One of the Happiest Days

“Come,” I typed.  “I need you.”

“Bring scotch,” I wrote.  “Bring babies.”

I added further information, where and when, before hitting send.  I did not feel better. 

That evening, they came.  And they brought scotch and babies.  Well, one baby.  Lindsey was up past his bedtime and cranky, but I needed a baby close by.   I didn’t get to hold him that evening and smell his hair and marvel at his clean baby smell.  He was past that.  He was a strong-headed year old boy who was just like his dad, and this close to becoming a toddler.  But he was a baby and I needed to see his fearlessness, his total trust and his forming self.

These are my people, my tribe.  They are my cousins on my mother’s side.  Not all of them.  Just three, and their wives and kids.  We sat in the kitchen while the kids played in the den, taking turns with the Wii and hollering encouragement at one another.  We sat in the kitchen because we had been raised in kitchens and we knew that all important conversations happen in kitchens.  Big farm kitchens hold a lot of stories and wisdom and tragedy and secrets.  They are big rooms because they have to be, to hold all that life.  There is usually a big, scarred wooden dining table with more chairs than you think you’ll need, a radio, a couch, sometimes a television set, often a dog.  There can be many people in a farm kitchen: the family, hired hands, neighbours, in-laws, out-laws, stray kids.  Farm kitchens are not sentimental places.  They are the gut of the house; everything runs off the kitchen.  You can’t get from one place to another, generally, without passing through the kitchen. 

We sat on mismatched chairs and stools and the couch and some leaned on the windowsills.  This was not a big farm kitchen, but it had the feeling and the furniture of one.  And I told them that she was dying.  They were not silent.  They showed me their unsurprised disbelief and their obvious pain and their hope for something good.  No, I said, no hope.  She is dying.  We are losing her.  And we each turned to the one beside us to think of this in smaller moments.  My favourite cousin came to my side and we slid to the floor, like we were kids again and the floor was as good as a chair.  We pulled our knees up and looked at each other.  I knew what she was thinking before she said it.

“What are they going to do?”

>>>>>>>>>>>>

Some people say that we are unusually close for cousins.  They might be right.  Who knows?  There are six of us that were born in stair step years, each one two years older than the next.  Three girls first, then three boys.  We spent a lot of time together as kids.  We spent summer days at each other’s farms, as planting and harvest needs took our parents’ time and energy.  We went to the beach one day each summer, all together.  We went to a criss-crossing set of public schools.  We wore each other’s hand-me-downs.  Our family, almost all farmers, got together for big meals often.   I remember one dinner at my aunt’s:  nine adults (Grandma and her four children and their spouses) and all 10 first cousins (another came along later) were there.  19 people, several dogs and enough food to feed an army.  Thank goodness for big farm kitchens.  My sister was 13 (cousin #5) and she noted that three-year-old Tim (cousin #10) was wearing a familiar piece of clothing.  

“Tim,” she said smiling, “I think you’re wearing my shorts.”  If true, these shorts were about 10 years old, and thereby dating from the early 70s—the era of indestructible polyester.  Tim did not smile.  He was a serious kid and he is a serious adult.    

“No,” he said.  “Mine.”  

My sister got down beside him and examined the light blue fabric.  

“Yep,” she concluded, “those are my shorts.”

Tim held his ground and put his small hands on the shorts as if to shield them from a greedy cousin twice his size.  “My shorts!” he insisted.

We gathered around him, aged 5, 7, 9 and 11 and some of the adults, too.  We pointed, laughing, “I wore those shorts!  Did you wear those shorts?” in imitation of a current laundry soap commercial.  And yes, all six of us had worn that particular pair of shorts.  

And then, a deeper voice joined in, laconic and amused.  Blake, (cousin #1) aged 26, commented thoughtfully, “You know, I think those are my shorts.”

Dead silence and then laughter from all but one of the assembled family members:  Tim held onto to his well-worn, family heirloom shorts saying, sternly, “Tim’s shorts.  Tim’s shorts!”

So this is my family.  We pass clothing and baby furniture and toys and books and camping equipment and advice and kids back and forth. The older ones baby sat the younger ones and we mentored each other at Girl Guides and Boy Scouts and summer camp. We even played with one another during the contagious period of childhood illnesses, so as to get it all over with at once. Our mothers had had the chicken pox when they were at Teacher’s College, at the age of 21 and were determined that none of us would suffer as they had.  It didn’t work for all of us:  my sister got the chicken pox at 26 and I have never had them, despite our mothers’ best efforts at infecting us young.

<<<<<<<<<

“What are they going to do?”

I knew she meant our mothers, specifically her mother, and our aunt. My mother was dying and her sisters would be lost without her.  Not because she was the eldest, their leader or the strongest personality, but because they had done almost everything together.  More, even, than my cousins and me.  They are triplets, born in the 1940s when the odds were against any premature baby, never mind three at once. They each weighed under 5 pounds at birth; my mother was one pound less than that.  She spent a little extra time in the hospital, but came home to be bundled, with her sisters, into the drawer that was their first bed.

  

They were a marvel, a wonder of the time and there are three thick photo albums of pictures and clippings to prove it.  They were followed by photographers when they went to the fair, made the paper when they performed at the music festival and were interviewed on tv when they graduated Teacher’s College together.  There is a photo of them on a blanket at the beach in their first summer.

“Why would you take three 4 month old babies to the beach?” I asked my grandmother incredulously.  

“Because people were standing in my rose bushes!”  she said with just a sliver of impatience in her voice.  “If we were at the beach, they could look and stare and just keep walking.  It kept them from looking in the windows at home and ruining my garden!”  Tiny local celebrities in diapers.

But now, what would they do?  How do triplets go on if there are only two?

My favourite cousin and I looked at each other in shared grief for the aunts, the three, ‘The Board of Directors.’  And for ourselves.  Our childhoods had been so deeply intertwined that we came to be sitting here as adults with the same thought at the same time.  How could we lose one of the women who raised us so that we would have moments like these?  We were silent, staring at each other.

We were the eldest of the cousins present and the others looked to us in the quiet.  We shared our concern and it spread out over all of us.  It was so quiet that the kids came in to see if we were all right.  “Yes,” we told them, “sad and scared, but all right.”  They nodded and hesitated in the way that children do when they know that something is being held back, but trusting that they will find out about it later.  

I sat in that kitchen with my cousins, sipped my whisky and thought about my wedding.  I was remembering how these cousins had  thrown my wife and I the perfect wedding. They hosted, baked cupcakes, roasted the pig and washed dishes and I thought then ‘I have the family I have always wanted.’ Such bliss. 

In my cousins’ kitchen I felt that again.  Here were a group of people that I can call at a moment’s notice and say, “Please come.  I need you.”  And know that they will.  It was such a feeling of fireplace warmth, of fresh cookies, of love and safety.  Of home, whichever kitchen we are in.

My heart is not is not free

My heart is not free

It beats in my chest, bruising and scarring me on the inside

My heart is not free

It draws me up from prone as though I was borne from the pages of a sketchbook. 

It imagines more activity in these new arms and legs than they can hold. 

My heart is not free

It pulls me in the night when the space between 

(this heart and these walls) 

is thin. 

It pulls me to the outside walls of this house, as though magnetizing me to drywall and bricks.

My heart is not free

It beats 

and beats

and beats me down, 

trying to escape this ribcage and this house.

My heart is not free, but

it tears through my chest wall and then the drywall. 

The bricks explode outward, trailing a useless cloud of dust. 

My heart streaks across the night sky, 

hot and red and bare, 

and not free. 

Sister; Missed Her.

Today my lovely wife asked if I planned to be in touch with my sister this Christmas.  Hmmm...I still have the card I bought for her last Christmas... As ever, I planned to send it but clearly it wasn't a priority.  My wife went on to encourage me to send the 'letter' I wrote almost 2 years ago (see post entitled AWOL).  I am quite sure I won't, as it was not written for her.  I wrote that letter to vent my spleen, to clarify my feelings and to try to understand how we got to where we are.  Wherever that is.

I was so angry at my sister for so long.  It was so easy, in the aftermath of our mother's illness and death, to blame her completely for the breakdown between us.  But it always takes two to tango.  I am as much at fault (if blame is the right paradigm to consider, here) as she is.  She absented herself and I dreamed that my need was visible, from thousands of miles away.  I thought she should know instinctively that I was caught in the leg-hold trap of the dying parent.  And what that would feel like.

I expected her to understand what it is like to truly, finally lose a parent, as an adult (we'd done it as kids, but it is vastly different as an adult). Because she had divorced herself from our mother years before, she could never know that type of loss, close up.  (She seemed to understand it when her friends went through it, though.) I thought, with all of our shared experiences, especially with other members of our family, that she would also share this.  Apparently I thought that we were identical twins, with shared pain, unknowable knowledge and mistaken identities. I thought the universe would tell her what I needed her to know.  Because it seemed that this had happened in the past.  Truth or fallacy?  Don't know.  Was that when we lived in the same time-zone?  So that our experiences were more similar?  Or was it an accident of conversation that made me feel as though she understood and maybe anticipated my feelings?  Or was it just me, projecting the support I needed as coming from my only sibling?

I expected too much of my sister.  I don't know when this started, this idealization, this shiny, perfect picture, but it is not the truth.  My sister is mortal and has faults and foibles and insecurities.  I had always imagined otherwise, that any shortcoming in our relationship was mine;  my failure to live up to her example, my weakness, my lack of foresight.  I guess I put the balance in our relationship into an equation that said she was right (almost aways) and I was wrong (almost always).  I remember as a very young kid agonizing over why she didn't want to play with me.  I would ask our mother what I could do to convince her to spend time with me.  (Our mother had few suggestions, that I recall, not having had younger siblings, herself--she was a triplet, which may explain why she was so concerned with treating us exactly the same...but that's another therapy session!) I believed without question that I was lacking, not that my sister was thoughtless and rude (and quick with her fists, when we were young).  And this mistaken idea followed me into adulthood, as such things do.

What a burden that must have been, to bear the unreasonable expectations of another.  I wonder how this shaped her?  Did she always feel like she had to keep up with my sky-high expectations of her?  Did she feel unable to share insecurities, failures, struggles?  Did she feel like she needed to maintain my image of her, wearing uncomfortable armour in battles that were not hers?

I don't know the answers, here.  I think that she felt inferior to me, to many.  She commented more than once over the years that I was 'the smart one,' better with money, had a 'noble' job.  As though there can only be one bright person in a family, that there is only one way to successfully manage money or earn vocational respect.  This is a new piece to the puzzle, for me:  my sister as vulnerable, as struggling, as unsure.

So it seems now, that the person I have to forgive is myself.  I need to let myself off the hook for expecting too much, for believing my childhood myths about my sister.  The ones that did not let me seei her as a full person, but only as a caricature of the supler-hero who could ride a two-wheeler before me. 

When Bad Things Happen to Bad People

Lately, I have been trying to grow up.  I have been trying to be more magnanimous, more generous of spirit, more serene.  I have been trying not to get caught up in petty disagreements, not to spring to judgement, not to blame, not to maliciously over-simplify.

It was going so well.

And then someone in my life was diagnosed with cancer.  Lung cancer, with metasteses to the bones.  Horrible, right?  I have been trying not to imagine the drowning, gargling end, the cleaver-deep pain--a nightmare waiting to happen.  I have been trying not to think about these things because I think he deserves every last, painful, gasping moment.

Kind of flies in the face of my goals in paragraph 1, eh?

He is someone I met about 20 years ago and have had regular contact with since.  There is a lot about our relationship that is contrived--there are plenty of templates and examples around, in life, in the media, in art to build this lie upon.  He believes that we have a relationship at one end of the sincerity spectrum and I believe we are far at the other end.  I lie to him constantly.  Every time I see him, email him or talk to him.  I let him believe gigantic untruths, allowing his assumptions to paint a cheery picture in his head.  I tell myself lies, too, to get through these moments.  I have to manufacture a sliver of reality in my head where he is the guy he thinks he is and where I am dumb enough not to see through it.  I swallow his bullshit persona of 'life of the party' and 'elderly hipster' and 'father of the century.'  I laugh at his jokes (except the hateful ones).  I listen to his advice and opinions and nod along, letting his fog wash over me.  

I play the game, as much as I can.  I put on my disguise as I ring his doorbell and afterward, take it off in the car, before we are out of the driveway.  I shake out the crabs and fleas and cockroaches, the rot and the grave wax and release my frustration on the dashboard.   I hate this game, but I play it all the same.

I play it because it is easier for the other people in my life, if I do.  I am late to this party.  Other people have been putting up with him for far longer than I.  There are defined roles and they are all limited.  It is not my place to changes these rules that are older than I am.

He is an old man, fearful and in agony and alone.  He is pathetic and pitiable.  He is needy and helpless and bewildered.  He knows he is going to die--soon--and he is terrified.

And I am glad. 

I am gleeful that he having an isolated, agonizing death.  I am grateful that his dying is traumatic and lengthy.  In these things, I am comforted that sometimes, the world seems to be in balance.

How so?

This man is a child molester.

Of at least one child.  (Oh, god, please let it only be one child.)  For years.  And years.  And years. 

Most of his fear and isolation is of his own making.  You cannot victimize someone repeatedly without putting up huge walls around them and yourself.  You cannot create a climate of complete control and impunity without being truly alone.  And if you can make actions such as his routine and agreeable to your conscience--your grip on the truth will slide down the toilet with the rest of your putrid effluvia.

So, in this way, we lie to each other.  He pretends to be a 'pillar of the community' and I pretend I don't want to vent my eye-bleeding outrage with a lighter and bamboo slivers.  We play the game with our masks of civility and our code of conduct.  Occasionally, one of us slips--his attempt at 'here's what porn I'm surfing' chats or slapping my ass in greeting;  my natural sarcasm slipping though--and we have to realign ourselves to the game that we have agreed to play.

And yes, I see the irony.  I want to be 'good,' more honest, cleaner but I am caught in a game of 'who can lie better' and 'let's maintain the horrific status quo'. My disingenuity is improving.  I can lie better, stronger, faster than before.  In agreeing to protect other people, I am also protecting him.  In trying to do the contextually 'right' thing, I am, myself, honing the skills that I hate in him.  Damned if I do, eh?

Serenity?  Hard to come by.  Judgement?  Got lots, thanks.  Generosity?  I'll get back to you...

Accepting my feelings?  Honouring survivors?  Making it work, minute to minute?  Working on it. And doing fairly well, thank you very much.

AWOL

August 29, 2013

Dear You

…

Dear Sister,

…

Dear Dumbass,

…

Even with just six words, you probably have a sense where this is going;  I’m mad at you.  Right pissed, in fact.  Have been for a while, now.

I know you know what this is about, in general terms.  You let me down.  Abdicated your sisterly responsibilities.  Buggered off. 

And I wonder about that.  It’s not like you to take a hike when the going gets tough.  You are one of the original tough cookies.  Maybe that’s the problem.  Have you gotten so self-sufficient that you’ve forgotten what it feels like to need help?  Last year, I needed help.  Lots of it.  And you weren’t there.  And I’m pissed.

I think it all started last January, when I spoke bluntly about how tiresome I found some of our conversations, how repetitive and frankly unhealthy they were.  I do not have the natural gift of tact—the tiny bit I have was learned the hard way in painful situations, over and over again.  It is a shallow well and I’m sure it ran dry early in our conversation.  I am sure the things I said hurt you.  I am also sure that they were true.  Which is not an excuse for saying hurtful things—kindness should almost always trump truth.  But I think it was past time for them to be said.  I believe that your thinking needed some shaking up.  I think your self-sufficiency and ‘I can do it myself’-ness had gotten in the way of some rational thought.  I wonder if you were cooking up your own personal Bay of Pigs. 

I do not regret the things I said in that conversation.  I believed them then and still do today.  I believed that you needed to grow up.  I believed that you needed to face your conflicts regarding our mother.  I believe that you were stuck, in some ways, at 15.  I’ve put all this in the past tense, as we haven’t really had a conversation in the past 20 months and I don’t know who you are anymore.  And frankly, I’m not sure that I want to know, anymore.

 

My bottom line:  I went through the hardest year of my life and you jumped ship.  From emails several times per week to nothing.  We disagreed on the value of a relationship with our mother.  Fair enough.  I was working hard at having an adult connection with her, to leave behind the disappointments of the past.  You had chosen a different path.  But when our mother started chemotherapy for her recurrence of cancer—you disappeared.  I was worried and scared and … alone.  Not in a broader sense—my wonderful partner was by my side almost every minute and our family was with me every step.  Our aunts, uncles and cousins were on my side, in my court, had my back…you get the picture.  But my sister was missing.

I felt your absence.  There was a hole in our ranks.  I looked at our mother’s sisters and our cousins in their sibling pairs and wondered where my sister was.  You and I grew up together, fought together, played together, laughed ourselves silly together.  We lived through massive losses and came out the other side.  We were not always the best of friends, or the best of influences on each other.  We did not practice a lot of kindness toward each other and tact was a language completely unspoken in our teen years.  But we stuck together, particularly in adulthood.  We filled in each other’s blanks and tried to make our past make sense.  I had always admired you;  in those years, I came to rely on you.

So when our mother got sick again, I missed you.  I missed your presence and reliability and resourcefulness.  I missed your humour and our shared language of history and reference points.  I missed your being, your body, your steadfastness.

And when our mother’s disease spread to her brain and it became clear that she was dying, I needed you.  I needed you to help me call her friends and tell them that she had not one, but three brain tumours.  I needed you to be there with me through the embarrassment and awkwardness of her incontinence.  I needed you to hear her flagging speech and when that was over, to help interpret her benign facial expressions.  And I needed you to help me call her friends back and tell them that she had died.

This, all of this, I did with other people.  My wife, our aunts, our cousins, nurses, strangers.  Not my sister.

And you may say, quite rightly, that I never asked for your help.  Not in so many words.  And truly, that never occurred to me.  My pain during that time was so massive, so all-encompassing, so dense and impenetrable that I never thought to ask for help.  The help that I received was there before I was.  The help was not offered—it showed up uninvited.  Phone-calls, emails, cards, messages arrived unbidden.  People reached out and touched base, offered a piece of advice or a remembered moment from their own losses.  Most of it touched me, some of it rolled off and a few things made me angry.  But it all helped me.  I knew I wasn’t alone, I knew that there were dozens of people out there who loved our mother and were willing to show up.  They loved me by proxy, just because I had shown up.  Even the lunkheads who said insensitive things in the guise of comfort were comforting.  Because they were there.

So, if you want it, there’s your Get Out of Jail Free card.  I didn’t ask for your help.  And you couldn’t possibly see the lack of sleep etched in my face, or the worry in my eyes for our mother’s sisters, her ailing husband and all her grandchildren.  Have you ever met our mother’s grandchildren?

Were you curious?  Did you wonder how things were going?  Did you worry that I may not have been eating well, able to sleep, driving distractedly?  Did you think of me at all? 

I thought of you, often.  I thought of you with concern, bewilderment, frustration and anger.  I spoke of you flippantly, rudely and harshly.  I thought how nice it must be to live across the country and feel exempt from the impossible work of watching someone die.  I wondered if anything disturbed your dreams, appetites and routines.  I wondered how you could amputate me so completely, and live with the phantom pain of my absent body.  Or did you escape that, too?

How’s that working for you?  Is your life good these days?  complete?  satisfying?  Do you realize that I lost the remainder of my family last year?  Our mother died.  Dad’s been dead more than twice as long as we knew him.  And you vanished.  (I have a client that counts her absent [dumbass] father among her list of dead.  I get that now.)  The math is depressing--once there were four of us--now there is just me.  I attend family functions and see the other branches of our family getting bigger;  thankfully, they are generous and welcoming.

So, if you’ve been wondering about my radio-silence, I hope this answers some of your questions.  It’s not a balanced account, by any means.  It’s just me being disappointed and picking myself back up.  It’s just me trying to balance my books.  It’s just me trying to understand.

Happy Birthday.

 

Love (and many other feelings),

Robin.

 

Hug a Thug

I used to think of grief as a little old lady who withdrew from polite company to weep delicately into a lace handkerchief.  Now I know the truth. Grief is not your maiden aunt, the one with fine manners and long skirts and high collared blouses. Grief is a thug. It wears a stained, cracked black leather jacket and ancient blue jeans.  Biker boots, brass knuckles and chewing tobacco.  He reeks of scruff and dirt and bad breath and stale cigarettes mixed with motor oil and cat piss.

Grief is intrusive, rude and entitled. It doesn't care that you are busy, that you have things to do.  It pushes into your life at any time of the day or night, interrupting routines and sleep. Meal times?  Better set an extra plate because you never know when he'll show up, demanding to be fed. Bed time?  Even a king-sized bed wouldn't be big enough for cover-stealing, pillow-twisting Grief. 

Grief waits for you in the shower, sliding over your body with the soap, suffocating your skin. Grief ambushes you in the kitchen as you try to figure out what comfort food is going to soothe this terrorist. Grief hides in plain sight, lounging on the dashboard of your car like a depraved bobble-head doll, daring you to read street signs through your tears. 

Grief will find you in the grocery store, at a friend's house, on vacation. He is a diligent body-guard, ensuring that your world stays small. You cannot out-run him, drive faster, get far enough away--he is always there, like a chronic itch, a bad rash, a hemorrhoid.  You can drug him, medicate him into a stupour, but he still hangs around, just clumsy now and snoring. 

Grief will hide anywhere:  in lines of poetry, between songs on a playlist, in colours, shapes, tastes, scents--he can fit anywhere. (For me, it was turquoise--my mother's favourite colour--every damn thing I saw in that colour had Grief in it, waiting to poke his thumb into my eye.). Grief demands access to every part of your life--and trying to keep him out just makes him work harder. Lock the door? He'll jimmy the window. Go away for the weekend?  You'll find him asleep in the back seat of your car.  Sure, he takes the occasional  moment or day off--but he always comes back refreshed and ready to hold you hostage again. 

And finally, finally you find ways to deal with him.  Ignoring him doesn't work, so you start to expect him. Set that extra plate, plan for an extra 'participant' in activities. Build in additional time to deal with him, if you can. Acknowledge him, validate him. Sure, he's still got a sack of dirty tricks and surprise attacks in store, but his zeal for these will wane eventually.  You'll start to see him coming, to recognize his shape in the shadows, to hear his heavy footsteps approach.   You'll begin to understand that fighting him is really fighting yourself.  That his entitlement to your life might remind you of your own power.  That his outline matches your shape and his despair is only as deep as your own resources.

Gradually, slowly, he discards the leather jacket; he puts on soft-soled shoes; he shaves.  He starts to respect your routines. He brings his own lunch.  He leaves at a decent hour.  He takes the bus on his own.  And one day, you'll realize that you haven't seen him around for a while.  And then you will spot  him on the street in your neighbourhood, and your stomach will clench, but he'll be looking at someone else.  He may catch your eye and nod, but you'll be able to turn and walk away. 

He never forgets about you or loses your address, but his obsession for you wears off.  It may take a year or a decade, but he eventually loses interest.  You will never forget him, either.  How could you forget someone who knows you so well?  He who has shared your bed like a lover, who knows every aching second, with you inside your skin.  You have marked each other.  There will always be a part of you that can reach for him, that can find him in a second.  Those desperate moments of loneliness, of refusing to accept the truth, of terrifying change.  But they are temporary and they will pass.  You have marked each other.  The scar you have left on him is unknown.  The mark he leaves on you could be anything:  fear, hope, strength, brokeness.  You can leave it out there for all to see or cover it up with long sleeves or a tattoo.  Whatever it is, it is yours.  You have earned it.  You have survived.

Before and After

(I started writing this in the middle of March. Took me a while to get back to it...)

It has been four and a half months since my mother died.  It feels like yesterday and it feels like years. 

She died in early November.  Many family members were with her when she died, and it was peaceful and seemed pain-free for her. 

I was so relieved when she died.  I was relieved for her, but mostly, I was relieved for me.  Her death released me from all of the unanswerable questions, from the terrible anxiety and dread, from not knowing what to say and do.  It set me free from benignly ignorant 'knowing' looks and comments, and from the lies I told constantly about how lucky I was to have this time with my mother.  Her death gave me something concrete to think about, to plan my time around.  It allowed me to assure people (and myself) of something.

Her funeral was a project--something to plan, execute and survive.  It was the final project (so I thought) of two long months of uncertain schooling.  It was on a bright, fall day (her favourite season) and lots of us took part.  Her grandsons were her pallbearers, her great niece sang "Hallelujah."  Her granddaughters carried flowers.  I spoke, as did her sister.  The minister knew her well, as did the funeral director.  She looked mostly like herself in the casket.  In fact she looked much healthier than she had in the previous weeks.  That was odd, and oddly comforting.

I thought that after the funeral, things would get easier. 

Hmm. 

Not so much. 

Things are better.  I am at home now.  I no longer have the next visit to the hospice hanging over my head.  I no longer fight, in quite the same way, to gather my resources each day.  I no longer have to face my prejudices and assumptions on a daily basis.  These things are a relief.  I've learned that it's just a different brand of hard.  I feel things that I did not anticipate.  That I didn't know existed.  I'm not sure there are words for all of the feelings that are bubbling up out of me.  I have wept more than at any other time in my life.  I have had deeper self-doubts than I thought possible.   I have never questioned so much that I had previously thought were rock-hard certainties.

The main feeling I have these days is of disappointment.  The palliative process did not live up to its Hollywood hype.  The medical and spiritual parts of it were bang on--my mother had extremely good care and was safe and comfortable.  But  for me, as a family member, I found little of  the expected 'shining nobility' of the process.  The reality of palliative care is one of grit and stabbing pain, of not knowing and needing and subjugating and endless tears.  I felt a little cheated:  Where was all the navel-gazing and new insights?  Where was the deathbed conversion?  Where were the final words of wisdom and truth that would sustain me throughout my life?

Ahem.

Why do I have to keep learning this lesson over and over again? The relationship does not change--not in that short period of time, especially when the main players are busy dying and agonizing, respectively. My mother and I were never good at talking to each other, at sharing truths and wisdom. Our truths were so far apart that they sounded like lies to each other. I bought the hospice hype--every bit of it. Invested in the shiny, happy image that 'everything will be okay.' Effortless. Weightless. Or maybe I was hoping so deeply for connection, for redemption that I let myself believe that a change of venue would furnish it. Simplified this complicated, convoluted relationship because, damn it, didn't something need to be simple? Easy?

Apparently not. Easy...doesn't matter. Convoluted doesn't matter. These words suggest comparison--as in, my relationship is more complicated than your relationship. Pity me, support me, pay attention to me...whatever the cry is. We get what we get. We can change parts of it, but not all of it; certainly not most of it. We have to face whatever our situation is. And this is easiest if we can accept what our situation is.

So, my mother and I remained who we've always been: my mother and I. We may have been our gentlest selves, and on our best behaviour most of the time, but we were still strange to each other. Just as we were always strange to each other. I've been looking at the before and after of this process hoping to find that 'the hard part' is over. What I'm finding is that it's all 'the hard part.'

And weirdly, that is comforting, too. I'm not winning, but I'm not failing at this, either. I'm surviving. I did what I could do. I wish it could have been more, but what I did was enough. I stretched myself further than I thought I could have--and did my best, walking that dark tightrope with my eyes closed.