of the heart. I thought to myself that I wouldn't see you again until next Thanksgiving, but the pain was the same. I think part of me knew. I looked up at you and said, "Please don't go. A year is too long." And I don't have the heart to miss you.

Sorry...

Okay, okay, I'm sorry about what I said in my last post. Maybe I was a wee bit harsh. I mean, it wasn't your fault you died. You didn't want to die, right? You didn't kill Dad. But you know me. You produced me, after all, so I guess when I'm like this, it's not unexpected. Were you surprised when I popped out like that? You always knew I carried an armadillo shell to cover a sensitive interior (and we can all imagine what armadillos look like underneath), but it's more than that. I walk that line between honesty and cruelty--I guess they call it brutally honest for a reason. I don't mean to hurt people, I just don't know how not to be that way. You'd be proud though, I've really tried to be better in the past few years, kinder I guess. Your dying helped with that. Husband helped with that.

But when you died, I told myself I wanted to live my life to make you proud, to make your legacy honorable, that I was something that came of it and could add to it by being the best human being I could be (no, I didn't join the army). I told myself that I had to tell the truth, no matter what. Have I really done that? Or is truth-telling a new euphemism for sharpening (your tongue with) your spite? Do I reserve my "truths" for fights with my husband? For slagging off my boss? For judging strangers and friends? Sometimes it's hard to tell what truth to tell. And what is telling the truth anyway? Does it matter if no one hears you? Does it count if it doesn't compromise the comfort of your own life? Is it brave if it doesn't challenge what people think?

There are so many truths worth speaking. I want us to have the courage to talk about fixing our environment now, before it's too late. About how women should be fighting to keep from being ground back under the heel of conservatives and men and other women. I want to ask questions: Are we, as humans, fundamentally unkind? Is there hope for us? I feel like no one knows how to fight back, how to say it, how to make people listen. How to tell the truth. I don't know. I wish I had your answers. The older I get, the more I wish I had your advice to rely on, your wisdom. The way you had of imparting those few gentle words that I could trust and carry with me like a little guidebook. Man, I miss you. I'm just guessing my way through life. Everybody does, but it would be different with you by my side.