grief

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Goodbye House

043

My father is selling his house of 37 years.  The house he built with my mother that reflects their vision, design, and love. My mother’s been dead for almost a year. My father followed the advice he gave to others, as an attorney, and did not make any big changes for a year.

Compared to losing a loved one, all other changes seem superfluous. People ask me how I feel about my father selling the family home. I feel oddly detached about it.  Losing my mother was hard. Saying goodbye to a house feels easy by comparison.

It is a beautiful, unique, light-filled contemporary home. My father was always so tickled when people he met mentioned that they’ve been in our house and how nice it was. True confession time, Dad. Whenever you and mom left town and had the poor judgment to leave us home unattended, I had scores of raging parties there as a teenager and young adult. It was all part of the joy of that wonderful house. Ah, good times.

Then I grew up and appreciated the house as a home. I brought my husband to meet my parents there, celebrated many occasions together with my own children and their grandparents, gathered for holidays, and nestled in for quiet times. I went there to tell my parents I had breast cancer. My mother died in that house.

Somehow the house lost its soul when my mother left this earth. My Dad keeps up the house beautifully, but as he says himself – it’s just not the same. The house is no longer the center of the family without my mother there. It’s just a house. I’m grateful that he’s able to get it ready for sale on his own. My mother, in her infinite wisdom, had been thoughtfully distributing her things for years to her children and grandchildren so there is not an overwhelming amount of “stuff” for my father to sift through. In fact, the social worker in me thinks it’s a lovely way for him to do “life review” as he goes through the memorabilia of his 54-year married life with my mother.

It will be strange to visit my father in another home. My sister and her family will have to stay with me when they come to town to visit, which is a bonus for us. It will be very strange for her, I’m certain, to lose her home-base.

So yes, I’m okay with the selling of the house. My grief is settling into a place where I can be less sentimental and more practical. Keeping that house won’t bring my mother back. As long as my father’s ready for the next chapter, I too can move on.

Like the saying goes, home is really in the heart anyway.

 

 

 

Are You My Mother?
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Are You My Mother?

 

Areyoumymother

In my grief, my mind plays tricks on me. Whenever I’m out walking the dog and I notice a bird resting on a mailbox, I think that it’s looking at me.

“Mom,” I ask?

I like that fleeting moment of thinking my mother is checking on me, before the bird flies off. Do I actually believe that the bird is my mother? Not really. But I do believe her soul is floating out there somewhere, briefly inhabiting things that brought her joy and remind me of her.

Like the flowers I’ve planted outside of my kitchen window.  With a large family, I spend what sometimes feels like an eternity washing dishes in front of that window. Those flowers bring a bright spot to the monotony of the chore.

Recently I was at our neighborhood pool and I thought someone was speaking to me when they said to a person near me, “There’s your mother walking into the parking lot.”

“Really?” I thought.  My head popped up, looking and hoping with all of my heart that I would see my Mom walk into the pool.

Or the time when I had a meeting at my house and was putting out cans of Diet Coke. On the side of one of the cans, it said “MOM.”

Apparently it’s a new promotion of Coke and there were labels on other cans, such as Dad and BFF.  But I first noticed the one that said “Mom.” Could it be a sign? My mother always chided my sister about her Diet Coke consumption – she worried about the chemicals. Since I lived near my mother and therefore did not stay in her home as my sister did when she came to visit from out of town, she was unaware of my Diet Pepsi habit. My sister bore the brunt of that motherly concern. Should I not serve Diet Coke?  In my opinion, it is inferior to Diet Pepsi. Mom, what are you trying to tell me? Crazy, I know, but it made me laugh.

I often think I see her in the grocery store where we both shopped. It’s weird, the times and places that make you long for a person.

My father still lives in the home he and my mother made.  It continues to feel like her house.  Going there makes me feel close to her and very sad at the same time, as if she should be walking in the door any minute.  I think it’s both a source of comfort and sadness for my Dad.  How long will he keep the house?  Time will tell.

So I keep looking for my mother all around me…in the eyes of strangers, the beauty of nature, the hugs of friends and family, and in my children.  Mostly I guess she is within me.

Maybe someday I’ll stop looking so hard.

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Me and My Dad

My Dad is one of a kind.  He is a generous, opinionated, smart, and loving man.  He expresses his feelings easily and freely.

Throughout my life he periodically asks, “Have I told you I love you today?”

Pretty great, I know.

And now he stands alone, after losing my mother to cancer six months ago.  Fortunately he is a healthy and independent seventy-seven year old.  But he is alone.  He no longer has my mother to schedule their social calendar, cook meals, beam with pride over their grandchildren.  Now when I call his house he can no longer chat with me briefly and hand the phone to my mother.  He and I are in a new place, bound together by our grief as we forge ahead without his wife and my mom.

We are lucky that we had a relationship independent of my mother so that we are not strangers.  It’s the same as before, but closer.  We check in with each other frequently.  We help each other – he does some of the driving of my kids and I frequently make dinner for him.  While he can shop and feed himself, cooking is not an interest of his.  It makes me sad to think his house will never be filled with the joyous, life-affirming smells of the kitchen. My husband and I provide a home-cooked meal, a glass of wine, and a sounding board as my dad moves forward to figure out his new reality.

He has been retired for several years.  How will he fill his time without my mother? Will he stay in the house that he and my mother built and love so much?  Will he date? Remarry? Where will he live?  These are questions he grapples with and I can only stand by and watch.  In a weird way, it’s how I feel about my 17  year-old son.  Of course they are on two different ends of the life cycle, but they both have to define who they are and figure out their own life.

I admire my father’s resilience and strength.  He is grateful for the wonderful marriage he had. And he is cognizant of the fact that he is still living, and should continue to do so as fully as possible. For now, I’m enjoying this time of having my father to myself.  If and when he is in another relationship, things will change.

My sister and I have taken to referring to him as “paterfamilias,” which he doesn’t care for but it amuses us.  “Pater” for short.  He takes seriously his role as head of the family.  He is a caring father, grandfather, uncle, brother-in-law, and cousin.  My mother’s way of doing things are ingrained in him, as they are in me.  He knows just what to take to someone’s house as a hostess gift.  He is thoughtful and caring, but even more so as he channels my mother’s special brand of kindness and thoughtfulness.  He remembers birthdays and goes out of his way to write meaningful cards.  He is very aware that he is the last parent standing and wants to ensure that his legacy is as rich as my mother’s.  He wants to make sure he too will have a lasting impact on his family.

I think of my Dad all the time and feel responsible for his well-being.

“Is it a burden?” a friend asked.

Not at all. I am grateful that we live near each other and can share the joys and sorrows of daily life with one another. It would be much harder to think of him alone if I did not live nearby. We have good boundaries and separate lives, though they often overlap.  I recently invited him over one Saturday evening but he declined, saying he wanted to be with adults.  Gee, I thought 50 year old me was an adult…but I knew what he meant.  He wants to hang around with peers, not people my age all the time.  He enriches my life, and the life of my family.

So who will my father become, after being Rita’s husband for 54 years?  Someone equally as wonderful.  Just a little different.

 

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Happiness Prevails

I anticipated my son’s bar mitzvah with trepidation.  Yes, I was looking forward to the service and celebration.  But I was also dreading it and wondering if I would be a weepy mess, missing my mother.

Once the snow became a non-issue, the sun came out, everyone arrived from out of town as scheduled, and I felt tentatively excited and happy.  Everything went as planned.  My son did a wonderful job, as did the rest of our family and friends.  I found myself “in the moment” during the service, very engaged, and happy.  How could I not be happy?  I was surrounded by so many people who love and care about me.  And who knew my mother.  They all assured me that a) she loved my outfit, and b) she was beaming with pride from up above.

I wore jewelry of my Mom’s throughout the weekend, and of course her coats.  I could feel her style and panache channeling through me as I prepared for each event.  I faltered when choosing a necklace to wear one night.

“Don’t over-think it,” my sister said.  “Just go with it.”

Thank goodness for her grounding sensibility to keep me on track.  Just like my mother would.

It occurred to me when the weekend was over that I felt more happy than sad.  I was pleasantly surprised to feel that way.  It makes me hopeful that I will feel fuller happiness as time goes on, without my mother in my life.  I realize she is everywhere.  In the love and nurturing I receive from my dear friends and family.  In the way my dad, sister and I always ask, “What would Rita do?” In my children.

I am ever an optimist, like my mother, although a more cynical one.  She lived every day to the fullest.  And I will too.

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The Grief of a Child

I was six months, a teenager, in my twenties and in my forties when each of my grandparents died.  I always felt a certain sadness (except as a baby, of course) but it didn’t seem to have a large impact on my life.  They all lived locally, but I was particularly close to my maternal grandmother.  She died at 99 years old, after 15 years of progressive dementia, so the loss was gradual.  By the time of her death, it was a relief that her suffering (and ours) was over.

I know times have changed.  Grandparents are not so “old” anymore.  70 is the new 50.  Older people are more vibrant, vital, and engaged in life than in the past.  They are tech savvy – a lot of them – and seem more relevant and connected to younger generations.  This, coupled with a closer relationship with my parents – both emotionally and geographically, must explain the grief that I see in my own children over the loss of their first grandparent (my mother.)

My children were aware that their Bubbe  had cancer.  We did not belabor it, but they knew that she received treatment and did not always feel great. You can’t protect children from bad or sad things happening in life, but you can teach them the skills to cope with adversity.  They know that some people get cancer and are cured (like me, who had early stage breast cancer) and some people die from cancer.

As my mother started her descent into her losing battle with cancer, my children were aware that hospice was involved.  In her final days, they allowed me the space to be with my mother while my husband tended to  their needs.  They watched and learned what it means to be a family and to help one another.

One of my son’s came by my parent’s house toward the end and said, “My friend’s mom (who was a hospice volunteer) said that the hearing is the last sense to go.”

“Why don’t you whisper into Bubbe’s ear and tell you love her?” I suggested.  So he did.

At my mother’s funeral the children sat with their first cousins all in a row, right behind their parents.  Their gentle tears were a tribute to the grandmother they loved.  Several of the grandchildren served as pallbearers.  They came to the cemetery and participated in the burial by shoveling dirt on the casket – a Jewish ritual.  They comforted each other, as well as their parents and grandfather. I was touched by their maturity and the depth of their grief.

Recently my children were looking at videos of their younger selves on the computer, as they love to do.  My husband and I drifted away to read the paper and wash dishes.  We weren’t paying attention to who was left watching what.  Our 10 year old appeared quietly, visibly upset but denying anything was wrong and went to bed.  When I went up to check on her a few minutes later, she was under the covers and crying.

“I was watching the videos and I saw Bubbe,” she said.

“I guess you haven’t seen Bubbe since she died,”  I replied. Weird, I know. She had watched a video of her 7th birthday party, and my mother was there.

“You don’t have to protect me from your sadness honey.  We can share our sadness.  I feel sad too.  I still can’t believe that Bubbe is really gone,” I told her.  We laid in her bed, hugging and crying – grieving together.

And once again I was touched by the extent of my 10 year old’s grief and grateful that she knew the love of her Bubbe.  I guess I witnessed our family’s version of the famous saying by Alfred Tennyson.  And I do think it’s better to have loved someone and lost them, than never to have been loved by that person at all.

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Grief, Continued

So it’s been almost 3 months since my Mom died.  I don’t cry every day anymore.  I do think about her all the time.  And hear her voice when I call my Dad and get their voice mail.

I have several of her winter coats, which I have taken to wearing.  Of course they each have a pair of gloves in them (and of course, Kleenex.)  My husband gives me a knowing glance when he sees a “new” coat.  He knows my Mom is wrapped around me.  While I know my Mom is a part of me, internally, I seem to get comfort from some of her external possessions.  I am carrying her everyday purse – I know she bought it at TJ Maxx, her favorite place to buy purses.  I carry Kleenex, shopping bags, an umbrella – all of the things she kept close at hand, “just in case.”  I stop short at putting a label on all of my possessions in the event they are lost.  While I am my mother’s daughter, I am my own person.  And I will not succumb to all of her idiosyncrasies.

I got through the first Thanksgiving without her.  And while my parents had been going to Indiana to my sister’s the past few years, I still missed calling her to discuss my menu.

“I’m having 20 people; how big of a turkey should I get?”

“Do I need appetizers?”  “What about a salad?”

Trivial things, I know, but all part of the package of having a mom.  Especially a good, extremely competent mom.  I managed without her, answering the questions with what I think she would have said.  I have grown into a very competent 50 year old woman.  I’m a grown up.  Of course I can put on a dinner for 20 without my mother’s input.

It just wasn’t as much fun.  It felt sad.  And lonely.  And I missed her, even if I could briefly pretend she was in Indiana.

My father spent Thanksgiving with my sister, where she took a turn helping him with his grief.  It’s generally one sided; he talks a lot about Mom but can’t listen too much if we do.  It’s okay.  As my sister said, “My grief pours out of me all the time, through my whole body.  I don’t really feel the need for it to come out of my mouth.”

Yet I clearly feel the need to talk about it some.  Or write about it when the mood strikes me.

Next week my sister is coming so we can clean out our mother’s closets together.  Yet another task for the grieving.