If not now, when?

Woodpile with Wheelbarrow

I spent time with my grandparents when I was little in the house where my Mother grew up. Lots of time.  Long endless unairconditioned summer days and cold dark winter evenings where rooms of the house were closed off by blankets and doors to keep the warmth from the stack heaters and wood burning stove concentrated in the kitchen and den. (Their wood burning stove was installed in the late 70s at the same time my dad had one put in our den.  It was something of a rural renaissance for my New York City born father who took to chopping wood and building fires like you wouldn’t believe, but it was also a chance to spend time with his father-in-law, who in his own understated quiet way poked fun at my dad and his woodsy ways but from a place of love and respect, I’m sure. Truly.)  

John and L.J.

September 1979

Anyway, the house where I spent so much time – it was hot.  And it was cold.  There were a lot of extremes from season to season is what I’m saying.  But in this house where I spent so much time, there were drawers and trunks and closets and chifforobes of photos and letters and books and yearbooks and paper dolls and record albums - memories of my Mother and my beautiful aunts and their growing up years.  And somewhere along the way, in those long summer afternoons and cold winter nights I began to think of all of those things as my own.  Only child of me?  Maybe.  But laying stomach-down on the landing at the top of the stairs listening to my Aunt Brenda’s Beatles album while looking through their high school yearbooks and photo albums and reading my mother’s diaries and learning the names of their friends  – their stories became my stories.  Coupled with all the conversations with my  grandmother about the way things used to be – all of it always felt so familiar to me.  My Grandmother’s words and the photos and being in the house where my Mother grew up – I just absorbed all of that into my bone marrow.

My Mother died June 21, 2016.  My grandparents were married on June 21^st.  My grandfather enlisted in the Army on June 21^st of 1944.  Maybe it's just happenstance that all those events coincided on the same date across seventy-six years, but I’m not a big believer in happenstance.  I do believe in signs, however.  I’m a big believer in signs.  A few weeks ago I drove Owen back to Knoxville after a weekend here at home, and instead of turning left onto Cumberland Avenue and heading toward I-40, I turned right and headed toward Broadway/Gay Street.  Then I turned left and drove out through Fountain City and Halls and then on out into the country.  I had not been to the cemetery where my Mother’s buried since the day we took her home.  But sitting in Owen’s car on that Sunday afternoon I experienced one of those band-aid life moments – it was time to go home. So I drove the however many miles it is from campus to Hickory Valley. I cried the whole way. 


When I pulled into the cemetery – a place so familiar to me from many afternoons spent there with my Grandmother that I can tell you who’s buried where and who’s related to who and how – it took many minutes of me talking to myself to get me out of the car.  Because as familiar as this cemetery is, it’s a completely different place with my Mother buried on top of the hill. 

I did get out of the car [eventually] and made my way up to the top of the hill and stood near my Mother and Grandparents. And it was hard. Those people, those three people buried side by side were the arc of so many of my childhood days.  Going to work with my Mother at the store*, waiting until my Mother said it was finally late enough that I could run through my favorite Little House on the Prairie field to my Grandparents house (it was after Donahue was over, by the way) where my Grandma would make eggs for me – sunny side up – and then after I had what was my second breakfast knowing it was time to wake my Grandfather up. And once he was ready to go, riding back to the store with him in his red GMC truck. That's a snippet of all the memories that absolutely flooded through me. All of those long ago days felt so close. And my thought then, again, was that I don’t want to lose them.

So,  there was that Sunday afternoon in the cemetery in the country, and Veteran’s Day looking at photos of my Dad and Grandfather, and my Dad’s  November14th birthday where the two of us sat and listened to a gentleman talk about his experience surviving the Holocaust, and then heading once again into these weeks that hold my Grandfather’s experience in World War II. The idea I’ve percolated for so long of trying to write down what I know has become so insistent that I had to get up and write this morning before I could do anything else.  If not now, when?  Now.  

 My Mom and Dad - November 1978

His 40th Birthday

_____________________
*My grandfather had a Texaco station and grocery/convenience store.  He and my mother worked together until he retired and closed the business when I was nine.  I have the keys to the store building in a box in my living room. 

Our Lady of Sorrows

We Weren't Done [June 21, 2016]

I wrote this in the days after my mother died in 2016 but never hit publish.  I'm hitting publish now, because I don't want to lose it.
__________________________________

I sat down earlier today to write my mother's obituary and I couldn't do it.  I pulled up templates and googled "good obituaries" and found lots of suggestions, but no help.  I could list my mother's family, her place of birth, her death - but it was the life in between, what could I say?  Too much.  There is too much to say.  So I walked away from it and like I have done many times and for many things during this last week and asked for help - Joel wrote her obituary for the paper. He did a wonderful job. But it was mine to do. And I couldn't do it.

The thing about writing an obituary is that it's a place to list your earthly accomplishments, which in my mother's case was easy - first in her family to go to college, first in her family to get a Master's Degree, first to get a PhD.  She owned her own business.  She raised a daughter. She moved from Knoxville to Kentucky to pursue her dream of being a college professor.  She was loved everywhere she went.  And then.  And then. And then she was diagnosed with MS.  Twenty three years she lived with her MS.  And at the end of that time it could be easy to look at only what she lost - her career, her mobility, her memory, her beautiful handwriting.  But her life was full and I can say that she was content. She had my father, she had Joel and me, she had a small circle of friends and family who saw her on a regular basis here in Nashville. And she had Owen and Sarah.

And as I sit here I'm just floored at how life has turned out. How is it Joel and I have both lost our mothers and that Owen and Sarah have lost their grandmothers.  A life with no Grandmother in it. The grief tonight is physically unbearable.

I'm trying ro find that grace and peace I felt in the hospital, but now that I'm home and just realizing all the life altering decisions that have been made in the last two days, it's hard. There's no grace or peace on this side of her death.  There's just empty. And pain.

She was only 74.  I say "only" because she comes from a gene pool where the women have long lives.  Her mother, my grandmother was 88 when she passed away. I've heard several times already that is was her time.  She was tired. That she's better off because her struggle is over.  The thing about that is - all those helpful comments make me angry.  Furious. Raged.  People commenting on her struggle who didn't see her contentment. And yes, her life may have looked smaller, more narrow from someone who didn't interact with her on a regular basis, but her life was full. She reveled in her grandchildren,  She may not have known the day of the week or who the President is, but she knew her grandchildren and lit up when she was with them. 

I sat with her by myself for quite a while after she died. I sent everyone home and it was just the two of us.  I wanted to memorize everything about her that I could. Her beautiful hands most of all.  I didn't want to leave her.  I wasn't ready for her to go.  I needed more years of Sunday lunches.  I needed to see Owen take her for a drive in the car.  Watch her watch Sarah graduate from Saint Bernard.  We all needed more hugs, more love, and more time. She was only 74.  We weren't done.

7 months

It's been seven months today since my mother died. Grief is strange and exhausting and at this point in my life it feels physically heavy.  I'm worn out by the end of the day from the effort of it all. Yes, I'm sure I'm depressed, but I'm trying to work through it.  I mean after all, my mother died - some sorrow/depression/melancholy seems appropriate, if not altogether fitting.  I made a comment to a close friend the other night that things really aren't that bad, most everyone goes through this sooner or later - losing a parent.  And she was kind enough to say, no, not everyone goes through this.  Not everyone loses a parent this way.

So, starting very close to the end of the story, going from the day of her death backwards, when someone you love (like your mother) has an illness like MS that lasts decades, you, as their daughter, get to watch their illness progress and their world contract. All of it happens slowly, but it happens. Relationships and mobility and her once sharp mind - all lost to MS.  In truth, it all changed so incrementally that there weren't big heartbreaking moments along the way.  Just a gradual loss. Of almost everything. Which is to say that nothing about my mother's MS ever seemed urgent.  It was chronic, ongoing, something to live with, but not urgent. Until it was, right at the end.  She was here, she was here, she was here - she was gone. Like spending twenty years walking down a hill wondering where the bottom was, then falling off a cliff. Boom. Over.

I've thought about finding a grief counselor, but I'm not sure that's the way for me.  I spent a few days with a palliative care team when my mother was in the hospital and they were wonderful and lovely and supportive, but I left every conversation feeling like I'd overshared, like I'd said too much.  I'm just not sure I'm a therapy person.  At least not right now.  But writing helps.  Getting things out of my head and down on paper so I can see how things are.  That helps.  Of course I also like to write things that people want to read and I'm not sure how many folks want to read about grief on a regular basis.  So maybe I'll write that closer to home, in a journal.  I do miss writing out loud though, where people can read it. But it takes courage and brainpower and the belief that I have something interesting to say.  Which is hard right now.

7 months without my mother. Grief is hard.

thirty + fourteen

We brought Owen home from the hospital on a Sunday.  It was just the three of us driving home to Bellevue - Joel in the front seat and Owen and I in the backseat.  I couldn't bear the thought of him sitting in the back all alone, so much so that I rode in the backseat with him for all the weeks that I was restricted from driving and for many months after that when the three of us went places together.

Our first afternoon home with him was overwhelming.  I had no idea [NO IDEA!] what I was supposed to do.  He was a troublesome mystery in that way that all new babies who come home with first time parents are troublesome mysteries.We had yet to figure out his disdain for eating or his love for sleeping anywhere anytime as long as it was on somebody.  Put him down, he wouldn't sleep.  Pick him up, out like a light. I wish I could go back and do it all again knowing what I know now.  I don't wish I could go back and do it all again as a first time mom.  That was terrifying.

He was a beautiful baby and so tiny (like all new babies are). As Joel unloaded the car, Owen and I sat in a plaid chair (that once belonged to my great-grandmother) and I remember thinking, "now what?" This was the beginning of the months and months of my life where I couldn't put him down and walk out of the room without my heart breaking. Friends who knew me then that still know me now will tell you that the last sentence is not an exaggeration. Could. not. put. him. down.

Tonight, Owen and I are home again - just the two of us.  In a somewhat strange turn of events, Sarah headed out to see the Avengers movie with her dad and Owen stayed home with me.  He's cleaning his room and doing his homework and wandering up and down the stairs and in and out of the living room talking about school and comic books and plans for the weekend.  He turned fourteen last Sunday.  He was confirmed Wednesday night and tonight, fourteen years to the day after we brought him home from the hospital he's helping me celebrate my birthday again. These last fourteen years have been amazing.  And hard. But mostly amazing.  I'm doing my best to pay attention to these moments - part of the reason I'm writing this down.  It goes so quickly.  Cliche, but true.  

Hello Sweetheart

L.J. and Cleo Hurst
with daughters Norma Jean and Sarah Catherine
Late summer 1944 in Union County, Tennessee

I have a notebook of letters that my grandparents wrote to one another when my grandfather served in WWII  in 1944 and 1945.  He joined the Army on June 21, 1944, was sent overseas in late November, went to the Belgian front on December 28, was wounded January 1, then spent three days trapped in a foxhole behind German lines before he was found.  He recuperated in hospitals in France and England before returning to the United States in June 1945.  On this November 11th, I am grateful that my grandparents' letters survived and have been entrusted to me.  It's a window into a time in their lives that they didn't talk much about.  

Wednesday Night

Forest Avenue

Hello Sweetheart:

How does this find u tonite? We are okay. Norma has played out and gone to sleep and "Cat" is still up playing.  I've been listening to the supper time frolic and thought I'd write to you before I went to bed as you are on my mind.

I kinda looked for a letter from you today but didn't get one, hope I get one tomorrow.  I'm sitting on the bed and Catherine's jumping up and down on it so much it's hard to write.

Well, honey I don't know anything to write you tonite. I thought when I started to write you I could write three or four pages but I think its all blown over so will just call it a nite and try to snooze a little.  I hope you get to snooze too.

So goodnite and sweet dreams.

Lots of Love

Bye now

your old lady

Monday Noon

Hello Honey,

How are you today?  For me, o.k.  Still blue and lonesome. Guess I'll always be that way if I'm not with you and the babies.  Honey, I'm sending my slippers and some extra things home.  Can't take them with me.  It sure looks bad.  Still don't know where I'll go or when but soon, I think.  They made us put on our heavy underwear.  Seems like we're going where it's cold and I have to wear overcoats.  It's pretty cold here but not that cold.

Honey I've had two letters already today, one this morning and one just a few minutes ago and boy was I glad to get them.  Sure helped me a lot.

Well Honey, I had to stop there but I will try to go on.  Will have to stop again soon I think but maybe I'll finish sometime today.  Honey, you asked how I like Fort Meade.  It's as good as any army camp I guess but I don't like any of them although they really are good to us here and Honey my watch is doing fine, not had to set it since I set it at home. They have eastern standard time here and its not a minute off.  I dropped it one day and thought I broke it but it didn't seem to hurt it at all.  I'm really proud of it but not half as proud of it as I am you because Honey anybody could be proud of you.  Well, I've got to go now.  Hope to hear from you soon.

Bye Honey

Love always, L.J.

over

Honey send pictures of you and Babies as often as you can.

I Blinked

It's true, I didn't cry on Owen's first day of Kindergarten.  What I did do was exhale - overcome by an enormous sense of relief as he was walked into a classroom that I knew was going to be a good fit for his then stormy and determined approach to life. Exhaled because the road to Kindergarten admission was a long one and included a notification that he was  "not a good fit for our program" from the school we planned for him to attend [so sure were we that our children would attend that school that our names are engraved on the big donor plaque that hangs outside their gymnasium].  Lo these many years later I am grateful [with a hint of grudge] that what we thought was our first school choice didn't work out, because while no school is perfect, I do believe that St. Bernard has been the perfect school for Owen.  I'll resist the urge to brag [in detail] about him, but he's done well at SBA in all the ways that I prayed that this child would do well in school. And I prayed for that. A lot.

And now, apparently, I've blinked and I find myself here - sending him off on his last first day at SBA.  The last first day. If this morning is any indication, this is the year that I'm going to say over and over and over again,"Good grief, how did we get here so fast?" Eighth grade. Eighth grade!! It's the top of the heap and the end of the line all at once. And I know [I.know.] that I will spend this school year weepy  [#cryinallthetime], emotionally fermenting in that heady blend of parental pride and nostalgia that watching your older child reach milestones seems to stir up. I wish I could think of a better way to say "it seems like only yesterday", but I can't. Seriously though, it does seem like only yesterday that we were walking a reluctant Owen into his first day of Kindergarten.  Where oh where does all the time go?

Joel and I sat with Owen on Sunday night, trying to impart some parental wisdom about his upcoming 8th grade year (because that's what we're supposed to do) and I hope he heard some of what his dad was trying to tell him - that he should jump in with both feet and enjoy this year.  Friends, classes, experiences both new and familiar - all of it. Because what I know in my momma heart is that even though he's thirteen and technically already a young adult, this is truly his last year of childhood. Big changes are on his horizon and I know that when the time comes, he'll be ready for them.  I also know that I'll be hovering somewhere, smiling and crying and smiling some more because that's what this momma does. Eighth Grade. Good grief, how did we get here so fast.