The Longest Day

I start dreading this weekend as soon as the Mother’s Day cards appear in store aisles. It’s the Great Wall of Grief for me and I try to avoid it as much as possible.

And every year since 2003, my first Mother’s Day without my mother, I’ve tried to come up with a strategy for the day. Every year I seem to have a different plan but they ultimately have one thing in common – they fail miserably in helping me through the day.

I want to be alone. I don’t want to be alone. I want to say home. I want to go out. And so it goes.

Most every Mother’s Day begins the same way for me now. I wake up, open my eyes and remember the day and then I feel this sudden churning deep in my gut– sort of like that feeling when you’re in an elevator and it descends really quickly and you try and catch yourself.

And then I cry. Sometimes softly, but sometimes I sob. I think about going to Harrisonburg, VA and taking my mother out to brunch at the Country Club. I think about what she would wear. My mother never really owned any casual wear and she always looked so stylish and elegant when we went out.

I think about drinking champagne with her. My mother loved champagne. Years ago at an outdoor wedding, we both were in our cups – or flutes as the case may have been – and giggled together all the way home in the back seat while my father and my partner at the time shook their heads.

Mostly I think about what we would talk about over brunch. We never ran out of things to talk about.

We just ran out of time.

They say that the longest day of the year is the Summer Solstice in June. I would argue that it’s the second Sunday in May.

Afterword: Through the magic of Facebook, I was given a gift this Mother’s Day weekend in the form of a blog post from Kate Spencer, entitled How I’m Making Mother’s Day My Bitch. It is, in a word, brilliant. Brilliant.

May it be a gift to all of you missing your mothers this weekend.

Encore

I’ve often thought that the term “celebration of life” was a bit of a spin job, designed to make us all feel better about someone’s death. After all, grieving and celebrating seem like natural antonyms of each other.

I stand corrected after attending my late friend, Suzanne’s, Celebration of Life this past Saturday. Suzanne died unexpectedly on December 18^th from a massive stroke and I, like most of the large crowd in attendance at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church on Saturday, still couldn’t believe that such a bright spirit had simply vanished.

The mournful tones of a lone bagpiper washed over me as soon as I opened my car door and my face was wet with tears before I even made my way inside the church. There would be many more tears but mostly ones of abundant joy for having been in the circle of such an extraordinary human being.

Suzanne’s celebration of life had it all – gorgeous music performed by her beloved Bel Canto chorus, a tender and funny eulogy delivered by a dear friend, and an inspiring homily given by a minister who seemed to know her heart and her struggles.

Light was in abundance in all manner of ways at Holy Trinity on Saturday.

I smiled throughout her eulogy as I learned so much about my friend that I never knew – including a hilarious story about her being surprised by an earnest pack of Webelos while skinny-dipping in a Texas pond one hot summer’s day. I could almost hear what the minister described as Suzanne’s “unfettered peels of laughter” chiming in with the rest of us as the story unfolded.

I learned that she was a “devoted encourager” often writing notes to young people, particularly those pursuing a career in the arts, and often enclosing a check with her kind words. I smiled as I remembered receiving such a note in support of Triad Health Project, the non-profit that I work for.

I really hope I saved that note.

I smiled again when I heard her described as “swift to love” and that she was known for her “constant practice of generosity.”

To know Suzanne was to also know her passionate love of music, particularly choral music and this music was the soul of her service on Saturday. So it was perfect when the Bel Canto company, her singers, many singing through tears, performed In Paradisum from Maurice Durufle’s Requiem, Op. 9 before Suzanne’s ashes were committed to the columbarium at Holy Trinity. This achingly beautiful piece translates from the Latin as “Into Paradise” and includes these lyrics:

“May the angels lead you into paradise; may the martyrs come to welcome you and take you to the holy city, the new and eternal Jerusalem. May choirs of angels welcome you and lead you to the bosom of Abraham.”

Choirs of angels – yes, nothing else would do for Suzanne Goddard’s arrival.

And may her celestial concert series commence. Brava, dear woman!

My swift to love friend, Suzanne.

Remember Pearl Harbor

December 7^th means two things to me – Pearl Harbor and the day my mother died, almost 12 years ago.

Both events caused mass shock and destruction, albeit on different scales – one historical, one deeply personal.

Pearl Harbor, December 7th, 1941.

I know it probably seems strange to you that I even note the connection between these events but as a writer, I’ve always appreciated the ripe imagery here.

My mother’s death was not a surprise attack – she had been battling a wicked head and neck cancer with weeks of radiation and then chemotherapy. The results were cruel – she lost 50 pounds and her voice only to learn that a previously undetected tumor on the base of her tongue was discovered.

I know you know – cancer sucks.

She was devastatingly brave, making even her aloof oncologist shake his head at her steely grit. He told us she probably had a couple of months left so we approached the holidays with a “We are the World” attitude, thinking we could turn the tables on cancer and make it a Hallmark Christmas.

A C. diff infection obliterated that plan pretty quickly and she died peacefully in a hospital on a blustery December night as I held her warm hand.

This is how I remember the Virginia sky the evening my mother died on December 7th, 2002.

I was happy she was no longer in pain and that her exit was full of grace and a peace that she rarely found in her life.

My bombs dropped later, as I dealt – or more accurately, did not deal – with a paralyzing grief and despair that I had never known. And there were many causalities – my loving partner (irreparable damage), my relationship with my sister (since repaired), and my own certainness in the world (a work in progress).

I eventually made my way back to the living and my life – a new life, not the one I had always imagined. And I always think of my combat experience with grief when December 7^th rolls around each year.

I think it’s important for me to remember it all – the pain, the destruction, and the armistice I finally brokered through a lot of hard work in therapy and a renewed relationship with my faith.

My mother died young – 70 – and in the past several years I’ve seen many friends navigate these same battles. I try to help in meaningful ways but for the most part, I think it is a solitary journey for each of us.

And I think Winston Churchill got it right about war, any kind of war, when he said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

My beautiful, glamorous, elegant mother.

No. 1 Grandpa

I’ve been looking at this photo a lot today.

My brother-in-law snapped this image of my grandpa and me two years ago, capturing a tender moment between us. It was a Saturday evening in April, and we were all gathered at my aunt’s house in Pennsylvania celebrating my grandfather’s 95^th birthday.

It was the first time in a very long time that the whole family was together. Four generations under one roof. There was a giant sheet cake and presents, old stories and new grand-babies, laughter and tears. We traveled from five different states to celebrate the life of this amazing man, our grandpa.

I do not recall what we were talking about the second the camera clicked and froze this moment in time, but the photograph warms my heart every time I look at it. I love the way my grandfather is leaning in closer to talk to me and how whatever it was he was telling me was making me smile. But what I love most about this photograph is the intimate moment we’re sharing in a room packed with aunts, uncles and cousins engaging in multiple conversations simultaneously while seven great grandchildren were whirling around us. But here we were — my grandpa and me — in the corner of the room, talking as if no one else existed.

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The Big See

Anyone who has actually watched someone die knows it’s never as beautifully scripted as it is depicted in the movies or television. Sure, we’d all wish for a great soap opera death where we appear in soft lens and tell everyone gathered around our beatific bed that we love them so much and then we gently close our eyes. Cue music, fade to black.

I just finished watching the final two seasons of “The Big C” – a Showtime series that got death right – the good, the bad, and the funny. Yeah, you read that right.

Don’t freak out, I’ll explain in a bit.

“The Big C” begins with the main character, Cathy, played by the extraordinary Laura Linney, receiving a diagnosis of Stage 4 melanoma – as in lights out. So before we even get to know her or care about her, we learn she’s not long for this life. What a courageous premise for a television show – to spill the beans on the ending right up front.

The four seasons of the series take us through the final seasons of Cathy’s life. As in real life, each season brings a mix of hope, disappointment, fear, and love.

By the final season, we care deeply for Cathy, and I confess to wishing for a Hallmark Channel ending with a miracle cure. Fortunately, I let go of that magical thinking long enough to watch some stunningly authentic scenes – scenes that reminded me a lot of my own parents’ deaths, both from cancer in 2002.

Cathy achingly longs for her family, especially her teenage son, to be okay when she’s gone. I saw that same look on my mother’s face a few months before she died.

She was several months into chemotherapy and radiation for lung cancer (no she was not a smoker) and in hideous pain that the strongest of drugs couldn’t seem to moderate. I was leaving her for a few days to return to my home in North Carolina.

Before I hugged her goodbye, I said, “I’m sorry you’re in so much pain.”

She replied, in her raspy radiation voice, “I’m sorry you’re in so much pain.”

That was the only conversation we ever really had about her impending death – but it was enough and I have thought about that moment a hundred times in the past 12 years. It was one of the most exquisitely honest moments we ever shared and I doubt it would have happened if she had not been so gravely ill.

Cathy’s home Hospice nurse explains this phenomenon to Cathy in her final days when she tells her, “When people are close to dying they open up like flowers.”

My mother was a steel magnolia – she was stoic and reserved with her feelings but the journey of dying let her drop so many of the barriers she kept around her for so much of her life.

She also had a deliciously dry sense of humor that was only heightened by cancer. I’ll never forget sitting by her bedside during one of her many hospital stays, as a social worker read over several questions from a clipboard.

“Mrs. Ore, are you feeling depressed?” she somberly asked my mother.

“No, but I’m going to be if you keep asking me these questions,” my mother replied.

After the earnest social worker left the room, Mom and I giggled like teenagers at a slumber party.

Don’t get me wrong – there is nothing remotely funny about cancer but imminent death does create a space for an authenticity that seems so elusive in every day life and I treasure those moments with my mother. They are like pieces of sea glass – precious and clear – and I get them out and hold them from time to time.

It’s no spoiler to tell you how “The Big C” ends. The surprise is how much a show about dying celebrates living.

The last photograph of me with my mother, taken in Maine, September, 2002.

Bookends

Two writers. One blog.

death