The annals of loss

 Mom's obituary, mostly written by my brother, John.

https://www.dohertyfh.com/obituary/Rita-McWhorter?fbclid=IwAR2zoIafxo1i28Fr2KEjFfbXJzi_kojpHnQV_sK06HNCv8bueTGfwk9p-_8

We all added input and corrections over the last weekend, a meaningful but difficult process for all of us. I had thought I was doing well, but I knew there was more to come. Yesterday as I made myself do my volunteer tasks I had committed to, I dissolved into a space of absolutely hating everyone and everything in my life. I wanted to immediately quit every single thing. Of course I knew not to, and put myself under a blanky, but even food sounded terrible and I just hoped it would pass before I went through with all the quitting. It was the most negative space I can remember being in, in my whole life. 

I feel marginally better today but not much. It's not fun being this vulnerable. Of course at the very same time the Oregonian article came out, all about me, in my living room, which I also was hating and being unable to fix. The article is wonderful of course, and there is a video coming soon, too. 

But the colors of the world have changed. I remember this from losing my Dad over fifty years ago. The world is different, but only to me, and it doesn't really matter to anyone but me. Nothing anyone can do or say will really make me feel much better about it. I need my mommy.

And she has gone. I'm glad she left behind so much love and approval of me for me to hold onto. I would not be me without her endless support and understanding. I had the best Mom.

How Life Goes

 

My house is filled with flowers and a lot of it is daphne, so it smells wonderful. Since I only have six readers most of the time, I'll just tell you. My Mom died on Wednesday. She had been in hospice for about a week...that was a bigger shock moment, when I knew the time had come. She was 97, so the feelings are of course also mixed with relief, that her pain and confusion are over and she gets to rest.

I am experiencing some of the many forms of grief, along with guilt that I'm not more sad and stopped in my tracks. I wasn't able to see her in person since just before the pandemic hit...I was there just as we were realizing we were in for something new. I remember kissing her and thinking later that I shouldn't have. I spent a few days with her and have a few regrets of course, but have cautioned myself about kicking myself for things that aren't fixable. It wasn't possible to go at the end to hold her hand but I said goodbye in a phone call and she smiled. I told her I would think about her with every bird and flower I saw and that is as it has always been. We loved beauty.

We had a close relationship within limits and shared a lot of love and so many years. I know I am lucky to have had a good, supportive Mom and she gets a lot of the credit for me being who I am. She had an even temperament and lived through a lot of hard things. I depended on her well into adulthood and she was there for me. It took me awhile to figure out that she was not that interested in my long stories but she never stopped me until it came time to remind me that I always met my deadlines or always figured out the right thing to do, or some similar Mom homily. She was good at parenting, overall. At some point we all decided that we would no longer hold her accountable for the past, in retrospect, something we should probably have done sooner.

Sharing the news is not fun and of course I appreciate the flowers and condolences but I don't want the attention. I just want to grieve alone as it develops for me. Doing it at the same time as the Jell-O Art Show is the best and the worst. At practice I forget about her and laugh and sing, which she would be fine with I expect. The rest of the time I think about her constantly. I carry her photo from room to room. I made her the most elegant bouquet and while I was arranging it I remembered that she had never liked the way I arranged flowers, which is a mostly casual haphazard method that pleases me visually. She would sometimes rearrange my arrangements when I brought in flowers from her gardens. I think she even studied flower arranging at some point in her constant self-education. Most of how she lived was much more formal than I am willing to be, but it wasn't that big of a deal to us. Sometimes I would take her hand-me-down clothes and on rare occasions I would wear things she had bought for me, but mostly our styles were not similar, though we looked somewhat alike. I got her wonderful hair with its cowlicks and widow's peak hairline, and of course her brown eyes and some of her other features, in a mix with my Dad's big nose and teeth. Everything that made me initially was part her and part him and all that growing up in the fifties with three sisters, and eventually a brother, added up to. 

Most of what sticks in my memory are the times we did clash over our assumptions and cultural positions and my siblings have been kind as I repeated what are probably often-told tales that I just think I have not told before. Not saying I am developing dementia but it has been pretty common in my mom's family, so it could happen for me. I'm sure I will be in denial and will hide it for as long as I can get away with that. I hope it does not happen that way for me. It's sad, but it also allows you to say goodbye in stages and accept loss over years, which is not the worst. She always knew me, except a few times on our weekly phone calls which eventually I stopped when they were more confusing than comforting to her. She also couldn't hear well so that further isolated us. But the zooms every two weeks with my siblings and her were wonderful since we could just see and sometimes hear her and keep up with her just a bit. It was invaluable in keeping us together so we could make it through this transition and retain some feeling of family, which will be hard without our central figure.

I remember when my Grandma Hytrek died and it seemed like the reunions would not continue, but they did, and the younger generations continued to add to our numbers and bring forward the memories. Editing her book was one of the best things I ever did and I'm so glad we got that done. At the end of it, she had mostly lost her writing ability, so it got hard, but we finished it up. I remember telling her that she had to write the part thanking me, as I didn't feel right doing it. She couldn't really put sentences together in a satisfying way by then, so I ended up having to write it anyway, but only I can tell I suppose. I didn't need the credit much, just an acknowledgement, which I have gotten over and over as we share the book. 

It's fine for the Jell-O show to be juxtaposed with this. There was no question of quitting it, though it has been hard to keep up with some of my other commitments. I don't want to have to talk about it at the show, but I am sure I will. I don't want to tear up. It wouldn't be the first time I cried at a Jell-O Art Show though. 

Here's a photo of her when Aunt Lud turned 100. Mom was 90, the sixth child of ten, and Jack was 80. He's the youngest, and now the only one left.

Rainy Days and Mondays

 That was a song I hated when it came out, but it did make an apt title. Not a cheerful day out there, but at least I don't have to go anywhere. I might resort to music, which I rarely do, but musicians have something I need, I admit. I have to practice all the songs for the Jell-O show, but that's all silly.

 Tom Prasada-Rao I found this on a Facebook friend's post, a friend I made during the pandemic, working on Fair in the Clouds. We know each other in the Facebook way, in the bits and pieces we post, and she posts lovely intimate reflections about loss, which is my current area of study. I expect to be studying it for some time, maybe going for a PhD. There is no way around enrolling in this course.

I go to class with this every day in a new way. Every evening it's different, every morning lying in bed thinking about plans and my lists of tasks and my ambitious plans. Every day another facet of loss appears, shiny at first, then tarnishing as it becomes the same old Loss. I want to revisit the meme world and read a lot of webcomix as that seems to be the place the deepest exploration of this is being done, in the flip bits and pieces that hide how deep the river runs. I need to challenge my intellect and ran out of good books to read, though I have stacks of books. I think the internet is the deep hole I need to fall into as often as possible. And I have always found truth more approachable in comix, which is why I have a big collection of undergrounds from the 70s and 80s. Probably part of Jell-O for me, too, since within jokes and joy there is always something universal we need a soft landing within. So we laugh.

Anticipatory grief is something we are all experiencing, as we watch our planet scream at us to make big changes we hardly have any power to do, and as we feel the push of fascism and racism that just won't get into that grave we've been trying to dig. We're horrified at our fellow citizens, our family members, our Facebook friends, and even our real friends. We're not even sure about ourselves. Self hatred and depression are twins that live in the murder shed out back.

Some things feel so obvious I want to scream every day. Don't buy plastic! Don't you know what vinyl is? Don't you see the connection between sickness and all of those consumer products you are putting into your body and home? The dissonance is so fucking loud that we buy some gelato  that is made from dairy in a plastic container that we (I mean I here) think we need. I'm grateful to Jell-O as I have to keep a super clean diet for the next week and a half or I will be unable to sing. I can indulge in none of the things that cause my respiratory distress. Of course that means I don't have a lot of comfort foods except I did remember fried egg sandwiches, which is something my Mom would make me anytime I flew in late at night or needed something. There are a couple of vegan butters now that are very tasty and I can still eat bread. And eggs. Not the time to be a real vegan. My Mom made me pork chops a lot too. And canned peaches, home canned. I might have one jar of those.

It's raining hard and that's okay, I've given up any more pruning now that all of the trees are budding out and I'm hoping it helps the big maple in the neighbor's yard recover from last summer's drought and do that pink flush it does before it turns bright lime green with new growth. If that tree dies my horizon will leave me bereft as my view from my kitchen window is pivotal to my well-being. It's one of the oldest trees in the neighborhood and for sure no matter what next summer I will make certain it gets watered. Even if I have to buy a new long plastic hose and climb over two fences myself. Nobody on my block gets to be selfish enough to not notice the neglect of that tree just because it is in the middle of the block in the yard of what has become a rental that will remain empty as it is too expensive. Most likely too-expensive rentals get filled with people who go to work all the time and use their backyards for drinking on the weekends to forget work, but we'll see. You never know when your contradictory choices will get worse or easier. Last hose I got I found free down the block and somehow carried/dragged home. It might even be long enough to snake under two fences and leave there since no one will probably notice it either. 

Contradictory choices are a lifestyle so I just cruise from one to another. What is the least-awful choice I can make here? That is an everyday question, and I'm sure not just for me. Since sometimes waiting to choose eliminates some of them, I can get left with more awful ones. I changed a dental appointment that was next week but now it lands on the day before my birthday...but that is not soon so I don't care. Birthdays take care of themselves and I ignore them more and more. Since I quit alcohol and can't eat whipped cream, some of the birthday activities are not as fun now...and it is a Friday, so there won't be any going out on the town, even if I wanted to. I will probably just enjoy my clean teeth on the deck with a book, since by then I will surely have found something I want to read. 

Birthdays are just a march toward more loss, anyway. I might be a little panicky about death these days. I have so much to do, so much important work. I have so many interests, so many curiosities, and I waste so much time. I keep putting off the self-maintenance things I need to do (the dentist being the least of them) and finding excuses for that, even though I know the satisfying feel of doing something virtuous and good for me. Don't I want to live long enough to do all of this work, and learning? 

Well, yes, but...what I want isn't really the most important thing operating, is it? I want a healthy world and a rise in people being unselfish and good to each other. I want the mean people to die off and not the lovely ones. I want the pork chop without the dead pig and the factory farm.

I want to get some tasks done today so I had better attempt that. Next time. 

Jell-O Art Therapy

 Instead of doing the dishes I made some cathartic Jell-O Art, so now I do feel done with it all.