Tobacco Stains and the Snow Plow

I decided not to go that morning. I decided not to go to see her and she died.

Because I did not go see her? Maybe. Because the survived ovarian cancer, survived breast cancer, emphysema, past fall down the stairs thanks to her drunken ex-husband culminated and said “Your coming with us now”? Likely.

Since I was born, she was there. My mom brought her home after she visited her in the nursing home and found out they were not treating her right. My grandmother. She was like another child- unable to cook, run errands, or do algebra. Her and her ex got drunk one night and he pushed her down the stairs and he caused brain damage. I never met him, but oh, oh how I hate him for that.

And also, in a weird way, I am grateful. Otherwise, I never would have gotten to grow up with a grandmother who was my equal but could remember the wars. Could remember the depression. So many stories

She was always kind, always smiling. Always smoking too. I still wake up sometimes, 10 years after her death and 15 since I have lived in the same house, smelling her Benson and Hedges Menthols. And I hug my pillow and I wish, so terribly, that her wrinkled, tan, calloused and tobacco stained hands would hug me like she always used to. Would hold me while I cried, like she used to when I would find my mother on the couch, passed out with tequila spilled on the carpet.

I was living on my own, going to college and working and living, when my father called and invited me over for dinner. My grandma seemed off that night, sad somehow. I hugged her and she told me she loved me.

Then she told me to remember that I can fly away in my dreams.

And I knew. I knew she was going to die. She used to tell me that same phrase when I would cry and sob in her arms, clutching her shoulders, sobbing into her flat double mastectomy-ied chest, because even as a child I realized what my mother was doing to herself and I wanted to run away.

And I left. And that night it snowed. And I called my Dad early and said I would not be able to make it to feed the horses because the road had not been plowed yet, and would he mind walking out back to do it this morning?

An hour later he called back, as I was settling in to study, and told me my grandmother had died last night.

And I shattered, there amongst the piles of papers, my laptop, the wet boots from my trek to the buried car that morning. I shattered.

When my mother and I drove to the ocean to spread her ashes, I could not. I could not touch the ceramic jar. The cold, dead jar. The cancer. And I fell to my knees on the wet sand.

And I was five again, wishing I could run away.

Then I smelled her cigarettes, and my head filled with memories of her hands- making clay snakes with me, frosting cakes, giving me her veggies because she hated green things…

And I wished her sweet dreams. And my mom, my mom who has been through so much, let her mother’s ashes fly away.

And I imagined that she was up in Heaven, smoking her favorite cigarette and eating cake and patting some child on the head, comforting them as she used to comfort me.

************
Inspired by this from Her Bad Mother:

This post was inspired by a discussion that was shared between me and some very good friends – Lindsay, Loralee, Julie and Devra – at Mom 2.0. We curled up on the floor of the bedroom of the Four Season’s Presidential Suite during the CheeseBurgHer party and talked spirituality and faith, grief and loss, prayer and meditation and all variety of confused and confusing things. And then Lindsay decided that maybe we should explore some these questions (like the one I’m struggling with above, talking to kids about death) together, on our blogs. So we are. You’re welcome to join in. Leave me a link if you do. Or just speak your piece in the comments. Talking, maybe, will bring enlightenment. Or maybe more confusion. Either/or.

So: how do you talk to your children about death? Do you talk to your children about death? If they ask the hard questions, how do you/will you answer? Or do you, will you, like me, seek their answers, and look for comfort there?

My moment

I am going on a new pill next week. Getting off some others. It's kind of like going on a plane- you know that they hardly ever crash, but somewhere in your lizard brain you worry that the "hardly ever" will become "today" and you will go down in a hot mess of a crash.

In the meantime I have to wean off the old pill. And I am not sure what caused the moment of clarity for me, but I am going to say that it was due to me really, really paying attention to my body and thoughts this week.

I want an apology. From my parents. Thats all- three words "I am sorry".

Most of you will smile to yourselves and think "oh, she is so young, she has so much to learn about the world" Yeah? Try raising your sister, placating your father by holding flashlights while working on stupid cars in a freezing garage, and prying the bottle out of mommy's hand at night, then tell me I need to grow up. My sister is graduating medical school this year, so I guess I did alright there.

What I have NEVER gotten was an apology. Not for my mom busting my nose, not for...so much. So very, very much.

So while I am still to chicken shit to demand it from them...thats what I want. That's the only thing I want from them. Instead I will get a care package for my birthday and Christmas...and while I pretend that those presents carry a hint of apology...well I can only pretend for so long.

It is hard, not feeling close to your parents. It's even harder to explain to people that I would rather be just about anywhere else then in a room with both of them.

Maybe I should change this website to "How I hate my parents" with how much I am writing about them lately. Stick with me reader, if anyone is reading. I promise that soon, oh so soon, I will be on a new pill and I am sure the hilarity will ensue

Thanks Mom and Dad, couldn't have done it without y'all

I don’t like my parents.

Not in the teenage they just took away my new moon poster kind of way. I really don’t like them. Sometimes I find it very hard to speak to them on the phone, and I never, ever want to take my vacation to visit them.

My mom is a recovering alcoholic. She stopped drinking right after I turned 16. Why you ask? Well, I had to wrestle her to the ground one night when she was plastered and wanted more smokes. She busted my nose with her head. I moved out the next day. I guess she decided it was time to start being a sober mommy after that, she has not drank ethanol since. She smoked and drank while pregnant with my sister and I, and I think that’s where my anger with her began.

My dad…where do I start? He is the reason I have to take pills to keep my brain chemicals in check. He is the reason that I cannot sit still while at home and enjoy a movie or silence without feeling guilty that I am not doing something productive. He is the reason that even when I do really good at something, all I hear is his voice in my head well, do better next time.

Hate did not begin to describe how I felt about them in my early twenties. Counseling helped me bring it to hate. Pills helped me not cry about it all the time. Anti-anxiety meds helped me stop having night terrors about the night my mom took my sister and I to our first movie (age 6 and 7), got wasted at the bar next to the movie theater, and got in a crash with us.

No matter what a counselor says or how many pills I take I cannot find it within myself to forgive them. I am confident the reason that I cannot forgive them is because I don’t want them off the hook. I know I need to lay it out there, everything, let them know how I feel. But I just see no point.

My dad the workaholic manic depressive, my mom the alcoholic unhappy housewife that gave up being a hippie for kids. Their marriage is a joke to me really. Dad yells at mom all the time, mom goes into la-la land and no one every talks about, well, anything. So I don’t call.

I called this past Thanksgiving. Hubs, great man that he is, has not met my parents so he is ignorant. I cannot blame him for chastising me for not wanting to call them. I mean, his parents are normal Southern people. So I call, with him right there to hear the version 2.0 of Hell that is a phone call with them.

I tell them that I am pursuing the dream that I was convinced out of in high school (long story, another post) and changing my major to English and becoming a teacher, eventually a professor. So they said “well, that’s ok we suppose Housewife, we could never see you being a nurse, so we are glad you came around”. Laughter. Evil-flying-monkeys-from-wizard-of-Oz laughter. I held on to the call, because a part of me was hoping that it would be different. Oh no, not this year kids.

Grandma Jane is bedridden and childlike. They don’t think she will make it much longer. Well, thankssomuch for that happy bit of news on THANKSGIVING. So glad I made this call. Yeah, and so you should try to get to California before she goes, she had asked about you awhile ago, we told her you were busy…

I’m sorry, you did WHAT?! (I think I shot a lightning bolt out of my eye into the dashboard of the car, I can't remember) On what planet do you tell a dying woman that her granddaughter (not by blood, again, another long story) that said granddaughter is to busy to come see you. Nice. Really niiiiiice.

Hanging up, I looked over at Hubs (I let him listen via speaker since he wanted this phone call to happen so much) and I give him the “are you fucking happy now?” look. Silence.

“See honey, don’t you feel better now that you called?”

That’s when I turned into a raging demon gorilla and beat him into the dashboard of his Honda.

When all you want is to run away

I think maybe I go through a cycle once every three or four years, where I just decide to act like a total bitch, get really depressed, and actively try to push everyone out of my life. I am not sure why the hell I am doing it, but three years ago I physically moved from my friends, and now, this past month, I feel trapped. Trapped in my relationships, my job, school, my debt. Completely trapped. I flip out with the littlest things, and other people getting treated badly puts me into murder mode. WTF is wrong with me?

As a kid, I did it to my parents, friends, everyone. I was a total loner, and liked it. I really do wish that I could just be alone on a mountaintop with my dog and my cat. I would have to have power…I would totally go solar. I need the internet. Face to face communication…I just don’t think I like it. Only when I am drunk. But sometimes I want to drink alone, just so I don’t feel so sad. I get to be numb. That is why alcohol is so dangerous to me…and why I have to actively try to not drink but one or two glasses a week.

My boyfriend is amazing. I in no way deserve him. Yet he is in the list of people I wish would just go away. Wrong me somehow so that I would have an excuse to get them out of my life. I think…I think I have a mental issue. I am on anti-depressants, but I think I might need something else. Anti-anxiety maybe. I have panic attacks, I just hide them from people- chest pain, the feeling of having an elephant on my chest, trouble breathing, graying out of vision…the whole bit. There is nothing medically wrong, so it’s a panic attack. Wonderful, no?

Anyway…I just want to run away. And it’s not like I have problems- I love my boyfriend, I am not in trouble with the law, and I am not about to get fired or anything….I dunno, maybe I just need to fight through it without pushing everyone out of my life.

My brain has been on overdrive lately. I am gearing up for the fall semester (including an all day chem. Class), I have a family situation where my closest relative is no longer speaking to me, and I recently opened my house to my best friend of 10 years because she got laid off. It has been a trying time for hubs and I.

I have had many a sleepless night, trying to figure out how to juggle everything, and frankly, I can’t. Either hubs or myself has to get a second job, preferably both of us. Well, we don’t have to, but if we want to stop scraping by, then yeah, we gotta. The relative, we will call them Skippy, well there is nothing I can do about it. I put my position on the situation out there, and there was a major disagreement. BAM sibling outta my life. Live and learn.

Now for the best friend.Salty has been my friend for 10 years, and when I was younger it was an even give and take. We both went out, painted the town red, smoked a lot of pot, so on. Well, I moved many states away and grew up. A lot. Had a lot of bad chit happen and my shit got smacked into place. Salty, prettier, more buxom, and more social than I, got an ever wider circle of friends, ex-boyfriends, blah blah. Then, she lost her job. Then, her wonderful father defaulted on the house. So Salty found herself without a job, in a bad market, and without a home. So, being the kind, bleeding heart person I really am on the inside (to my constant chagrin), I opened up our guest room to her. She found a job within three days (Bitch, I have been looking for almost a year and NOTHING). The job pays crap, but she is sticking to it cause “it makes her happy.” WTF?! This is not magic never-never land with pixie dust and magic elves that sweep away credit card debt.

It was stupid of me to let her move in. She is stressing me out. I am not supporting her financially, except not asking for rent (she cleans the house, nice perk), but she is just so…inefficient. With anything- be it getting ready in the morning, to cleaning, to looking things up using google. I mean, I know everyone has their ways and patterns. Everyone is different. But three hours to get ready and your not applying makeup? Being late all the time b/c you forget? I cannot fathom it.
See Internet? All this has me so out of it that I lost the point of this entry. Oh, right, overdrive. I feel like that damn cat hanging on the rope…and if one more person tells me to “keep hanging in there” I might have to add murder charges to my list of things to stress about.

No More Cherry for me

Well, I started a blog. No one will read it, and that's ok. It's probably going to be full of dry humor and really jaded point of views anyway. So my blog cherry has been popped. Good for me. Now on to bigger things, like, makeup or the latest cosmo magazine...

Just kidding. Seriously. I am not that kind of girl. I do not read magazines, nor do I wear girly clothes or focus on makeup. To the hubs pleasure I detest diamonds and cut flowers. Lucky him. Heh.

Trust me, I will get into it. For now, let's just start with the basics. I am in a committed relationship with a great man. I want children, don't have any yet. I work in a corporate world, blech. I am in nursing school, which is my dream. I will blog about my family, but not much. I am not to close with my family, so you will not hear much about them.

Mostly I will delight you with my wit and intellectual prowess...heh. More like I will make you feel better about your life when you compare it to mine, how is that?!

Signing off now, dear Internet...here is to my hope for fame in the blogging world