Renovating My Brain

Last year, around the time I flew out to Seattle, I was feeling like I was at some sort of tipping point in my life, and I decided that I was going to start doing things differently. I was going to start saying 'yes' to things I would usually disregard. I was going to pursue latent interests. I was going to make my life more 'full.' By the time I got back to my apartment after that week in Seattle, I knew that my life was taking an unexpected turn. It's funny, sort of, that on my flight back from Seattle - with no reason to think anything was awry - I had a sudden desire, over some large snow-capped mountain range in the west, for the plane to crash; for all the questions of my life, all the possible futures - whether good or bad - to suddenly cease, but not of my own volition. It wasn't that I wanted to kill myself, it was that I wanted to be killed. That was March 31st. By April 1st I knew that my mother had leukemia. When I try to structure a narrative to my life, I give myself second sight when it comes to this set of feelings. It was that I felt that I was going to experience a significant loss and that I would rather disappear myself than go through it. On November 4th she died. That really is a spectacularly short amount of time when you think about it.

The point is that I was telling L. about that sense of commitment to change I felt. My life has changed in a few key ways this year, but none of them were a result of any commitment on my part. I have certainly made choices over the last seven months, and they certainly changed my life; but none of those choices were made in pursuit of any of my initial goals. These initial goals weren't even big! They were about dating more. They were about knitting and cheese and Scrabble and summer trips to Canada. Small ways I could make my life bigger and more dynamic. Small ways that I could make myself happier. Since I learned of my mother's illness I haven't stopped pursuing these goals; to say that the urges for change ceased would be a lie. While I was in Nashville during my mother's month-long hospital stay I went on dates and got laid. Well, not often. Only a few dates in total. Laid only in one instance, but satisfyingly so. I also was determined to enjoy my summer, after my mother was given a temporary reprieve from imminent death. At one point we were told that she only had 1-3 months to live and then things got more hopeful, so that seemed like it was no longer the case. Thing of it is we should have still been thinking that way. I spent my summer determined to have a good time; to enjoy the experiences available to me and have no regrets. But I didn't spend my summer with my mother and that is definitely what I should have done.

The last time my mother was in the hospital, she really shouldn't have gotten so weak that she ended up dying. Science is science and things can be explained, but basically my mother died because she went into the hospital with pneumonia and just as it was actually getting better, she suddenly had too little sodium in her body. I arrived on a Sunday and my mother was my mother; she was herself. Tired, yes. But totally 'with it' and capable of calling me on my bullshit or telling me about a nurse's engagement. By Wednesday she was trying admirably to pretend that she had any idea about what year it was or who most anyone, including myself, was. This was a sodium thing that, from the faces of a few doctors or nurses, should have been avoided relatively easily in the first place, and was also extremely bad for the patient. Though it was reversed, and my mother released from the hospital after nearly two weeks (maybe more?), the effects of that additional wrong turn in her health were insurmountable. While hospice care was held off during her discharge, it was clearly on the horizon. My mother's expressed feelings in this respect were good: she wouldn't die without a fight, but if the fight was all in the hospital, fuck it and let her go home.

Among the last written statements my mother ever made to me were "have no regrets," and "stop smoking." It's strange that I don't struggle too terribly with the regrets question, but I continue to smoke. I could have been in Tennessee the last week of my mother's life. I could have seen her get weaker and more confused. And perhaps my presence would have staved off this natural progression because my mother loved me and wouldn't want me to see her in such a compromised state. But that's the thing about dying - those who love you will see some part of it. I left and the worst fell to my father.

Since my mother's death I have continued to live a life. A life still adjusting to the lack of her life. I am a practical girl in a number of ways. When it comes to my mother's death, I write what I feel, hope relevant people read it, and continue on. I cry when I drive. Or when I make a bed. I cry. But I don't cry on anyone's shoulder on the whole. I grin. I bear it. I accept life as it comes at me.

So I was telling L. about this loss of connection with my more go-to-it-and-change-your-life self and she sent me this graphic made by someone connected with her own work place....
I have made this my desktop, changing it from a combined image I made of my mother and her brother, on separate occasions, giving the camera a middle finger. In each instance the impetus was giving cancer the finger. Unfortunately, as much as cancer could be fucked in someone else's case, cancer won our own family's finger competition.

I actually have more to say about the graphic, because I don't actually agree to all of its directives. But perhaps part of my recommitted effort to saying yes and changing my perspective is actually finding a dream or passion to live or wear. Those who know me in real life know that the chances of my being able to rein in my self-analysis will probably be futile, but perhaps the attempt will be worth it.