Where I am now...

I am still here and I'm working through the cloud of sadness. This makes it sound like I'm walking around with a grim expression on my face, on the verge of tears all the time. I'm not...in fact I laugh, and I socialize, and I create, and I cook, and all those normal things. It just takes a bit more energy to do every little thing, and that wears me out by the end of the day.

I had made a resolution to start going back to the gym in September. It has been so dreadfully hot here and I was exhausted, and there was yard work. I found a lot of comfort sitting stupid in front of the TV. Having new episodes of Burn Notice and Project Runway available made it that much more comfortable.

I started following The Free Motion Quilting Project blog by Leah Day and I read her series of posts on her sinkhole quilt. I am not alone in depression and a difficult childhood. This I know already...but I found it inspirational and courageous. I appreciated that she shared her issues with the world. Made me want to write a bit today.

Music. It seems odd to me that music would, given my upbringing because I was not raised by musicians. I was not taught to view life through music. Somehow it grew in me. Becoming a singer probably accelerated the process - the clarinet speaks for me in one way, but it's so personal to me when I use the physical instrument.

This past week I purchased The List, a collection of classic heritage music by Rosanne Cash. When she was 18, her father, Johnny Cash, gave her a list of 100 songs that he considered to be essential literature for any American songwriter or musician. It is a collection of country, rhythm and blues, Appalachian, folk, gospel and Southern Blues. She chose 12 songs from this list for the album. She interpreted them anew.

Right now, I am taken by the second track, "Motherless Children." Sure, the connection is obvious. The phrasing is simple, but the words are profound in their simplicity and they resonate with me.

I keep thinking I should write a resource list for the grieving with all I'm learning.

Grieving takes energy

This grieving is so strange. I am exhausted and I have little energy to blog. You'd think blogging just flows naturally as life goes on and you find things to write about.

But it doesn't.

Guilt, self criticism. I should blog more. I haven't written on rikrax, my project blog, in weeks. I have been sewing, but I can't get the energy to take a picture and post it. I guess it's the grieving, the depression, the lack of interest, the feeling of exhaustion at the end of the day.

And this morning, I completely forgot a rehearsal. I just didn't show up...they called and looked for me and I was fresh out of the shower not ready to drop everything and rush to join them. I just told them I wouldn't be there. It's terrible. I take my music very seriously and I don't just skip rehearsals. More guilt.  I have let them down.

I'm trying to be patient with myself, though. They say you're supposed to be scattered and tired early on in mourning a big loss. "Early on," they say, is the first 3 months. It has been seven and a half weeks since Mom died, and to me, it feels like it's been a long time. I should be "back to normal," I think. But by the calendar, I'm barely half way in the first stage of the grief timeline.

It seems like I should be over it by now. Apparently I'm not.

A day of rest

I took Friday (yesterday) off on a whim. This grieving has been exhausting, even though I am not wailing, crying, or feeling frighteningly unstable. Really, I'm OK, but it is taking a bit more emotional energy to get through the day. That's why I wanted a day off.

It was nice. I went to a church-based rummage sale and serendipitously ran into an acquaintance there. It was a pleasant interaction...and I found some nifty little things at the rummage sale to take home. One of them was a book on terrariums - apparently terrariums are "in" again. The book was from 1973, but it still applies.  Anyway, since I drove all the way to the sale, I felt I ought to help the church out a bit and buy a few things.

Then I went shopping at the mall. I don't go to the mall very often and it was pleasant to go again. I was reminded how nice it is to have all the shops right in one place, and not to have to get in and out of a hot car in between.

Next, I picked up my serger from the Bernina shop.  I had purchased my Bernette 334DS at an estate sale, missing a few parts, and I wanted to have it serviced to make sure it is in proper working order. It's in good shape, and I got the parts I needed. Now all I need is to learn how to use it. Fortunately, they have a teacher!

Then I stopped by Target. I had been eyeing a small shelf unit for my sewing room which happened to be on sale this week. I picked up a number of other things we needed.

By the time dear husband came home from work, I had planned a good dinner. I had the time to make something good - I made some stuffed zucchini with fried couscous cakes (something like pancakes) on the side. The meal came out delicious.  Both recipes were from Martha Stewart's Everyday Food magazine. I recently got a free copy of that magazine, and I'm coming to like it.

In the evening, I worked on my hexagon quilt and one of Mom's cross stitch projects, while watching Burn Notice, one of my current favorite shows. I have a huge crush on Michael Westen, the main character. Sure, actor Jeffery Donovan is easy on the eyes, but really, it's Michael that I pine for. (Since he's fictional, this crush is safe.) This season he has slightly longer hair that looks just so sexy...oh my, he just makes my heart aflutter.

In all it was a nurturing day, just what I needed.

What is it like to grieve?

Grieving is a personal process. We all have our own paths through the darkness of grieving when we lose someone we love. I can only talk about my own process, which I will do here, a little. I don't want to wallow in self-pity, but I do want to work through what I need to work through.

I do not feel like there was anything major unresolved between my mother and me. We had come to a comfortable place in the last 10 years or so, able to respect each others differences but still enjoy each other. There are some things I would have liked to ask her, but it's OK that I did not. Knowing the answer would not change who I am.

Still, there are many things that make me sad about her dying. In my naturally selfish way, they are mostly about me.

• I will miss the presents she gave me. It's not the presents themselves that I will miss, it's that she knew me well and thought about me and thought about things I would like. She was very personal in this way. It helped fulfill my need to be known.  My husband does not understand how much presents mean to me....again, not for the present itself, but for the intention and thought put into them. I try to do this for my friends and family. It takes effort...that's why I value it.
• I will miss hearing "Hi Laur!" on the answering machine. I spoke with her about every week. Mostly we talked about nothing in particular - what's going on in her life, my stories from work, the weather, cooking, crafting, gardening, blah blah blah. I don't have another friend I talk with on the phone regularly. Mostly I email, now.
• I will miss visiting her. I will miss how she would cook special things for us when we came to visit. She found vegetarian recipes to try that she saved for when we came.
• I will miss her letters and her packets of clipped coupons. She cut coupons from her newspaper inserts and mailed them to me. There was a time when those coupons really helped, but I haven't needed them for years. I told her she didn't need to cut them any more, but she kept on. It was another way she told me she cared, and I continued to accept that.
• I will miss buying things for her. She also loved to receive stuff. She kept a lot of stuff, but she also did know the value of being thought of. 
• I will miss being connected to the larger family. She was our kin-keeper. I will probably lose touch with everyone on her side of the family ...well, on second thought, maybe not. I have some kin-keeping tendencies. 

According to the books, I can expect about 2 more months of being in the throes of grief. I feel much more stable than the first two weeks. I guess the shock is worn off.

I don't know what is to come, what more I have to deal with.

Right now, I feel like the world is a much more lonely place for me.

Emerging from the pit

I'm posting from my parents home a few hours before I start my trip home. This was a difficult week - yeh, that's an understatement.

• Quick travel plans
• Putting together a memorial service and a reception
• Stress, inability to sleep
• Too hot, too cold in the hotel room
• No appetite
• Sorting through Mom's things
• Taking things to charities for donation
• Brother's birthday
• Bad summer storms
• Power outage
• Getting locked out of the house and how we resolved that (breaking a window, yay)
• Not being able to ship my stuff home
• Worry that my flight may get delayed or canceled
• Worry how the next few months will be

But...good things too. 

• Husband supporting me in amazing ways
• Pretty much all the relatives coming to the service.
• Making it through the service and my part of the service.
• Immediate family supporting each others' decisions.
• Support from my church

Yes, it could have been a lot worse. It could get a lot worse, still, but so far so good.

After cleaning out Mom's house, I have the urge to clean out my own house. All kinds of stuff is tucked away in boxes and drawers and closets, and it would be nice to be a little lighter. I don't know when I'll be ready to work on my quilting and crafting again.

Yet, the house is not done. Some of us need to come back and sort through the china cabinet, storage closets, and the attic. I don't know when I'll come back. I want to be home. 

My Mom Died Today

I found out my Mom died yesterday.

I don't know anything what to do. I live about 1000 miles away, I can't get there. No one I've talked to knows anything - exactly how she died, what she died of, what we will do, if they need me.

I feel like I should be doing something or carrying on; but I'm kind of numb right now. Writing on a blog is kinda the best I can do. I started writing yesterday and finished up early this morning.

Here's the story: and I'm sure I'll tell it a hundred times in the next few weeks. Mom had multiple health problems, and to some extent, we knew she probably didn't have a lot of time left. Personally, I thought it would be a little more drawn out with multiple trips to the hospital and lots of pain.  Mom was 72.

Last night, my brother called, alarmed and worried because he had called (or she had - I'm not sure) and she didn't sound right. She sounded upset. She only talked for a few minutes - and Mom could talk on the phone for hours, usually about nothing. He asked me to call her. I did, and she picked up the phone pretty quickly. She sounded a little off, but there were several logical reasons she could sound this way.

The next day (this morning), she fell and Dad couldn't get her up. They called EMS to help and they got her back up. She did not go to the hospital then, since the fall was minor - Dad says she slid out of a chair.

The day proceeded as normal, according to Dad. She went to take her afternoon nap, which was her habit. When Dad went to wake her up, she didn't wake up. Dad called 911, but it was really too late.

I spoke with Dad later and I guess he's hanging in there as well as possible.

I'm scared. I'm worried. I don't know what it's going to be like without having Mom to talk on the phone to. She was the central figure of our family. Now who will keep the kin?

No, actually I do know how it will be. It's going to be sad and lonely and I'm going to have a big hole in my heart for a long while.

Community Garden - Weekly Update

My plot in the Overland Park Community Garden is planted!  Now we need a little help from God, a little tending from me, and we'll have a nice harvest come August or September.

The garden didn't work out quite as I had planned. It's late in the season here for planting and it was hard to find transplants for the veggies I wanted to grow.  So, I ended up planting:

• 2 green bell peppers
• 2 jalapeno peppers
• 4 sweet banana peppers
• 4 Italian parsley
• 4 green beans (blue lake, bush variety)
• 2 rows of mustard greens
• 4 green summer squash, called Cocozelle (very similar to zucchini)

I put in seeds for the mustard greens and squash. Hopefully they will grow fast and vigorously enough to make up for the lack of starter plants.

Everything went in on June 4, yesterday.

The mustard greens were a last minute substitution for a row of green beans. I could only find 2 pots with nice looking bush bean plants and each of those pots had 2 plants in them. I separated the two plants to make a row.  The greens are from seeds given to me by a friend who is Hmong. She called them "Hmong Mustard Greens." I don't know exactly what variety they are, but I planted some last year and they were very good.

I chose a variety of peppers because I could not find many green bell peppers. It'll be fun to see if I get some banana peppers. I haven't tried them yet.

Additionally, the plot turned out to be slightly larger than 10 feet long. I could fit in six rows, altogether.

The cocozelle squash was a substitution for official zucchini, mainly because it takes only 45 days to harvest, compared to the black beauty zucchini seeds I found at 50 days (or so). Every day counts when you are starting so late!! 

(By the way, I included the links so you could see what the plants look like. I don't have any relationship with these seed/plant vendors - I neither endorse or denounce them and I do not receive any compensation for linking to them.)