Archives for June 2008

I said, "What if we get married at the Oakland City Clerk’s office? I saw a picture of Kira and Rachel’s ceremony they had there yesterday, and there’s a wedding-ring quilt hanging behind them. So it can’t be all that sterile."

Lala said, "Sounds good."

"And then, what if we walk over to Baggy’s? To have a drink-up after with all our friends? You know, nice and circular, the place where we had our first date….."

"That sounds great."

"Really?"

"I always have fun marrying you," she said.

No date set yet, but I’ll keep you posted. Love is good stuff. Happy Pride.

It’s the most watched video on the internet right now (and only went up four days ago), but if you’ve missed it, please go watch Matt dance. I’d embed it here, but you should watch it in high quality (button below the main box on youtube) and in full-screen. I don’t think it’s just because I’m overly emotional that I bawled while watching it.

It’s beautiful. Enjoy.

The memorial for Mom was so hard. But it was pretty great, too. The church was full of people, many of whom I didn’t even recognize. Others I knew by sight, but would never have been able to put a name to. I was way more emotional than I thought I’d be — I thought I’d gone through the range of emotions and had sorted the first bits of stuff out, but I almost wasn’t able to read the Henry Scott Holland piece that I wanted to. I know how to project, but my voice shook, and I hated that. I wanted to be clear and strong. My father closed with his eulogy, and I swear there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. The church was quiet as he started, but the sniffs started to ripple as he spoke about his best friend, his wife.

It just kilt us all.

[An aside – this is my new gift to the environment: Handkerchiefs. I’ve been using them all month, and there have been a LOT of dribbly nose blows. Allergies and grief is an ugly combination. I always thought using a handkerchief would be gross, but as it turns out, it’s comforting in a way that Kleenex never could be. If you think you have to blow a lot, carry two, but one is really enough. I keep one in my pocket, use it when I need it, and I wash the used ones with my clothes. If I forget one in a pocket, no biggee. No Kleenex bits all through the dryer. And I am Kleenex crazy — used to be OBSESSED with always having a box near me. One in every room. Now I’m not. Saving the world, one little piece of paper at a time.] [See? I mitigated that last sad bit with a soapbox bit. Whew.]

Then we went to the parents’ house (I should move that apostrophe, but I don’t want to), where we held a lovely cross between a reception and a wake. It was a potluck musical gathering. People brought food and instruments, and we set up chairs all throughout the huge backyard. Groups of people gathered in small clumps — older men talking about wars they’d fought in, older women talking about church/book matters, the old-time musicians playing serious fiddle tunes in one area, kids smearing themselves with dirt and strawberry juice in another.

Later, we non-serious musicians kicked the serious ones out by joining the music circle with our ukuleles (okay, MY ukulele) and a particular fiddle-tune-killing request. If you know an old-time musician, just try it. Demand a Kingston Trio song. A the mention of the Kingston Trio, it is truly hysterical to watch them remember their pots on their stoves as they scramble backwards like crabs, reaching for their gig bags. So we musicians who like lyrics took over the song-circle and we sang every Kingston Trio, Woody/Arlo Guthrie, John Hartford, Pete Seeger song we could think of, throwing in all the lyrics we could remember, sprinkled with a good dose of "bah-di-bah-blooo-bahs" when words failed us. We sang our family anthem, the Washing Machine song, twice, once in our circle, and once in the room where my sister Christy was lying. She liked that.

Christy’d been feeling really ill the whole day. She was a trouper that morning, vacuuming and cleaning, setting things up, and she made it to the church, and walked around the reception, smiling when people hugged her, even though she felt so sick. Then she took to bed, letting the party swirl out in the main room. And later woke up WITH APPENDICITIS! She had to have her appendix out yesterday morning. Seriously, how much does your day blow, if you memorialize your beloved mother and then have to go for immediate surgery? Dude. She’s due to be released this morning. Our poor thing.

Some pictures. Just because I want them here.

Lala is cute; I might be a little manic here.

Dad’s the one in black, La’s got her back to us.

Gaynelle, part of our family.

One of the more serious circles

Babies and beer!

Father-in-law Tony Hulse (he and mom-in-law Jeannie came all the way out from Boise!) and my Dad. Little sister Bethany sticks out her tongue like Dad does when she’s concentrating.

Lala’s pride and joy: the 1957 Gibson her dad gave her last year for her birthday.

For Mom:

  Death is nothing at all. It does not count. 
   I have only slipped away into the next room. 
      Nothing has happened.
        Everything remains exactly as it was. 
          I am I, and you are you, and the old life
            that we lived so fondly together is untouched,
              unchanged.
           Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.
          Call me by the old familiar name.
       Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. 
    Put no difference into your tone.
 Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes
  that we enjoyed together.   
   Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. 
     Let my name be ever the household word 
       that it always was.
        Let it be spoken without an effort, 
          without the ghost of a shadow upon it. 
           Life means all that it ever meant. 
           It is the same as it ever was.
        There is absolute and unbroken continuity. 
      What is this death but a negligible accident? 
    Why should I be out of mind 
   because I am out of sight?
    I am but waiting for you,
      for an interval, 
        somewhere very near,
         just round the corner. 
           All is well.

				Henry Scott Holland

You are darlings. Thank you for your kind emails — they mean the world to me. They ARE hard to read sometimes, though, because you’re SO nice, so you understand why I closed comments on that last post. Would have made it too easy for you to be kind, and I just couldn’t bear all that. The emails were wonderful, though.

It sucks. That’s what it comes down to. It just sucks. I’ve hit a point where I have decided bed is the best place to be. The memorial is this Saturday, and I have to go back to work in another week, and I’m looking forward to rejoining the human race. However, for now, while work is paying me to be bereaved (a civilized idea, really), I am lying in bed all day, knitting and watching ANTM and Brothers & Sisters on the computer. Brothers & Sisters, a fine show, is very hard to find illegally on the internet, so hard that I have LEARNED HOW TO TYPE IT IN CHINESE. Or at least, I’ve figured out what it looks like and then I have copied and pasted it into Chinese TV sites, and voila! There my season 2 episodes are! Free of charge, subtitled in Chinese. A valuable talent, I know.

THINGS I HAVE LEARNED THROUGH ALL THIS:

1. Family is all-important, and I have the best one. I hope you think I’m wrong, that yours is the best, but I’m not wrong. Even missing the sun of our solar system, the planets are still spinning (I almost minored in astronomy — I understand the physical implications of that and I’m ignoring them for the sake of the metaphor) and there is much, much love. So proud of them.

2. Sorrow does not preclude joy. That one’s a shock — I didn’t expect to laugh on the very day she died, let alone every day since. I’d been so lucky that I’d never suffered a major loss until I was 35. But I thought when it happened it would change me, make me into a sorrowful person. No. It’s made me sad, and at the moment, depressed and lethargic and only able to identify with stupid TV, but I’m still me, and I still take delight in the same things I always have. They just have a low-pitched humming underneath. Salted caramel ice cream is still so good I want to cry, only now sometimes I do.

3. Greeting cards. Let’s talk. This is something I didn’t know, and it seems so obvious, but Lala says she didn’t know it either, so maybe you don’t. Now, I’m only talking greeting cards, not the lovely emails and comments I’ve received from you, my readers. Internet notes to friends online who have lost a loved one (or are going to) — you’ve done everything right. Even the ones earlier that didn’t quite understand Mom was dying (and how could you? I was vague on the point for a while), those made me feel loved.

But the mailed cards. Oy. It got to a point where we screened every card, and only read Mom the good ones, or left out the maudlin words as we read. We stuck the other ones up on the wall, but only after we showed them to each other and rolled our eyes. So many wonderfully-intentioned people wrote treacly cards, invoking the Lord’s mercy, telling Mom to Feel Better! The Lord has a plan! Get Well Soon! Listen, if the family has invoked the word Hospice, the patient WILL NOT GET BETTER. You telling us miracles happen in a Hallmark font does not make us (or her) feel better, it pisses us off.

You know what helps? A card, written by hand, remembering things. One of my aunts wrote, "I remember when Danny brought you home. You were so beautiful, and you both sat on the porch and sang the washing-machine song, and the shearing song." Another friend from New Zealand wrote, remembering Mom’s "beautifully fringed eyes and abundant hair," and the fact that no matter how hard she studied, she could never catch up with Mom, always head of the class (natch).

Mom loved this kind of card, called them the most Christian of the bunch, and smiled when they were read to her. And we loved getting them, hearing about her, people remembering specific, wonderful things about her.

So when you write these sympathy cards, if the person is on hospice, just recall the good things, the things that make that person unique and special. Send them love.  Later, to the family, write more memories, of funny things that happened, or things specific to a time and a place and a person. People will be so grateful. We were.

4. Wacky Hijinks! Lala does everything she can to cheer me up, including what she did at 3am this morning (which was exactly one week to the hour since Mom died, but I didn’t realize that then).

She normally sleeps like a rock, so it startled me when she sat straight up in the dark. She said, in an  alarmed voice, "UH-OH!"

I sat up with her and said, "What is it?"

She said, extremely worried, almost panicked, "I can’t see!"

I reached behind me and turned on the light.

"Oh!" Ultimate relief in her voice. "Wow!"

I laughed so hard that I had to put my head down, but apparently that sounded like crying, which confused her, and then her look of confusion slayed me even more. Good stuff. She doesn’t remember a bit of it this morning.

5-100. I have learned way more than this. But I’m done typing. Valuable ANTM time is slipping away as I write….

My little mama died this morning, peacefully. It has been a beautiful day, and the hardest day I’ve ever known.

We were so lucky.

And I am so unbearably sad.