Triplets

Yesterday morning was a glorious beach day.  I went with my darling Elena before school, before it got too hot.  I think my back got a tiny bit burned as this happens when you're a single mom, on the beach with an adorable four year old.

It was a busy day because both girls had tech rehearsal for the recital tonight.  I ended up showering Elena at the beach, dropping her off at school, having lunch and then picking Elena up early for rehearsal.  With no time to shower or change myself, I spent the day in my blue bathing suit with a dress overtop of it.

When rehearsal for both girls finally ended around 5:30, I peeled off my sweaty dress to cook dinner in my swimsuit.  Eliza, still dressed in her light blue leotard, leaped around the house, excited for her recital the following night.  I pointed to her leotard and then to my swimsuit and said, "Twins."

"Huh?"  Eliza looked at me confused.

"We're twins."  I pointed again to her blue leotard and to my swimsuit.  My swimsuit is more of a bright turquoise and her leotard is more of a powder baby blue but here we both were, going about our business at home in our blue one pieces.  In my world, that makes us twins.

Eliza grinned broadly.  "Twins, I get it!"  And we grabbed each other's hands.

Suddenly Elena barreled, grabbing at each of our hands.

"What about me?" she growled.  "Not twins," she said, busting up our hands and demanding a circle.  "Triplets."

I didn't even know that she was aware of that concept but there she was, my little one, demanding to be part of the pack.  It's so fitting.  There we were, the three of us, in our own little circle.

Triplets.

Trying

It's been a while.  I don't really have much to say.  Girls are great, most of the time.  They fight a lot, sometimes to the point of driving me crazy.  I don't have a lot of patience for the fighting.  The loneliness of life without my mom and without work is often overwhelming.

Smash was officially axed on May 10th.  We all guessed when we finished shooting in mid-March that we would not be back but it was still somewhat crushing to know we're really finished.  That crew, in its entirety, will never be together again.  From the director of photography to the second assistant camera to the first assistant director to the editors I will never work with a group I like as much as them again.  I might work with some of them again but to have all of us, the entire band back together, it's not going to happen.  Since Smash was not a success, the idea of a musical TV series is probably dead as well.  So I'll probably never get to work that closely with a Broadway choreographer and composer again and let me tell you, it sucks.

I wish the job hadn't come at one of the hardest times in my life but then again, I'm grateful that it came when it did.  Smash kept me going and when it ended I went to bed and really didn't want to get out of it.  I spent my first weekend at home, lying in bed, hoping for the strength to get out.  I took care of my girls and found joy in being with them but it was very difficult to get up each morning knowing that my mom was gone and my adult time was over.

I've gotten more into my routine at home with the girls and I've really enjoyed so many great times with them since Smash wrapped.  But I'm sad in ways that aren't easily conveyed and a hypochondriac, not so much for myself but for everyone around me.  Eliza had a headache yesterday and I was ready to rush to the emergency room.  I saw my brother on Sunday and he was visibly uncomfortable due to stomach issues.  Watching him grimace and suffer cramps made me wonder if I was destined to watch another loved one suffer the way I watched my mom.

When my grandmother's brother died, she said, "I don't have any family left."  I assured Grams he had me, my cousins, her niece Patty, her husband.  Now I completely understand what she meant.  In a little over a year, I lost so many of the core people for my family that all that's left is my brother.  I have my kids, I have my dad but my real family, the people I grew up loving and being shaped by, they're gone.

Today, I tried to take a nap while the girls were in school.  I set my alarm to wake up at pickup time.  But I couldn't sleep.  Instead I lay there, trying to tell myself what my life was.  I validated my life so much by telling myself how important I was to my mother.  She wouldn't want to live without me.  Without her, my life is a lot less valuable.  Unemployed, unable to write much, what exactly is my life these days?

The kids need me and I'm good at taking care of them.  So I lay in bed and told myself that this is my life now, to raise the girls, to be there for them, to do everything I can to shape them into fine, well-adjusted, hard working adults.  Since I've been done with work, Eliza has started piano lessons and I've started to work with her more to improve her dancing and singing.  I have tried to spend more fun time with Elena in the mornings before she goes to school, visiting the park, cuddling on the couch or reading books.  This is important work and I'm happy to do it but it's so very lonely.  My kids need me, they love me and caring for them refuels me but it doesn't buoy me the way my mother's voice did.  A huge part of me is missing and probably always will be.

Despair

I'm okay, as they say, hanging in there.  But I'm not sure how much longer I can keep doing this.  Trying to keep it all together and get everything that needs to get done is becoming too difficult for me. And trust me, I've cut myself a lot of slack.  I don't care if my home is vacuumed or if every table surface is free of tiny piles of paper.  I clean the bathroom as minimally as I can.

Being a working single mother is frying me.  An actor I worked with on "Fringe" was raised by a single mother.  She visited set when I was pregnant with Elena and I asked her what it was like being a single mother.  Her children were both adults at the time and she said she was still recovering from her time as a single mom, that's how hard it was.  I knew my relationship with C had headed south long ago, I knew what I probably faced.  Believe me when I say I did everything, everything to avoid life as a single mother.

And still, here I am, not sure how I'm going to limp to the finish line on "Smash."  And when "Smash" ends, how will I handle being home full-time?  Completely isolated from my co-workers who've kept me going, who make me laugh, who make me feel like a person instead of just a mother.  One one hand, I will finally be able to relax with the kids and fall into a comfortable routine.  The mess that is my mother's estate can maybe begin to be sorted out.

But who's gonna take care of me?  How will I face life now, completely alone?

Maybe Mama Reads This Blog

Hi Mama, here we all are together on Eliza's 7th birthday.  You died exactly one week before this photo, right in between Eliza's birthday and my own.  You left me Mama, you left me.

I can try to write this as I would write to my Mom but the thing is, my mother didn't read this blog when she was alive, she's certainly not going to read it now.  My mother always said close friends should not discuss religion or politics because "I'm not going to change your mind and you're not going to change mine."  I believe this to be true.  When it comes to faith, to Heaven, we believe what we believe and while some one else's mind might be malleable, mine is not right now.

I would love to believe in an afterlife, in a place where my mother can see me and watch over us, enjoying our day to day lives.  But in the words of a close friend, what kind of Heaven would that be, a place where we could see our loved ones and never be able to be with them?  I'd never thought of it that way but I agree with this philosophy.  My mother would be tortured to watch us and incapable of touching us.  If she was so miserable in her last days on that hospital bed because she suddenly lacked the power to speak to me, she wouldn't be happy to watch her beloved granddaughter cry and ask for her and not be able to answer her back.

Maybe there's a place where all the pain my mother felt is gone and she's happily in a new body, running and skipping and enjoying a sudden ability to do deep knee bends.  She could skitter across a flowery meadows drenched with sunlight beside her beloved Uncle Joe, her brother, her parents who she loved so much.  She can't see us, no, but she'd be with people she loved so earnestly and desperately that she's happy.  I want to believe this for her, I wish I completely believed this for her but I don't.  I don't know where she is, if she's anywhere or if she's just left the world and all that remains of her are the ashes in a little box I keep under my bed until I make the trek to Pittsburgh to bury her ashes in the grave with my grandparents.

My friend Paula lost her mom suddenly when a passing truck mowed down her mother's car as she backed out of her driveway.  A religious person, Paula waited for telltale signs that her mother watched her from "somewhere" and could still communicate with her.  As time passed and nothing happened, Paula increasingly became angered by what she refers to as an "absolute silence."  There was no communication, no coincidental signs that indicated her mother was still "with her."  Her ability to be with her mom ended the day her mother died and there's been no connection since.

Paula wrote a spectacular essay about her mother's death entitled "Absolute Silence."  It is hands down the best writing I've ever read on grief, and that includes the much praised book by Joan Didion.  Right now, I'm right there with Paula, feeling nothing but sadness and an almost crushing hopelessness by my own absolute silence.

I certainly don't want to offend anyone who believes in Heaven or say "I'm right and you're not."  That's not what this is about at all.  I won't say I wish more than anything that I did believe in heaven because what I wish for more than anything is my mother, here with me.  But I can't describe how much I would love to believe in a Heaven, in a world where my mother lives without pain, happily looking out for me and protecting me from unseen terrible forces.  In her last days, as she was so visibly saddened by the realization that she was in fact leaving us, I tried to comfort her by saying, maybe there really was a Heaven and she'd get to be with the people she'd lost and missed so very much.

And maybe, I told her, since my mother always wanted to right any wrong she saw in my brother's and my own life, maybe she'd be able to do more for us in Heaven.  Maybe from there she'd have an ability to really protect me and Billy in a way she couldn't from here on Earth.  She always felt that her brother, shortly after he died, "told" her to get the mammogram that would detect her cancer while it was still stage one.

I want to believe all this, I really do.  I want to feel that now her arms are around me, gripping me in a hug that will never fade.  But thinking about this makes me cry.  I now feel her weak right arm around me for the last hug she gave me, on my birthday.  I sat on her hospital bed and lay my head against her chest and she managed to get that arm around me, an ability I didn't think she had anymore.  The day before, they told me she would not open her eyes again but not only did she do that, there she was, putting her arm around me, hugging me.  She couldn't really speak but I could feel it, running all the way through me, her love for me.

I can't feel it now.  Some one said to me shortly before she died that love was stronger than death and that the love would always be there even if she didn't survive this.  On my birthday, with her arm around me, with her eyes on me, I felt that love vibrate down my limbs like a pulse.

I don't feel it now and I want to, I want to so much.

another boxed up Xmas

Just a few photos from our holidays.  The top picture was taken on December 18, 2012.  The girls are dressed for their school holiday concert.  The next picture was taken on Christmas Eve and the other two were taken Christmas morning.

I'm too exhausted to write much.  I ended up getting very sick with the flu or bronchitis or something that's made me pretty weak over much of the holidays.  I managed to stumble through Christmas Eve and Christmas Day without canceling plans but a few days later had to beg their father to come get the girls because I was so weak I couldn't get out of bed.  We did have as good a holiday as we could, considering I'm pretty depressed about my mother's death.  My father stepped up to the plate and my brother seemed to have a very happy Christmas.  Although I'm glad he was absolutely giddy with happiness, it would have been nice to see him at least ask about my mother.

It's all too much to talk about and after I spent the day saying goodbye to the Christmas season with our annual Three Kings Day celebration, I'm so spent after putting away all the Christmas decorations, I've no energy to write.  My health has improved but I'm much weaker than I'm used to feeling.  Some one told me that's normal, a person's immune system takes a big hit when they lose some one they're very close to.  I spent a day or two in bed while the girls had fun at their dad's, wondering if I would live and if it even mattered.  Without my mother, I felt like if something happened to me, it wouldn't really matter much to anyone.  It's sad but true.  Sure I have the girls and I have some good friends but let's face it, I'm pretty expendable to everyone but my kids and my mother.

It's a sobering reality but one I won't focus on too much.  I just hope to continue to improve.  I wonder if I'll ever feel like I used to healthwise or if this is my new normal.  Tomorrow's my last day at home before I return to work.  It was good to be home for two weeks.

I sure do miss my mom.

Girl talk

So I was having a pity party the other day and I told the girls how now that my mother is gone, no one loves me but them.  This is not entirely true but it's close.  Though there are plenty of friends and extended family who love me from afar, they are not day to day like my mother.  My mother was my best friend and almost like my partner in life.  I could call her most nights before bed and we would laugh and cheer each other up after a tough day or share each other's happiness on a good day.

"No one loves mama but you guys," I said as Eliza hugged me tightly.

"But Mama," Elena said, spoon in hand.  We were in the middle of our dinner of leftover ziti and embellished lipton soup.  "You're the greatest."

I laughed.  Elena says many things to me, not all of them kind.  She can also be a very tough children, she screams, hits and often shoves me pretty hard when she's not getting her own way.  A lot of the time, when I don't give her what she wants or I correct an inappropriate behavior, she says "I don't like Mama anymore.  I don't want Mama."  Eliza often gets offended when Elena says such things, jumping to my defense.  I mediate by telling Eliza that her sister is only three, she doesn't know half of what she's saying.

So considering the source, I'm not exactly walking around patting myself on the back and feeling like I'm the greatest.  It was a nice moment, a cute moment, worth recording here.  It did the trick of making me feel loved.  But the loneliness is starting to expand.

Thanksgiving weekend was a tough weekend.  I spent some of it dealing with the business aspect of losing my mom.  I met with the realtor who, if I use her, plans to list the house a full $50,000 less than what's owed to the bank.  My mother lived in her house for 20 years and was a bit of a pack rat so poking around there, figuring out how to clear it out is horrifying.  I can get a dumpster, have a sale, host a cleaning out mom's house party but still the clean up can take months.

And then there's her mail, the ominous stack of bills with no funds to back them up.  I addressed one letter after another notifying bill collectors of her death.  This process took about two hours.  All but two bills were medically related, some from collection agencies for amounts as low as $40.  I felt an overwhelming sadness as I went through these bills realizing this had been her life for so many years, a struggle to pay out money that few people would have to every lab, doctor's office, medical facility and collection agency.  Even a wealthy person would find themselves financially challenged and this was my mother's life, sending money she didn't have for "supply fees", "lab copay."

And she still met my phone calls with enthusiasm, happy to listen to me whine or giggle over my latest escapade.

My poor mama, how she deserved so much better.  I miss her and I ache for her now.  I should have been there for her more, should have helped her write those bills, just been at her side, letting her know she wasn't in this alone.

The Orphan

"When the girl was still young, cruel fate took the mother's life and left the poor child an orphan, for as people say in Greece, "A child becomes an orphan when she loses her mother."

From the children's book, "The Orphan: A Cinderella Story from Greece."

My mother lost her long fight for her life around 2:30a Wednesday, November 14.  I was with her, timing a Smash script when she left me.  I sat on the floor about two feet away from her bed, my back to her, acting out the end of Act IV.  As I whispered the last of Ivy Lynn's lines, I suddenly realized that the horrific gurgle of her breath had silenced.  I looked at her, saw her chest rise and then spread out and stop, and rushed out of the room shouting "She's quiet!"  Three nurses marched in, brandishing stethoscopes.  One picked up her right arm which was pressed against the edge of the bed and rested in gently on her stomach.  I slid down against the wall and sat on the floor.

"I'm sorry for your loss," the first nurse out of the room said.  I stayed on the floor, refusing their offer of a chair, not wanting to be far from my mom as I waited for the undertaker type to arrive an hour later.  I didn't watch as he went into the room but the sound of a long zipper rising will never leave me.

I am not young and I still have a father but I feel like an orphan.  There are no words.  Eliza's birthday is next week so this weekend is filled with activities to celebrate her birthday.  She knows of my mother's death but is quietly mourning in her own way.  I don't know that the reality of forever is quite as accessible to her yet.  Frankly, I don't know that I realize it now.  I am going through the motions.  Sometimes when I'm giggle with my girls, I see Mom's face as she gasped on that hospital bed and I feel terrible that life continues, often joyously, for us when hers has stopped.  I will never stop feeling her weak arm around me for the last hug I will ever get from my mother.  It's like she willed herself to make it to my birthday and then let go.  After that, it was relatively quick.

In mid-October, the facility called to say she might code that night and what should they do about a DNR.  The nurse called to ask if she should bother to send my mother to the hospital or just let it go.  While I knew she had a terminal illness, I didn't know what was wrong with her and it was hard for me to believe that this was it.  So I told her she absolutely did not have my permission to just let my mother stay there without getting checked out.  It turned out she had a UTI which in the elderly or the very sick can render the sufferer delusional.  I met her at the hospital and watched as she screamed repeatedly that she had to move her bowels.  Two nurses pushed her onto a bedpan as she raised her arms touchdown style and grimaced but nothing happened.  I saw her naked that night, clawing at the hospital gown and the bedsheets.  My mother would not want me to see her naked but there I stood, staring at her mutilated body, the flat right breast from her mastectomy with it's useless nipple recreated by a plastic surgeon.  The long train tracks of a scar that ran down her abdomen from either her colon resection or the whipple.  Her wide fishbelly white butt as she writhed on the hospital bed.  the bruises that ran down her left arm from everyone trying to unsuccessfully extract blood from her collapsing veins.  I looked at this body, realizing it had no business being alive.

I stood over her, not knowing it was a UTI, thinking that this was it, she was leaving me.  I patted her hair, touching the misshapen scar caused by a craniaotomy that removed a benign brain tumor six weeks before Elena was born.

"I see you," she said, not to me.

"Do you, mom?  Do you see Pap Pap?"  My beloved grandfather.

"No," she said, looking at me for the very first time.  "I don't see him.  I don't see Pap Pap.  I don't want to die," she said and I understood.

"I don't want to die.  I don't want to die."

I nodded.

"I don't want you to die." I said.

But you're gonna, I thought, staring at the scars, all that damage so immediately apparent.

She didn't die, not that week.  It was a UTI and within hours of starting an antibiotic, she was greeting nurses and visitors with the words "I hear I was delirious.  Sounds interesting."

We were separated by the storm and three days passed without my being able to check in on her because the phones and the power was out.  So when I found her and I heard she was all right, that she was actually sitting up in a chair again, I became so hopeful.  The storm had passed and we were okay and I would be home and she would be with me again.

But she wasn't.  She was so very sick when we finally saw her on November 4th.  But she held it together until November 7.  She hugged me, she told me she loved me.  She went under the next day, babbling and gyrating with discomfort for two days and then comatose for the next four.  She didn't babble about seeing anyone who'd passed, it sounded more like she was somewhere else, reliving her youth.  There was no talk of white lights or some one else in the room.  Only of the steps she had to go down and the "practice" she had to do.

I think of her that night in the ER and all those battle scars.  How much that body had been through just so she could stay with us.  Before she went into the hospital never to return, she could barely get up from her chair but yet she hid how badly she felt so I'd let my kids stay with her when I went back to work for two weeks in the summer.  My babysitter tells me now how my mother told her not to tell me that she had pain.  I don't know if she didn't want me to worry or if she was afraid I'd take the kids away.  What I do know is how little she told me about what she was going through.  How little she wanted me know.  

Her sad, weak, almost useless naked body with all those scars.  I stood beside her that night, not able to hold her hand because she squirmed from one side of the bed to the other.  I stared down at the jagged lines on her navel and I felt nothing but a hot, fierce, surging pride.  I don't know that I will ever be prouder of anyone, not even my own kids, ever.

This was my mom at the end of her life but there's so much more to her, so much more.  I don't know that I even love my kids as much as I love her.