6 posts tagged “motherloss”

Nine years ago today, the SF Coroner's office took possession of my 49-year old mother's body. It isn't clear exactly when she died. Phone records indicated she called her father for Father's Day. It took them a few days to find me (I had moved to Austin, Texas and my mother did not update her emergency contact information), so June 21, 1999, was just another day to me. I got up, went to work, ate, and slept in ignorant bliss. I remember making this argument to my therapist - that because I didn't have a reaction to the event when it happened, then it was really senseless to have a reaction now. Grief makes you say (and do) crazy things.

I found out on a Friday night. It was probably around 9pm. I was watching AbFab on the couch in my nightgown. I was tired from a long week at work. My house needed some tidying. What would have otherwise would have been a forgotten night, changed when the doorbell rang. It was the police.

B said he knew right away why they were there. But even when the officer said that it was in regards to my mother, I never went there. I figured she was in trouble of some sort, maybe locked up in a mental hospital at worse, but not dead. I hit the first phase of grief before the words were even out.

And once the words were out, I lost it. I started screaming. Wailing, almost. It was so bad the officer asked B if I had asthma, and was having an attack.

That insanity was broken by the phone ringing. Who could be calling at this hour, on a Friday? It was B's mother. For some reason I answered the phone. I must have been nearest or somehow thought that someone was going to tell me this was all a joke - a very bad one. This was the last person I wanted to talk to. She asked me how I was. I managed to say, not good and passed the phone to B. He took the call in the other room, never telling his mother was was going on in our living room. Yes, he did not mention that my mother was dead.

The officer left. He was accompanied by a woman who I guess was a social worker. I don't know. Her job was basically to give me the information I needed to deal with the body. She said that I could talk to the coroner's office if I had any questions. Actually I had to call them. All I wanted to ask, but didn't, was what kind of questions might those be? I had lots of questions, but I didn't think they were probably appropriate for the coroner.

In talking with this woman, whose name I don't recall, and who most likely I could not pick out of a line up to save my life, my sister came up. In irony of ironies, the last piece of correspondence I received from my mother was a postcard with my sister's address (and the request that I send my estranged sister money for an air conditioning unit). This woman explained that she could have someone go and share the news with her. What she didn't say was that said person would go post haste. My sister was in the eastern time zone, and ended up be awoken by the police at 3am local time. This caused her to call me quite pissed off about the whole incident (not that our mother was dead) as soon as they left.

By this time I had spoken to the coroner's office. I learned that I needed to make arrangements for my mother's body. I also talked to my mother's brother in California, who agreed to tell their father and other siblings. I also talked to his wife, my aunt, who had been friends with my mother since they were 13. She lost it on the phone. My first call was actually to my friend, and former high school teacher, who is a nun. She knew my mom too, and was able to help me figure out a plan of attack, so to speak.

My sister passed over the fact that we hadn't spoken to each other on the phone in about a decade. It didn't even phase her that the last time she had contacted me, she sent me email pretending to be an adopted 17-year old girl from Maine. I actually had a hunch that it was a hoax, but when I told B he said I was paranoid. He wasn't overly amused when my hunches turned out to be correct and she revealed her identity over IM. She was plain angry that I gave her address to the police. This was the purpose of her call - to tell me off!

When I was able to get her on track - our mother was dead, remember - things went downhill pretty quickly. She felt that the body should be cremated and the ashes scattered on the Golden Gate Bridge. [That is totally illegal, by the way.] My mother had disowned my sister when she was 15 and sent her to live with her paternal grandmother. They hadn't seen each other since she was 17 at a lunch which I also attended. They had made some contact recently, but my mother's brain was so pickled, that it is hard to call it a reconciliation.  I can't recall how the call ended, but by that point I was completely spent. Life as I knew it would never be the same, and now I had to deal with all this craziness to boot. I wanted to just stay up all night, but B insisted I at least try and sleep.

I woke up the next morning, and B insisted we try and take his car in for service. I followed him in my car, and was not thrilled with the idea of being alone. I remember asking not to be left alone. As it turned out the service center was closed, so we went back to the house and carried on with the day in one car.

We also needed to stop by the office (he had to work), and I had an eye appointment later that afternoon. I believed that canceling it would anger my mother, so didn't call and try to reschedule. In truth, I didn't want to have to say why I needed to cancel.

First, though, we had lunch. We went to this sort of Irish Pub called Faddo. It is actually a chain. There is one in Chicago too. I remember going to the pay phone and calling my therapist to see if he could see me. I had to leave a message, and just said "something bad happened". I didn't have a cell phone, and so had to leave B's office number.

After lunch, which I didn't eat, we went to the office. Technically I worked there too, but part-time, as a contractor. Still, I had no idea what to do with myself. The CEO, my boss, was in, so I went to his office and broke down. I couldn't get the words out before the tears were streaming down my face. He handled it well. He said I could take any time I needed. I think he was a little surprised we were there, but also grateful as there was a release deadline looming. Somehow word did not spread, and so despite it being an office of about a dozen people, many of them had no idea that this happened while I worked there. Ah, life at a start up in the days before the dot boom.

It was then time for the eye doctor. It was a busy Saturday. They left me in the exam room by myself for a few minutes. I just sat there and cried.  I was so afraid someone would ask what was the matter with me. Thankfully no one did, because I think I would have lost it.

I arrived at my therapist's office with my eyes still dilated. I remember the first thing I told him was that I had just been to the optometrist, and that I didn't look this bad because I had been crying uncontrollably since I learned about my mother's death.

Over the course of the next few days, things went from crazy to insane. My mother's siblings on the east coast had at one point tried to steal my mother's body. They felt she should be buried with their mother in a Catholic cemetery in New Jersey, and that I should foot the bill for an Irish wake complete with free-flowing alcohol. I guess they forgot that my mother had just lost her life to alcoholism. What they didn't even take into account was that my mother was converting to Judaism. I was never able to determine how far she had gotten, but at one point she had made arrangements at a Jewish cemetery. She later asked for her money back, and when I called in inquire was met with "you don't have a Jewish name" and basically told to get lost.

In the end, my mother was cremated and buried in the same plot as her mother (and her father and his second wife and possibly my sister). There was a funeral at the church of the Catholic school my sister and I attended for a year. This was the same place where after meeting with the principal, and learning what my sister (who was in first grade at the time) was up to, left the meeting and passed out on the front steps of the school, blocking out what she had been told because it was so awful.

I did not attend the  funeral. I can only imagine what this group of people said about a woman they didn't know. About a woman who when she was able, helped out her siblings in every way she could, but when she tried to get her life back, they turned their back on her. I am sure it was a giant guilt festival -something my mother would have hated - but I felt like she probably wouldn't have attended unless it was for the humor of it all.

My aunt and uncle in California did go to the funeral home, but didn't attend the funeral either. They pushed the button for the cremation, and then went across the street to an Irish pub to toast her. I ended up in that same pub when we returned to the Bay Area after B got his MBA. There was a gathering of the interns summering in San Francisco, and we met up at a bar in North Beach . When that got too crowded, we moved the party. We walked a few blocks to Green Street, and as we turned the corner, I realized where we were, even though I had never been there. And there we were in the bar my Aunt described. I freaked out a bit, but somehow got though that night too.

on the night stand :: Motherless Mothers

x-posted to my blog

Since writing this I learned that Mother's Day was not the creation of the evil geniuses at Hallmark. It was created by Anna Jarvis of West Virginia in 1907. She started the tradition of wearing carnations: pink if your mother is alive; white is your mother is deceased.

originally posted on May 11, 2003

Carnation2

sometimes a lie is the best thing

This is a simple truth: the only way onto this planet (sans spacecraft) is via a mother. Sure, modern science has blurred a few lines about who exactly a mother is, although surrogacy has been around since biblical times. But even with test tubes and Petri dishes, it all boils down to the same thing. The largest cell joins the smallest cell, and creation takes place.

So a mother could be considered a vessel, a ship. A storage space that leads you to a passageway – a point of entrance into this world. Thus a connection/bond like no other is formed. We lived inside of this being. We were literally nurtured by her body. Fed by what she took in, good or bad. Her body offered shelter and protection. And then when certain conditions came together, we emerged, and were literally cut from that which created us. And that is why we cry.

No matter what happened after that, we still share that connection. We will have it with no one else. It is a one-time deal. No one comes into this world alone. There will only ever be one person who got us here. Like it or not, those are the facts.

Today I read an entry about the kinds of mothers that there are. The author mentioned mothers no longer with us, those with children who are no longer of this earth, mothers who no longer have custody of their children (because of court orders, adoption, or otherwise), and mothers who are estranged from their offspring, or at least in complicated relationships. I would like to add to that list mothers who felt that the best decision for them both was to not take things to term. They are all mothers, and should be honored on this day.

Today being that day brought to us by Hallmark, and sponsored by 1-800-flowers.com, South Western Bell, and Avon, I, of course, thought about my own mother. Mother’s Day 1999 was the last time I sent her a card. Had I known then that it would be the last, I’m still not sure what I would have said. I know on some deep level that she loved me, and that she knew I loved her. That my leaving was the best thing for me, and in some ways her, too. That she never wanted me to take on the role of mother to her, and yet it happened....

This is my first time sharing this here, although I usually share it annually on my other blog. I will warn you that it may be triggering for some.

blue iris

Well, I will try and explain it anyway. This is about the fifth time I have tried to compose this post. Where to begin?

My Mom died almost eight years ago (June 1999). The last thing I ever sent her was a Mother's Day card. The last thing she sent me was a postcard with my sister's address and a request to send my sister money for an air conditioner.

One of the things that happens in the grief process is that you get to 'celebrate' (I use that term loosely as not much celebrating usually goes on in the first year) each of the holidays without the person. I still remember secretly sitting around on Thanksgiving thinking my Mom would call. I knew it was a crazy thought, but grief does things to your mind.

I thought I was doing better and then Mother's Day 2000 rolled around. It hit really hard that my Mom was gone, even though the more rational part of myself knew that it would have been highly unlikely that had she been alive we would have celebrated together. Here I should note that my Mother was an alcoholic with bipolar disorder. To say that our relationship was complex would be an understatement. The anger part of my grief was coming at me at waves, so watching other mom/daughter relationships was very very hard. I would either get very angry or be brought to tears. Even for complete strangers that I just happened upon in my day-to-day life. Fun times.

Four years ago I decided that I needed to redirect these feelings. I needed to find a way to celebrate the moms in my life in an effort to lessen the pain and burden I was feeling. I had a few friends who had had children and I also had a teacher who was also a nun who was like a grandmother figure. And so I went and bought and sent Mother's Day cards to them. I think I sent five. But I felt like I was doing something good and felt better.

The next year I continued this effort, but made my own postcards from photos I had taken. The list grew from five to thirty.

The following year I lost my teacher/nun friend. I just couldn't bring myself to do it and so skipped a year.

Mommy Wars: Stay-at-Home and Career Moms Face Off on Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families

Leslie Morgan Steiner

Last year it seemed like more people I knew than not were becoming Moms and so I decided it was time to bring back the project.  Further inspiration came from the editor of Mommy Wars, Leslie Morgan Steiner. In her afterword she says that positive role models for American mothers in the 21st century are as hard to find as "swim diapers at Target in August". She also asks when was the last time you told another woman she was a good mother. I ended up sending out cards to over 50 women around the globe.

This year I haven't picked a theme yet. I am hoping to outdo last year. And maybe even have them arrive on or before Mother's Day.