overcome

No Words

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This post is kind of a non-post, I suppose.  I realized today that it has been two months since I last blogged, and I am writing to let you all know what has been happening in these intervening weeks.

I believe I have mentioned in previous posts that I had begun the process of packing up my mom’s things.  This endeavor evolved into the decision to sell her house.  Being the pragmatic, motivated and energetic person that I normally am, I met with our attorneys and decided that this was the most logical course of action.  Though we are living in said house, and have some emotional attachment, of course, we have moved many times, and I truly thought it would be no big thing.  A month or so, and we’d be out.

That was in August.  We finally finished packing up the house in October.  I cannot even begin to tell you how hard it was to pack up the house of a loved one.  It was all-consuming, drained every ounce of time and energy that all of us had.  We cried every day, we worked from waking to bedtime. Some days, I got a reprieve in the form of seeing my prenatal clients or flying out the door to attend the birth of a baby, but most days… it was just this continuing march through what became near-despair, hoping there was a light at the end of the tunnel.  Forget time for writing, even if I had had the spirit to do so.

Sounds dramatic, right?  Well, the clinical explanation is clear:  I didn’t see my friends enough; I didn’t get enough sunlight; I didn’t get enough exercise; I didn’t eat right.  These things alone can drag you down.  But more than this, the daily question, as we were touching all of Mom’s things, packing away her treasured possessions, changing the quirky things she loved about her home with paint and landscape work – were we doing the right thing?  To sell this house, this place that had held so much love and so many life events.

In October, we got our reprieve.  We took our annual trip to a beach house in Lincoln City, OR, to celebrate Mom’s life.  I have a post in progress about this trip.  When we left for Oregon, we joyfully (well, maybe not joyfully, but with so much relief to be done!) put her house on the market and drove away, counting on, in this hot market, being under contract when we returned in three weeks.

Ha, ha.  Just kidding – we are back in Colorado now, and back in the house. No one is interested, so far, in undertaking the updating that needs to be done.  We live in an affluent area where people kind of expect to have it perfect when they move in.  We are moving the price all around and doing more work on it, and struggling with the same questions.  Are we doing the right thing?  Should we just price it low to sell and move on?  Or should we keep it?  Around and around in circles.  Oddly, this is the most stressful period I’ve experienced in years, even in comparison to Mom’s death. What makes it so?  I think there are just too many choices before me, too many decisions that rest upon me.  Though I know I am so lucky to have these choices, I can’t help but think how much easier it might be to just have one option.

Perhaps the difference is that death doesn’t leave us a whole lot of options.  We simply have to ride the train to its inevitable end the very best way we can.

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The Club

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This afternoon, I attended a funeral service for the mother of a friend of mine, who passed away suddenly last week.

It was the first such service I have attended since Mom’s death, and I was, frankly, quite nervous about going.  Historically, I don’t do well at funerals, anyway, and usually end up sitting in the back, trying not to make a spectacle of myself with my audible sobs.  I usually carry my own cushy tissues so that my nose will be comfy and I won’t hog the box provided by the funeral home.

Today, I navigated the experience much better than expected.  In fact, much better than the last several funerals I’ve attended.  I wonder if it’s because I cry all the time these days anyway?  Maybe pent-up grief isn’t bursting to get out at the moment.  I did cry today, but I wasn’t wrecked for the day, and was able to talk to my friends and be functional.

As I am watching my friend walk through this experience, I imagine that she might be feeling similarly to how I was feeling 8 months ago.  I remember distinctly the first ten days being surreal, and feeling almost as though I had the flu.  I remember how hard it was to grasp the realization that I no longer had a mother.

Disclaimer: I understand that life and relationships are complicated, and this may not be your personal experience.  But, as a rule, there is no love like the love that a mother has for her child.  I am certain that there isn’t a greater pain than losing a child, as the love is so powerful.  But, I have come to believe that losing a mom, while, sadly, not an incredibly unique experience, carries a special kind of pain that bears some deep consideration.

When my mom died, I was not surprised to find that I grieved.  But I was surprised by the void that was left when I realized that she wouldn’t be texting me at two a.m. when I was out delivering a baby to make sure I was safe.  That I didn’t need to poke my head into her room and let her know when I got home.  Honestly, before she died, I found the fact that I had to check in with my mom at the age of 37 a little annoying, but now that I had no one to check in with, it felt very lonely

Because, you see, there is no one that will ever love you as much a mom. We were a part of our moms.  We exist because we grew and were nurtured in our moms’ bodies.  There is evidence that our mothers carry our cells and we may even carry her cells in our bodies for the rest of our lives after she is pregnant with us.  There is no one who will look at you and only see love, and not your flaws (okay, your little baby or toddler might look at you like that, but once they hit a certain age, your perfection will diminish.)

It’s a lonely feeling to realize that the person who cared the most about whether I was safe and whole is not here anymore.

I am not saying this to be a downer, truly, but just to illustrate the significance of this club so many of us are in, or will join at some point. Until I was in this club, I didn’t have any idea what it really meant.  I still might not know, but I’ve had a little bit of time to sit with it now.

Losing a mom is a special loss.  When I lost mine, friends who have been in the club for a while hugged me and looked at me with knowing in their eyes.  This is a loss that we will feel lifelong.  This is a loss that will visit us on holidays and when milestones come and go.  This loss will be felt when we are alone, hurting or scared and need the comfort that only a mother can give us.

Today, I hugged my friend and looked at her with this knowing in my eyes. Tonight, I am going to think about her and wish for her comfort as she settles into this new life.

And I am going to think about moms.  About their vital contribution to our existence, our formation as humans, in both the physical and emotional sense.  About their love, hugs and snuggles, nagging and pestering.  Their perfection in their imperfection.

And I’ll cry a few more tears, both happy and sad, for all of us in this club.

 

What is Important

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I come from a family of adventurers – my parents once picked us up and moved us to Mexico with just a few weeks’ notice –  so the thought of turning our lives on end was not scary to me.  And the impetus was strong;  I had known women with similar aggressive cancers who had lived only weeks or months after diagnosis.  I feared that if we did not act immediately, my mother would be lacking essential pieces of her support structure as she faced her deadly foe.  Though the move would bring some logistical concerns, including financial hiccups, we were ready to meet what challenges would come without hesitation.

What I did not realize at the time was that we were living an enormous life lesson during that period of upheaval.  Many people have asked how our children adjusted to moving on such short notice.   As I prepared to leave a job, friends and family that I loved, so, too, did the kids prepare to leave their schools, their friends, their family, and their home.

Right or wrong, my style of parenting includes brutal honesty, and they were fully informed of the gravity of the situation.  Though the problem was complex, the answer was truly simple.  Grandma was very sick and her life was in peril.  She needed us, and they somehow understood that no matter what else we had going on, none of it was more important than giving what we could of ourselves to support her.   This is not to say that there weren’t moments of grief for what was lost in the transition, but they never questioned why it must be so.

The lesson, I hope, is one about rising to the occasion.  About doing what needs to be done, doing what is right, even though it may be uncomfortable. About being human.  This lesson, of course, continued, evolved and grew exponentially as the next three years passed.  During this time, we rode wave after wave of change and emotion.  Excitement as we forged our new lives.  Fear as we faced the unknown.  Contentment as we breathed in the beauty and peace of our new environment at the foot of the Rockies.  Hope when there was improvement in Mom’s condition, and bitter disappointment when there was a setback.  Determination as we endeavored to experience life fully with Mom every day, and in turn, enriched our souls.

My amazing children stepped up to the plate big time.  They rode the waves.  There were tears, of course, and sometimes anger and acting out (and that wasn’t just me).  But they bravely faced the reality of what was coming with incredible strength.  One of these days, I will tell you all about just how hard things got at the end, but let me assure you, my kids were amazing.  From small gestures to powerful shows of support, I could fill post after post with stories about how amazing they were.

But, back to the lessons.  I hope what they really learned from all of this is that there is value in things that are really hard.  Life doesn’t have to be easy and it can still be good.  Maybe it’s not even supposed to be easy.  We discovered marvelous things through the struggle, and learned how to feel the wonder of life.

I think that last part is something that they had a hand in teaching me.  And we are still learning, of course.

 

 

 

 

Making Room

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Wow, this is not the blog I thought I would be writing.

I am a midwife.  I read all of the natural birth and attachment parenting blogs, and I write for birth related publications on occasion.  I have thought for quite some time about how on earth I would write a birth blog that was new and fresh in the sea of fabulous and powerful birth blogs.

Instead, here I am, writing my blog, not as a midwife or a mom, but as a daughter.  And it’s not about birth at all – it’s about death.

Several times every month, I am privileged to touch life as it emerges into this world, surely the most glorious moment.  But as my family and I navigated our three-year journey with my mother after her diagnosis of breast cancer, culminating in the inevitable end of her life, I discovered the beauty in moving through this most acute of human challenges.

This is a big one for me, and I’m sure it is for you too.  Death is the big scary thing.  Losing my mother in her fifties wasn’t even on my radar when I was living in Phoenix a little more than three and a half years ago, working in an insanely busy practice, and raising three kids.   Around Thanksgiving, Mom called me from her home in a Denver suburb to tell me about some pain she had been having in her breast (for quite a while, as it turned out – we’ll talk more about how important body awareness and self-care is in a future post).  She believed she had breast cancer because when she finally worked up the nerve to do a breast self-exam, she could see that her left nipple was severely inverted, and her breast was red, hard and sore.  This news was alarming to me as a health care provider, as what she was describing sounded like a vicious, fast-moving form of breast cancer called inflammatory breast cancer.  When I flew in to Denver in mid-December to meet with her oncologist, this suspicion was confirmed.  She was diagnosed at stage 4; the cancer had filled her entire left breast, her sternum, several ribs and vertebrae, and had spread to adjacent lymph nodes.

So, that’s the scary beginning of the story, but as this blog unfolds, I am going to tell you about how this piece of horrible news changed our lives in some incredible ways.  For example, even though my relationship with my mom had been strained in the previous years, my trip to meet with Mom’s doctors led me to make the crazy suggestion to my husband upon my return that we move to Denver to take care of her.  And because this disease was so aggressive, we had to leave right then.  And we did.  If you can believe it, we packed up our home in Phoenix over the next two weeks, and I made arrangements with my business partner to start getting my practice covered.   My husband, myself, our three children, our two dogs, two tortoises and our moving truck pulled into my mom’s driveway on January 1st, ready to begin the fight.

My mom’s name was Marsi, by the way, and she was a beautiful, loving, youthful woman.  I hope you stick with me as I tell you about her and all that we learned about how to do this awful dying stuff.

I think the biggest thing we found out is that it’s not so bad if you don’t have to do it alone.

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