Blog a la Cart

IV

Hi, Mom.

This week’s episode of “The Longest Shortest Time” shared the story of a woman mothering without a mother. And, fuck, I stood frozen in the kitchen listening with my mouth agape (so much for cooking dinner while casually listening to my favorite podcasts). Moment after moment of this woman’s story found me nodding ardently with resonance and affirmation.

I’m not my biggest cheerleader, and I’m getting emotional because I think there is something about a mother that is your cheerleader. When my mom died, I felt so acutely like my personal cheerleader on the sidelines of my life is gone.

This thought runs through my head almost daily. I am forever without the person who loved me and championed me best in this life. And man, that never won’t suck.

143 Your Ashley

II

Hi, Mom.

Tonight, Courtland wailed for you. She wanted her Momar’s squishy hugs, and James and I were not sufficient. You were always her biggest champion, and even at the age of four, she could sense that. I hate knowing how much richer her life could be were you still with us.

While Courtland sobbed, Sunny mournfully whispered, “I wish Momar had taken care of herself as well as she took care of all of us.”

And in my angriest moments of grief, those very thoughts creep into my head. Why didn’t you love yourself as much as we all loved you? Why didn’t you care for your own health (physical, mental, emotional) in all the ways you supported and encouraged us to do? Why didn’t you want to take care of yourself enough to be around for all of us that need you so much?

I realize that even with the most vigilant self-care your body could have given out, suddenly, unexpectedly, in the way that it did. But I hate that I wonder. I hate that I resent that wonder, that possibility that this didn’t have to be. Had you just exercised more. Spent time with a therapist. Eaten less sweets and more leafy greens. Taken care of you, in mind, body, spirit.

It does me no good, but memories of standing in an ER in Albany, clutching your ashen hand, shaking with adrenaline and fear, pleading with you, race through my nightmares.

I need you to take care of yourself. I need you. I can’t have this happen again. We all need you.

That moment, less than three years before your death. That moment when death came so near, but I stopped it. I thought that would be the moment when you’d finally focus on you. Your health. Your happiness. And yet, I couldn’t stop death. I never could, I just never expected it to haunt us so soon after its first approach.

As a friend said in the aftermath of your death, “This wasn’t inevitable, but it wasn’t unforeseeable.” And that very fact shakes my core. Even your seven year old grandchild can sense it.

I’m angry that I couldn’t stop death. I’m angry that I have to exist in a world without you. Forever a world without you. And that these children of mine will never fully understand what a vibrant, rich world it was to have you in it. What it meant to be loved by their Momar.

I miss you so damn much.
143 Your Ashley

I

Hi, Mom.

Your grandson is seven months old as of last Friday, and he is all sweetness. I wish you could see how much I absolutely adore this boy of mine. He is such light. Such joy. You’d be so enchanted with him. I can picture you crooning, “Oh you beguiling little thing,” as he’d gaze at you with those big blue eyes, downy chick blonde hair and opened mouthed grin.

Just yesterday, he learned to clap. He is one of the happiest, smiliest babes I’ve ever encountered, and his face positively exploded with joy when he figured out how to repeatedly slap palm to palm as his sisters sang round after round of “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands!”

Boy did he know it!

He’s going through some serious sleep regression thanks to runny noses, and coughs, and teething, and a deep interest in being vertical. I know you’d stress and worry that he is showing absolutely zero interest in crawling. Tummy time elicits screams of protest from an otherwise carefree babe, whereas he will stand for what feels like hours with utter pride and delight on his feet. Stick a mirror in front of him, and he could entertain himself all day. The bouncer is a huge hit as a result. His daycare teachers say that he is giving their arms quite a workout, as he so prefers to be held standing upright than down on his tummy. I’m not too concerned about the lack of crawling, but I can picture you worrying this fact over and over with me on the phone. “It’s important they crawl first! It’s a critical developmental milestone!”

As I navigate life on only two-three hour blocks of sleep before interruption, I wish I could call you to commiserate. You were always so good about letting me bitch and moan and whine, and pepping me up to take on another day. I’ll never forget sitting in a pool of tears in my bathroom in LA, while Addison screamed in my arms, with you, on the other end of the line, gently reminding me, “It feels like forever, sweetie. But it’s not. This will only last a short while. You can do it. You’re a wonderful mother.”

When I find myself at my wits end at three o’clock in the morning with a fussy baby in my arms, I call those words to mind, the gentleness and wisdom of your voice, and it helps me find calm.

“This will only last a short while.”

How painfully true.

You would be so taken with this boy. And while writing to you will never be sufficient, I’ve realized it brings to mind what is most pressing, most true, most salient because what comes flooding out of me is what I so wish I could share with you. Moments like the splendor of learning to clap.

You’d have been so proud of him, too.

143 Your Ashley

I don’t want to do this anymore.

That’s how I’ve felt about this space since my last post in early July.

I don’t want to do this anymore.

There has been so much. So much change. So much transition. So many moving parts these past six months that, recently, the thought of attempting to capture them here has felt daunting, not therapeutic. Overwhelming, instead of celebratory.

Since I last posted, we’ve found new homes for Penelope Pig and our flock of chickens, as part of a much larger picture to simplify our lives and conflicting demands of time and energy.

We’ve spent a full week of summer vacation on Cape Cod without my mother. It was filled with beach lounging, ocean swimming, bridge jumping, corn on the cob eating, movie watching, sand castle building, sand island playing, and sunset boat cruising. So much time in the water and sun. With family. And there was so much joy and memory making, and yet everything is diminished by her absence. Forever, diminished.

We packed up and sold Cartwheel Farm. A decision not easily made, but solidified when we found buyers in under 72 hours of listing. In the name of simplicity and convenience, we needed to let go of our dear farmette. We had to say goodbye to the place where I buried my sweet Ursa, where I last saw and held my mother, the last home in which she ever knew me living

We weathered a week of homelessness in sending the dogs and girls off to my in-laws, while James, Sanderling and I relied on the hospitality of friends, and mentally prepped for our move into our new home.

We moved into our little village, walking distance to school and work and daycare, and most significantly, loved ones, our support network. Upon filling our 1875 Colonial with all of our worldly possessions, James and the girls boarded a boat to Bermuda with their Bermudian great-grandmother and Sanderling and I flew over and met them island-side. A tropical, gorgeous, breathtaking break from our chaotic reality back home.

Sander became a teething, squawky five month old. Courtland turned into a Kindergarten-ready five year old. We marked six months of life without my mother’s.

And now, I sit here typing with breast pumps attached to my chest as I attempt to physically and mentally and emotionally prepare for Sander’s introduction to daycare tomorrow morning. The first of my children to be sent to full time daycare before age one, and a symbolic demarcation of all that has changed in such a short period of time. From the beginning, he has been my anchor, and the thought of being apart from him for an extended period makes my gut turn with nausea. I’m not sure how to weather a day without him by my side, providing perspective and comfort and presence. It is a necessary step in my grief as we prepare for my return to work in September, but for now, I feel raw and exposed and unsettled. I know that he will be fine, social butterfly that he is. It is me about whom I’m concerned.

Last night, I had my first visceral, ugly, hysterical outburst of grief in months. I screamed and sobbed and moaned, “I don’t want to do this any more. Please, I just don’t want to do this anymore.”

And by that I mean, I don’t want to exist in a world without my mother another day, another second. I want this grief to be over. I want this hurt to stop. I want this world without her to no longer be my reality.

Well, I don’t care about life insurance at the moment, but it actually helped us a lot in spite of everything. My mother always told me that the average costs of life insurance is super low and that one day that would help me. now that she is no longer at last I understand her. I love her from a distance and I respect her for teaching me to lead my life.

The foreverness of it undoes me. Trying to make sense of forever, to wrap my head around that, is so physically devastating that my whole body aches and yearns and mourns. I need my mom. I just need my mom.

I don’t want to do this anymore.

I was called to return to this space thanks to a beautiful, loving email sent by a fellow member of the Dead Parent Club (one of the shittiest clubs to join). It was a reminder that these words can be helpful, not just for me, but for others who are navigating a similar devastating forever.

I may not want to do this anymore, but I can. And I will.

Ballerina Ladybug

This weekend we watched our recent preschool grad dance in her inaugural ballet recital. She, with an array of other 3 and 4 year olds, danced on stage in lady bug costumes and stole the audience’s hearts with the level of adorableness. As I said yesterday, this kid loves to perform. And she, along with her fairy godsister, won the award for “Dance Excellence” in her class. I have a feeling that that just means that she is enthusiastic about dance and follows directions well (she’s only four after all), but it made both the recipient and her mama proud. Here they are pictured together almost exactly three years apart. Age 1 versus age 4.

My dad and sister and my mom’s dearest friend from childhood drove up for the performance, and while my heart ached from my mother’s absence, I was grateful to have this grouping of family together. While it will never be the same without her, we are all trying to celebrate and enjoy one another whenever the opportunity presents, as she would have wanted.

42 Years

My parents would have celebrated their 42nd wedding anniversary today. I find myself so angry and heartbroken that they don’t get that chance, and yet so deeply grateful and humbled by the strong, amazing marriage they shared over the course of my mom’s lifetime. It’s a rare and precious thing to have a relationship like theirs, and I am so fortunate to have been raised and loved by two people who loved one another as fiercely and deeply and truly as they did.

For their 40th wedding anniversary, I compiled a book my mother wrote about her and my dad titled The Mermaid and The Oceanographer. I added photographs from where the story left off, through their life up until that anniversary. I ended it saying, “Here’s to many, many more happy years!” My heart aches every time I re-read those words with the sting of hindsight.

I hope you know by now, no matter where you are, that the way Life sings through us into the whole, wide world is something like magic & you will always be the reason I’m not afraid to love.  – StoryPeople

Happy 42nd Wedding Anniversary, Mom and Dad.

Our Aquamarine

This weekend was Sunny’s end-of-year dance recital. Each dance represented a different jewel, and she was an Aquamarine. It felt like a particularly fitting role given that aquamarine is Sander’s birthstone and that it’s said to be the treasure of mermaids, a creature that I associate so closely with my mother. I wore all of her vintage aquamarine jewelry (it was her grandmother’s, my great-grandmother, and Sunny’s great, great-grandmother), complete with necklace, earrings and ring, to bring a piece of her with me to the performance. It was so strange and sad to watch Sunny dance without my mom’s presence in the audience with us, saddled up next to my father, beaming with grandmotherly joy. I’m so proud of Sunny and how she’s managed all the upheaval and heartbreak of this year. Momar would be so proud of her, too. And I just love these post-performance photos.

84 Months

Dearest Sunny,

Today you are seven. And it is my first time celebrating the day that turned me into a mother without my own. You shared such a special bond with your Momar. You are her namesake and the person who made her a grandmother, the greatest role she ever played.

You asked if Doda could make you a robot Momar for your birthday, and it makes my heartache with both sorrow and gratitude that you loved her equally as much as she adored you. While nothing will ever replace her, you are a living embodiment of so many of her best qualities. That button nose. That gorgeous hair. But more importantly than the physical embodiment, the way you say I LOVE YOU to your family with abandon, just as she did. The way you surprise us with special notes and drawings and gifts, the way she always showered those she loved with affection and over-the-top giving. Your bookwormy nature (you now stay up reading chapter books by the light of a book lamp, and we have to ask you to put the book away to actually get you to go to sleep, you adore late-night reading so much). Momar had a similar predilection. Your disdain for the morning is also a shared personality trait, though that extends to your mother as well. Most notably, your tenderness with and caretaking of your siblings and pets resembles a gentleness with animals and babies that was such a core part of your Momar. How fortunate I am to have a living glimpse of her before me each day in the hearts and bodies of my children.

I am awestruck that I have been your mother for seven years. But yesterday morning, as you held your baby brother in your bed and cooed and kissed and snuggled, I gazed down upon you and beheld a child who has had to grow up so much in just one year. Who has faced the loss of her great-grandfather, and then cherished grandmother, while navigating huge changes and advancements in school, both academically and socially. Not to mention that you’ve had to watch your mother experience immense grief while our whole household shifted into a family of five. With all these upheavals and heartaches, you have become more vulnerable but also far tougher than the little girl who turned six last year. You are very much a seven year old. And I am endlessly proud of your kindness, your intellect, your creativity, and your gentleness with the world around you. As I looked into your eyes yesterday morning, there was such grace, such elegance. You are growing up beautifully my darling, and I mean that well beyond the physical.

I love you, my precious first born. Thank you for all that you’ve done for your mama, particularly these past three months.

And Happiest Seventh Birthday.
143 Mama

Pictured here with your Momar the last time we saw her, Christmas 2015. Showered with gifts, just as she would have done for you today were she still with us.

Dreams

My father nicknamed her the Petite Laundrette, as she so enjoyed what most perceive as the chore of laundering our family’s clothes. She excelled at it, in fact. Stains were no match for her. And our clothing and sheets always smelled far more delicious than any of our friends. She was territorial about this work. She did not want anybody else in the household attempting laundry, as no one had quite the patience or attention to detail to sort, and spot treat, and appropriately set the machine dials to her liking for the load at hand.

Her preferred hour for tackling laundry was always late at night, as she bustled about in her cotton nightgown. I come from a long line of night owls. Growing up, friends always knew that they could call our landline well until midnight, as my mother was rarely in bed before that hour. And often up much later. Doing laundry. Watching Masterpiece Theatre. Mending. Puttering about our grand and elegant Victorian home well after the rest of our family had turned in for the night.

I see her, standing in front of our washer and dryer in her long-sleeved blue nightie. It’s a Calida. Her favorite. There was no softer cotton, she swore. She’s clearly braless, as there was no other state in such attire, despite her ample bosom. I’m lounging on our sofa, chatting with her as she works. Her coarse blonde hair is pulled back in a loose ponytail, secured with a scrunchie, as her bangs fall haphazardly across her brow. During the day, she always wore her hair down, as it was her self-proclaimed best feature (it really was magnificent). But at night, without anyone to impress or entertain, it could be swept out of her face to keep her cool.

She throws a large pile of clothes in the washer before turning. “Give me that baby!” she says with a grin as she reaches out her arms.

I hand her my son, a bundle wrapped in a navy fleece blanket, a gift from her best friend since 5th grade. She cradles him to her chest and begins to sway and pace around our childhood living room, dancing between walls and memories that are forever etched in my mind. I watch the two of them together and feel a wave of contentment and gratitude.

We’re now lying side by side on her bed as she leafs through a magazine and I listen to her prattle on about some drawing in its pages. In my head I think, “My mother is alive, again. I can tell Sarah (my therapist) that she’s back. My mother is back.”

As I think these words to myself, a bit of reality seeps into my subconscious.

How is it possible that she’s alive? She was cremated, Ashley. How did she come back from that? It’s not possible to come back from that. 

As the answers to these questions come searing into focus, I reach for her. I want to touch her, hold her hand, prove that she is indeed real. Concrete. Close. As my fingers outstretch, she turns to me, and leaves me all over again. I am paralyzed with what to do. How do I save her? How do I keep her with me?

I finally find my breath and begin to scream. I’m screaming as loudly and as violently as I can when hands fall down upon my shoulders. I hear James pleading with me. What is wrong? Ashley? Ashley, you’re okay. Breath. What’s wrong? Try to breath.

As I’m thrust back into reality, I face her absence all over again. James holds me as I cry and wail to be back in that world where she felt so real. So close.

I dream of the day when I visit with her in my sleep and it’s filled with just happiness, and no fear. For now, however, I feel grateful to have experienced her so vividly. And to have seen her with my baby.

The other day I told a friend that I wished she could see how much I was delighting in her grandson.

I think this was her way of telling me that she knows.

3 Months / AFTER

My mom’s been gone three months and while I’m far more functional than I was when she first passed, there’s this ever-present knot and gnawing in my stomach. A heaviness I can’t shake. I’ve realized that my thoughts are constantly on my mother, whether trying to make sense of her absence or desperately trying to hold her in the present. I find myself trying to recall the way her coarse hair rubbed against my cheek when she hugged me, or the way the tops of her hands felt like paper due to a severe sunburn in Bermuda when she was young. How she looked puttering around the house in her nightgown, or the way she’d snap her fingers and bob her head so assuredly when she was feeling a song on the radio. While I daily find myself smiling and laughing and connecting with people in my life, she’s always just below the surface. Bringing comfort with happy memories but also the weight of grief.