Another funeral

I think 2013 is going to go down as the Year of Death around here. My fourth friend/relation/whatever died last week and was buried Monday. This one was not as difficult, though, because it was truly her turn to go.

Cloa (pronounced with a long o and silent a) was an elderly lady in our congregation. She and her hubby were unable to have children and since my mom lived so far away, I adopted her as my "mom away from mom" when I was pregnant with Abby. She became "Grammie" to Abby and to the rest of the Wild Bunch.

She and her hubby were relatively active until the last few years, then her health started failing. The last six months have been particularly rough, as she was bedfast, on a feeding tube, and unable to communicate other than "yes" or "no". Her brain was still there, which made it even worse. She's been so sick, for so long, I wasn't sad for her that she passed. I'm not even sure I'm sad for me. I'm just sick of people dying already. I'm starting to feel like the Angel of Death or something.

Dave is sick and I'm at home with him instead of being at HELP, wrangling other peoples' children. And I should be cleaning house. We're having a young married lady from our congregation over for supper before church. She's been here already this week, cleaning out the basement. She actually does this for fun. Aside from that, she's a delightful person but I really feel like the house needs to be cleaner.

And why? Here's the deal: the house can be cleaned but then it will be totally messed up in a fraction of the time that it took me to clean it. It seems like a waste of time, energy, and good juju to bother to clean the house. Sadly, it seems to be important to the majority of society to have a clean house. So there we are. Bleah.

Baby steps

Well, here we are...I'm basically putting one foot in front of the other and walking straight ahead. I don't think it's all Cherylyn's passing. I have a wretched cold right now that laid me flat for a couple of days. Now I'm trying to play catch-up and get ahead and everything else.

But some of it is Cherylyn's passing.

While I was talking to David yesterday, I spotted a birthday card she'd sent him last year, complete with handwritten message. I must have had a weird look on my face because David said, "What? What's wrong?" Then he saw the card and asked me if I was sad. Yes, son, I'm sad. But it hits me at random times, unpredictably. I try not to shove it down because I know it'll come back and not better for the break, but I also don't want to fall apart at the library or in front of my son. So I guess there are times when I do try to cram it down at least until I can get to a place where I can grieve in private.

And then there are the other lovely bits of depressive behavior that I continue to have: sleeping too much, lack of interest in things previously of interest, lack of appropriate affect. I'm trying, I really am, but I don't want to do anything but sleep. I don't even want to read all that much and that is amazing. I'm just not going full force right now. I guess it's not crucial that I do. Obviously, life goes on without my processing totally, but I hate being so dazed and confused all the time.

One positive thing of note: I retaught myself to knit and have been working on that sporadically. It doesn't get my other projects finished or started, but it's quick and soothing. So far, I've just done a couple of lime green (happy color!) dishcloths but maybe I'll get back to, and finally finish, Doug's sweater. I've only been working on it for 5 years or so...

Hope you all are doing well. Make sure the people you love know it. That was one saving grace with Cherylyn and me...we always always said we loved each other. Sometimes it felt excessive but now it feels comforting.

Stuff & things

What to say? I scarcely know what to say or do these days. My friend did die, as she and everyone else expected. She passed late in the evening of 8/19. She was at home and had at least one person with her all the time. I was blessed to be able to go out there the Saturday before. Her family was very gracious and allowed me much time to be with her during the day. She was more or less non-communicative the whole time. Apparently her last fully lucid day was the day before I got there, and I had talked to her on the phone a couple of days prior to that.

It was a strange thing. I didn't have anything I needed to say to her or to "work out" with her. We said everything to each other when we talked. Maybe that's why we could talk for four hours straight and still be going strong when our families were begging us to stop already. I just felt I had to be there with her, and I was. I talked to her about the new days and the old days. I sang to her, beautiful old hymns that we loved and a few new ones that I loved and felt she'd like. I held her hand and stroked her arm and shoulders, trying to be soothing.

There were a few times that it seemed she was trying to talk to me and when I'd sing, she'd make sounds that I took to be her singing along. It made me smile and tear up, all at the same time. It was a special time, but different from the other times that we'd had, when she just wore me out with her energy and extrovertedness. It was a quiet time, it seemed endless. It wasn't.

I was able to stay for the funeral, then had to rush home because the two people who could drive were sick. I can't really talk about the funeral. Too much there that could be misconstrued. A key point is that I did not even consider crying until we all got up to file past the casket. That's when they started playing a slide show of photos of Cherylyn. One popped up of the two of us, the time I'd come to visit in April. That one almost made me lose it. At the same time, when it would come up, I would just hungrily scan it, hoping to make sense of the realization that this vital piece of humanity was gone, leaving us all behind. It still doesn't make sense to me. I think that is part of the problem I am having.

Or maybe I'm not having a problem at all. I think it's rather normal to feel down when a dear one dies. I didn't see or even talk to her every day, but she was always in the back of my mind. We wrote letters back and forth and just enjoyed our friendship so very much. But now she's gone and we and I have to learn to go on without her.

I am so grateful that we had the years that we had. Her very life was a gift and a prod to be a better person. Her family will survive and even flourish because of the determination and work she put into them. I miss her but I'm so so glad that she is no longer suffering from the pain she carried for so long.

A good friend read the following at her memorial service and it still makes me smile.

Gone From My Sight
by Henry Van Dyke

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side,
spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts
for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck
of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then, someone at my side says, "There, she is gone"

Gone where?

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast,
hull and spar as she was when she left my side.
And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me -- not in her.And, just at the moment when someone says, "There, she is gone,"
there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices
ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"

They know it's bad when Mom's cleaning house...

That's how my family determines when I'm really depressed or in a foul mood. If I'm cleaning, it's bad news. I was washing dishes this evening, long after I usually go to bed. The family was nervously giving me a wide berth.

The news is bad.

It seems as though my very dear friend is finally going to make the transition to the next life. The translation: my good friend is dying. She's been quite ill off and on for years. She's always fought it off, or been given more time. She amazes the doctors. She astounds me. But she's pretty sure this is the last hurrah. And if she thinks it's the last hurrah, it may well be. Her doctors have called in hospice. Her oncologist is saying goodbye. This is it.

What is it about death that is so unimaginable? Perhaps it is because, in our culture, we are so removed from death. People don't die at home, people don't linger at home with a dread illness. People are not buried out of their homes anymore. Maybe. I don't know, but it seems totally beyond the realm of reality that she will not be here anymore.

Reminders of her are all over my house. I washed a pan tonight that she had given me for my birthday a few years ago. Her letters are all over the house, surprising me by popping up where I least expect to see them. Books we've both read, gifts she's given me over the years, even clothes that she got rid of years ago when she dropped some weight and I didn't. I'm surrounded by reminders of my friend. I don't mind; I love to see reminders of my beloved ones around the place. But I wish above all that she could be here too.

She is so strong: telling her children that the end is near, dealing with the endless paperwork, trying to help keep up with the current paperwork so her girls can go to school and stay on a schedule that they so need, setting things up so her husband does not have to think as hard when she is gone. Telling her friends she loves them each and every time she talks to them.

I am trying to be strong but am crumbling away. She has been a far better sister to me than any blood of mine has been. She's also been somewhat of a mother figure, being about 14 years older than I. She supported me through the death of my own mother. She gave me a piece of memorable advice: look your mother in the eye. Study her eye color, the way the eye looks, so that you will remember. I did that and discovered that my mother and my second daughter share almost the same eye color. When I look deeply into her eyes, I remember my mother, thanks to my friend.

I have looked deeply in the eyes of my friend over the years, without trying to memorize her features. Even if I were to forget the shape of her eyes, I'll never lose the shape of her heart which has walked with mine all these years. When she is gone physically, she will still walk with me in memory.

And oh, how I will miss her!

Chapter 8: In Which Our Heroine Becomes Annoyed With One of Her Children and Contemplates the Weird

Surprise! Lori's annoyed with a child...stop the presses!

Well, it is a different child, for a change. Sometimes I wonder what possesses my children. Keziah is the latest culprit (although Rachel is getting marks next to her name for impertinence as well today). She has always been strong-willed but lately she's decided to make her own play for running the universe. She has decided to start with me. So we spend a lot of time telling her to do something, having her either refuse outright or drag her heels, with the result that she gets redirected or punished.

I think I'm too old to be a mother to toddlers. Or small people.

In other news, I got an e-mail from one of my mother's cousins yesterday, which contained the news that another cousin had died of cancer on Saturday. Now generally, this is a sad thing. If my mother had lived, she would be 61 right now. Tony was one of the cousins that was born the same year she was. He is not someone I knew really well, as his sisters were a lot more friendly and I got to know them better. In fact, Tony was the only person at our family reunion in 2007 who was unkind to/about the twins, so I have some vague negativity toward him. But still, another one gone, and way too young.

Death is such a weird thing. There's nothing at all intelligent that I can add to that so I'll stop. Go hug your babies for me, will you? Even the snarky ones.