Food

I realized something about myself today. Grocery shopping is a truly enjoyable, relaxing activity for me. I love doing it. I love dreaming of exotic and gourmet meals and dishes I can make for myself and other people. I could honestly wander the aisles for hours and consider it time well spent. Now, in the past, for good bonding with dear friends, we'd shop for ingredients and cook up a great meal together, but there's something about the people and the stuff of grocery stores....I could just get lost in all the cheeses and perfectly arranged colorful produce. And I love food, don't get me wrong, but I don't think I'm necessarily obsessive OR compulsive about it, and I absolutely have a problem with the excess of food in our culture (how many different kinds of Chex cereal do we really need?). But today, I'm just delighting in the fact that I have discovered what could be a beautiful coping skill when times get tough.

Tonight was the second night that friends have had my dad and me over for dinner. Our neighbor is an excellent cook, and I think she copes by cooking. There is something calming in assembling a beautiful, simple meal for people you love. And so we benefited. My shopping today was to get what I affectionately call "my food," namely avocados and hummus, cheese and bagels, and let's not forget Trader Joe's chocolate covered, peanut butter filled pretzels. THANK YOU that Trader Joe's has spread beyond the borders of California and invaded the Midwest.

It is SO beautiful here. The weather has provided spectacularly clear blue skies as a backdrop for leaves that seem to seep more color out of the soil by the hour. I love the fall. My neighbor said to me today, "It's because we were born in October." Neighbors came by to drop off a ham (why did I buy so much food again?) and we stepped outside to see them off and EVERYONE was on the street, walking dogs, raking leaves. There is something so resonantly comfortable about being here. I know how to exist here in the familiarities that are woven into the fabric of my identity. I live on Braumton Ct. We know our neighbors. You wave to anyone you pass on the street whether you know them or not. You bump into people you know at the grocery store (unless, of course, you're engrossed with all the cheeses). My dad and I went to church this morning, and everyone is the SAME, only aged a few years. And today, I held an appreciation for the people that have sustained this institution. Today I appreciated where I have come from. That this place, this culture, is a part of me. I'm friendly and I talk to strangers, because that's what you do in the midwest. Today, rather than resent the obligations and the "shoulds" that have hounded me most of my life, I saw the beauty in people who have have been truly fulfilled spending a lifetime doing what they should, what they're supposed to, just because that's what you do. This is not where I belong, but part of it certainly belongs in me.

Real

My dad went back to work today, which is good for him. So I'm sitting in my family room while a gentle rain falls outside from a darkly clouded sky. The past few days have been kind of surreal. I have felt this overwhelming peacefulness (except for an awful crick in my neck). My dad and I have had some good times together; talking, making arrangements, watching movies, crying. But it doesn't always seem real that mom is gone, moreso that she's just at the nursing home, or just away for awhile, not that she's gone forever.

Then yesterday, I was putting some of my stuff away in my room and my bathroom and started clearing stuff out to make room for my stuff. As I'm sorting through old medicine bottles and jewelry boxes, I had all these questions, "Should we keep this? Is this sterling silver? Where's the jewelry cleaner to get this tarnish off? Do I just need to soak it or should I scrub it?" These are questions that my mom would know the answers to, and I can't ask her. So I lost it for a little while and told my dad and we lost it together. That made it more real.

The piano tuner came yesterday to tune our Baldwin baby grand--such a kick-ass piano. My mom had set up the appointment and the tuner was asking who played, more specifically if my mom played. "Well, she did," I said. "She died on Tuesday." Facts. I can state facts. And I am a person who loves intense experiences, who would forever swim in the depths of her emotions if she could. But today I am grateful that the human mind, body, and soul can state facts and do so without fully engaging the depths of human emotion. I can bear a lot, but even I am far too fragile to bear the fullness of the implications of these facts all the time.

"I'll be playing a lot while I'm here," I continued to tell the piano tuner. And I did this morning. I filled the quiet of my house with the sounds of a lament, just some simple chords without words to express a portion of the ache that threatens my heart. May that ache and that pain be consumed and expelled as something achingly beautiful.

Promoted to Glory

She's gone.

Barbara Ann Lange Scharnhorst
Born July 14, 1944
Promoted to glory October 23, 2007

My mom (and her mom before her) did a lot of work with the Salvation Army. The officers in the Salvation Army, rather than saying someone died, would say they had been "promoted to glory." My mom always liked that, and I do to.

My dad and I were with her. More later when I'm not so exhausted. Thank you for all the love and support, everyone. It means the world.

Harder than I thought

This is going to be harder than I thought. It's times like this I'm grateful for my naivete, because if I knew what I was getting myself into, I don't think I'd do it. Denial can be a beautiful thing.

After taking my brother and sister-in-law and niece to the airport, I stopped by the nursing home to see mom. She was sitting in her chair, having eaten a little bit of breakfast. She didn't make much sense, babbling about numbers and letters, which I think were left over from one of her old jobs. I started to cry. She opened her eyes and looked at me, "What? You're sad, because I'm so confused?" she said, perfectly coherently.

So I put lotion on her while I prayed for her, and smiles would come across her face occasionally. My brother called to say they'd gotten on the plane, and as soon as she heard his voice, another big smile. I'm getting a small glimpse of a mother's love. Of my mother's love for me.

Needless to say, a lot of my grand plans for final bonding are going out the window. As I was putting lotion on her arms, a melodic spontaneous nonsong (see previous post) came into my mind about "the arms that held me, strong and loving," but I didn't sing it--courage, my soul! Be courageous! Instead, I asked if she would like me to sing to her, and she smiled, "You should sing Happy Birthday." My birthday is next Monday. Somewhere in the midst of the words and the cloudiness of drugs and cancer, she is making sense.

So now, off to get some of the things that will help pass the time while I sit with her.....a CD player and some CDs to drown out the TVs of the hearing impaired across the hall, books, yarn and crochet hooks, photo albums.

Yeah, this is going to be harder than I thought.

Road trip

I watched the sunset over the ocean in Santa Monica on Friday night. Hopped in the car after working on Saturday and watched the sunset over the Mojave Desert. Watched the sunrise over Albuquerque this morning and here I am at the kitchen table in the house I grew up in. Total travel time door to door: 32 hours, 25 1/2 of which were driving. I only stopped when I needed gas. Talked to friends. Started singing to myself in Oklahoma, beginning, of course, with all the songs I could remember from the musical, "Oklahoma," then began to compose a musical of my own. I began to compose a musical once when sitting in traffic on my way into Chicago one weekend. It went a little something like this: "I need to change my lane/before I go insane/change my lane/go insane/change my lane/go insane." It's amazing the creativity that oozes out of a road-weary, sun-baked brain.

Somewhere amidst the windmill strewn red dirt hills of Oklahoma, I decided I'm going to sing to my mom. I don't think she's ever had a song written about her, which is a tragedy, because she is definitely an epic, songworthy woman. And, singing spontaneously about the little things, "I'm getting you a glass of water, whether or not you think I oughta" could be kinda fun, and is, in fact, my specialty in songwriting. Melodic nonsongs. If that fails to be fun and cheerful, I brought fingerpaints and play-doh with me.

On a more serious note, how much more poetic would a lifetime of apologies be if it were sung as a ballad? Let's all admit it, we snicker at musicals, because they're really kind of cheesy, but somewhere deep in my heart, I wish the world were in sync enough that people would just bust out with "Lean on Me" in line in the grocery store. I FEEL like I live a musical, because of all the music that accompanies me in my head. So maybe, for one part of one day, I'll live a musical with my mom.

Time for bed, as I'm getting back in the car tomorrow morning to take my brother and sister-in-law and niece to the airport. It's good to be here.

The road home

I will arise at 4:45 am tomorrow and work a 6 hour shift before hopping in my not-yet packed car and starting the cross country trek to St. Louis. I talked to my older brother today, and he and my sister-in-law and niece were at the airport on their way down from Michigan for a trip they'd planned a little while back. Hopefully I will arrive before they leave so we can all be together. I am tired. But I am ready to be home, ready to get there.

The nursing home

Found out yesterday that they are moving mom to the nursing home today. She isn't safe to be at home alone anymore. When they called to tell me, I took the liberty of telling them I was coming home. It has always been part of the plan to go to the nursing home when the time came (dad doesn't want her to die at home), but I just didn't think it would come so soon. I didn't think any of this would come so soon.

The realities keep hitting me anew--that I will not see my mom in my house again. In my head all the conversations I've imagined having with her, I imagined in our kitchen or in her bedroom. Now I've started visualizing the conversations at the nursing home. It's one we know well--my grandma was there for a few years. My mom would visit every day, so all the staff know her and love her, so at least it's a familiar place. I think I'm going through all the moments people typically do when putting a family member in the nursing home. It seems cruel. I think I can take care of her. But there she has new people to talk to and people who know what they're doing. The woman can't communicate well to save her life, though, so I hope the nurses understand that....they've probably seen much worse.

So I think I'm going to leave Saturday after work, forgo my going away party, forgo the long trip planned with beautiful stops with amazing people and just get there as quickly as I can. The end is so very near, and there is no time to lose. My mom burst into tears when they told me saying, "I don't know how much time I have left." "Just hold on a little longer, Mama." "I'll try, Annie."

Please God let there be enough time to say all that needs to be said, to express the "I love yous" and "I'm sorrys" for a lifetime. Enough time and stamina to use the fingerpaints and play doh I bought for us to play with together. Will it just be enough.

good music

I'm moving home in a week, because my mother is dying, and a few people have asked me if I need anything. "Music for the drive," I always respond. I love good music.

I've been listening to Copland the past week or so....and I mean Aaron, the American composer, not the band Copeland, though I hear they're good, too. I have always loved his music and did projects about him in college. Something about the way that he writes expresses the things of the human spirit to me, and so after I got my car back from a month in the shop, I grabbed some CDs to load up the 6-disc changer. Among them was a gift from a family I used to nanny for, containing Fanfare for the Common Man and Applachian Spring Suite. Really, my speakers don't go loud enough to experience this music at the proper volume.

As I drove through the city last Friday, blasting Fanfare, seeing mountains and skyscrapers in the same view, I felt a nobility rise up in me, a desire to be great, to do great things, and it is a great and noble thing that I am doing to move home to be with my mom. But Copland's is a Fanfare for the Common Man, and it is also a very common thing that I do--I am going home, something so normal and natural, and doing so in the face of death--something common to every person. And somewhere in the comingling of nobility and commonness is where the essence of humanity lies. Somewhere between the grandiose notes an imagination can conjure and the limitations of our bodies to leap high enough or sweep big enough to express those notes in dance.

Later, in Appalachian Spring Suite, is a section where the lower strings lay a thick, velvety undercurrent as a solo flute dances sweetly up above. And it struck me that this is the state of my soul--a deep faith and rich understanding moving purposefully underneath and in the midst of it, the contemplative questioning heart of a little girl asking, "What will I do without my mom? Who will take care of me? Can I just play today?" But really, the deep tones are not entirely of me, but deeply ingrained into me from somewhere or someone outside of me, slowly becoming part of me. The double basses support the melody of the flute and counter its playfulness and its questions with strength and solidarity. In the same way, whatever the source of this current running through my soul is will bolster me and carry me along through the grandiose and common corridors of my humanity.

With any kind of good music, or good art, for that matter, words cheapen the experience, so go find some Copland to listen to and see if your soul doesn't soar. As for me, I can't wait to listen to it as I drive through the mountains.