big breath.
This week seven years ago, according to my old daily happenings ramble blog which I look at so very rarely, my relationship with my first girlfriend Christine had just ended. The week before, I had moved out of my dad's house and back in with my mom, who I hadn't lived with in something like nine years. I sheltered myself in Mom's den, with the big screen TV and the computer and the big, big couch. There's a blue dent in the wall behind the bed in my room where I threw Mom's blue cell phone one day because I was so mad after talking to Christine. Mom didn't like her. Gloria made a lot of fun of her (we still have the one joke that lives on, how she used the word "derived" really strangely. "Where did you derive that idea?"). My diaryland entries from that summer talk about "extreme lonliness" and then peter off into the fall, where I went back to college for sophomore year. I remember Mom getting me everything I needed for the year, because I left a lot of stuff at Dad's since I only wanted to grab what I could carry in my hands. She got me my white Mac iBook laptop, a bunch of wires and things I needed, a discman, $300 in spending money and I may have picked up some clothes too. She was big on that. My big thing was walking back down Bolyston street from Radio Shack back to my dorm swearing up and down that I would pay her back for everything, feeling like I had to pay her back. She said no, that was silly, I didn't owe her anything.
I went back to my dad's house on Monday for the first time in seven years. I wanted to pick up some of my memories, distract myself a little bit. I landed in Philly Monday morning, Liz got me from the airport and took me to South Street, where I relived a lot of easy stuff about hanging out, went to the place I had my first "gig" (one of the only places still up from 11 years ago -- in fact they were celebrating their 11th anniversary that day), had Lorenzo's pizza, tried to go to the place I had my hair cut for 15 years or so by the same woman (they were closed), took a phone call or two and just remembered easy things for awhile. After that I ran some personal errands and then went to my dad's with Liz, where I was overcome by a treasure trove of my youth -- diaries from high school, pictures of my trip from Israel (which turned out to be exactly eight years ago that week), stuff from Akiba, my old private Jewish middle/high school before I transferred to public, letters to friends from the one dreadful (but funny) summer I went to Jewish sleepover camp in the Poconos, Letters to Cleo posters on the walls (remind me to tell that to Kay and Mike when I get back) -- like Dad said, it was a shrine. It was cleaned up a bit but everything was essentially where I left it. I talked to Dad for a little while in the old hallway, grabbed my diaries which were the main thing I thought to pick up and some pictures, and headed over to Cottage Street in Northeast Philly. Mom's house.
My mom passed away on Sunday morning, July 13, 2008. For the last year, she'd been struggling with lung cancer. I came in very often for someone who lived on the other side of the country and doesn't get sick days or health benefits -- she was always worried about that and kept asking when they were gonna give me the position for real (they still haven't, but I'm coming to terms with it. Meaning I'm always on the lookout for a new job, though I'm not dissatisfied now). Friday she called me relaying the hardest thing I think she ever had to say to me, that the doctors said she was at the end of her life. I was arguing with her after she told me I had to come in for awhile, but after she said that I stopped, said "I love you, Mom," and otherwise didn't know what to say. The doctor's appointment she had set up for the both of us to go to was this Thursday the 17th, and I was going to go over a bunch of trials my friend's mom, who has been a cancer expert for 15 years, had sent me. I called her back and did something I never did -- I left her a message, because it was hard to get a hold of her. I said I was sorry for arguing earlier, I was just scared. That work was letting me work from Philly as long as I needed to and I was going to come in earlier, it would be okay, we'd get through it. She called back and said it was a nice message. She was a little quieter than usual on Saturday, I said how are you? She said still terrible, in pain. I said can you hold on til Monday? She said yeah. The radiation was on Monday, and that would help with the pain, but it was just a band-aid. I was coming to terms with the fact that my mom was dying and it would probably be something like two months. I had no idea it wouldn't even be two days. I don't think she knew either, because I know she would have talked to me more. And damn straight I would have talked to her until my body forced me to shut down.
I'm with my brother, his wife and three kids in the Adirondacks in upstate New York. We got in right around dinner time. He was the first person to calm me down significantly, then Gloria when she got in yesterday a few hours after my mom's service. On a moment's notice the seats at Goldstein's Funeral Home were filled with my mom's friends and coworkers who hadn't seen her in years. It was a short, simple service. There was no body, and that made it so much easier -- Mom was easy, she wanted things to be easy and convenient as possible (which is weird considering I get to do all this mourning by a beautiful lake surrounded by family the very next day). Eric spoke, then Mom's longtime, close and amazing friend Barbara, then me. Eric said Mom was ditzy but you couldn't find anyone to say anything bad about her, ever. Barbara said she was always apologizing for everyone and everything. I got up there and proudly proclaimed that even when she was alive, I told my mother every day she was the most amazing mother on Earth, that she was my best friend, she was beautiful and I loved her. And how lucky I was to have her. That I'd never met anyone more loving, generous, appreciative. That she had a heart of gold. That all my friends loved her, how she had adopted Gloria. How I'd say, "I love you Mom," she'd say "I love you more," I'd say "I love you most" and she would say "Impossible!" And for people to please never forget her, because I couldn't.
I have so, so many comforts, and so many of them are blessings directly from my mom. She really was the most easygoing person of all -- she was a master of distraction and didn't want to talk about things that were hard. She could change a subject better than any person I think I'll ever know. I feel almost no guilt (I know she wouldn't want me to but there's some -- though I'm getting over it) and I definitely feel no regrets about the life and time we spent together. I appreciated the hell out of that woman. I would lay awake at night and think wow, I have the greatest mom I could ever ask for -- she loves my brains out, she's my biggest cheerleader, she's my best friend I can talk to about anything. And oh my God, oh my God, I can't tell you how impossible, how absurd, how unthinkable this all is. My brain keeps going back to her last days, our last moments, and Mom's telling me to get that stuff out of my head. I know the disbelief stage will be ending relatively soon and I can't even fathom anything from here on out, but I know that it's going to be hard, hard, hard. And that I will have a hole here, an ache that will be there for the rest of my life on Earth.
But Mom's easygoing attitude is one of my biggest weapons. She hated the pain and suffering she had at the end of her life and she hated, hated to see me cry. So I'm hopeful that I can quickly skip to the end of a lot of this, do not pass go and just go straight to missing the biggest heart I know. This world is so much emptier without her in it. But I have so much of her in me that it's a joy for me when I hear it from other people, and when I can make other people feel at ease and happy. That is direct from her, a "direct message from Myra" as Ray, her longtime good friend and roommate, would say.
My heart hurts, it hurts it hurts it hurts. I'm so, so glad she's not in pain anymore, that the pain wasn't very long at all, that we had so much good time this past year and that we had such an amazing relationship. I'm still such a lucky person for having my mom, such a wonderful, whimisical, loving soul, an amazingly unique person that does nothing but bring the biggest smile to my face when I think of her. There will never be another Myra.
I love you most.
Melissa