Surviving

It's a gray, rainy day in Nashville, like so many have been since my mom died a little more than three weeks ago.  Never have I seen so much rain over an extended period of time in Nashville.  It feels like Seattle.  Fitting, I guess, because the weather as of late matches my mood for the most part.  Gray.  Dreary.

Some days are better than others.  Although the rational part of my mind knew that would be the case, it's still hard.  Very hard.  I'm tired.  And, really, I'm just sad.  A deep sadness that feels like an ache in my heart that won't entirely go away.

Joe's birthday was Wednesday and I couldn't help but think how much my mom would have enjoyed being the house, eating pizza and having a beer - a Miller Lite, of course - with us.  Joe played his best basketball game ever this morning.  He scored six points, including hitting an 8-foot baseline jumper in the first half.  My mom would have loved to have seen that.  She would have been so excited for him.

I haven't had much to say because I haven't known what to say.  I'm struggling to figure out what this blog will be - what it will become -  moving forward after more than 11 years of entries.  In the last few years, the blog has been an important outlet for me to express my feelings and emotions, and to process all that my mom was going through and that I was going through with her.

It seemed important, somewhat, to record my thoughts in real time, to preserve a record of some sort for me, my boys and my family.  On some level, it reassure me to know that at least a few people were reading my posts and thinking about my mom.  Maybe even sending a few prayers her way.  My writing felt purposeful.

Now, not so much.  On the one hand, part of me wants to record in minute detail every minute of the last week of my mom's life, so I don't forget it.  On the other hand, I'm afraid to think to closely about that week because the reality of her death and what lead up to it was horrific, traumatizing and mind altering.  It's strange.  I want to think about it but, then, I was to think about anything else but that last week with her.

I've thought about sharing memories of my mom, of special times we shared.  Times of laughter and happiness.  That way, my boys could perhaps read it someday and gain a better understanding of what a special, unique person my mom - their Meemaw - was in her life, before their lives.

I want to write about my grief but I don't want to sound like I'm whining.  I realize almost everyone goes through something like this with one or both of their parents.  I think it might help me process my emotions to write about them, much like it did when I wrote about my mom's journey with Alzheimer's disease.

My mom's death was so intense and personal to me.  It's hard to talk about, or write about, I guess.

For mow, I'm going to finish my cup of coffee at Honest Coffee Roasters, then drive to J.T. Moore M.S. to watch J.P. play basketball.  

It's still raining outside.  

Interloper

Yesterday, against my better judgment, I left the office at lunch at drove to NHC Place.  Tracy and Alice had finished disposing of and moving my mom's things out of her room in the Courtyard.  I wanted to see the room one more time before it's occupied by someone else.

It was a gray, rainy and dreary day, which might have contributed to my somber mood.  Seeing my mom's room - empty for the most part - didn't help.  Damn, I miss her.

It's funny, but NHC Place in general and the Courtyard in particular represented a kind of oasis for me.  Maristone was the same way, when my mom was living there.  When I stopped by, in the middle of my busy work and family life, I was able to be completely present in the moment with my mom.  My life outside the walls of NHC Place - and all of the concerns and stress associated with it - receded into the background, at least for a little bit.

It was like low tide at the beach.  I knew the concerns and stress of my daily life would come back as soon as I left the building and got into my car.  But for an hour or so, when I was with my mom or visiting with other residents or just talking to the staff, in some ways I was in a blissful, worry free state.  I was focused on my mom.  My mom in the present and not how my mom would be in a month or two.  That state of being, for me, was refreshing and, maybe, energizing.

I remember in the early days at Maristone, I often stopped by in the middle of the afternoon to see my mom.  Her apartment always was warm.  Reclined in her chair, watching television, she encouraged me to take a nap.  On several occasions, I laid down on her couch, in my suit, and fell asleep for a few minutes.  A "twenty minute nap," as she used to call it when we were growing up.  I woke up feeling safe, secure and happy.  It made her feel motherly, I think, to watch me nap.  It made her happy, too.

When I walked the halls at NHC Place on my way to see my mom in the Courtyard or just to stretch my legs, I felt at home.  Strangely, I felt like I belonged there, like I had a stake in the place.  I felt comfortable.  I spoke to staff and residents, including those I didn't know, and shared a smile with everyone,  trying to make each person's day a little better.  I had a purpose there.

Yesterday and the previous Sunday, too, when I stopped by NHC Place, I felt like an interloper.  Like I didn't belong.  That made me feel even more sad.  Yes, I talked to several residents - Ann, Sarah Dunn and Carol - and interacted with them.  I made them smile and that made me happy if for just a minute or two.  I still couldn't shake the feeling that I wasn't part of the family, though.

It's an odd and sad sensation, I think.  Losing my mom and, simultaneously, losing my relationships with everyone in the Courtyard at NHC Place.  Part of me wants to be there, maybe to feel more strongly the memory of my mom through my interactions with staff and residents.  It's like her presence it still there, somehow, but it's fading away quickly and I want to feel it for as long as I can before it's gone forever.

I honestly don't know which is better for me from a healing standpoint - a clean break from NHC Place or staying involved there by visiting residents or volunteering in some capacity.

It's all so very confusing.      

The Aftermath

I go back to work tomorrow after having taken Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off.  To grieve.

Wednesday, the day after my mom's memorial service and burial, was predictably difficult.  I felt lost, unmoored.  I still do, I guess.

Thursday and Friday were a little bit more bearable, although I still didn't feel like myself.  I won't for  a while, I suppose.  Maybe I never will.

A longtime friend of mine who is a Court of Appeals Judge sent me a text with his condolences.  His text hit me hard.

So sorry to hear about your mom.  You are a good son.  And regardless of what you may experience in the rest of your life, a boy only loses his mama one time.  After that the world will never look the same.  But it's brighter with good thoughts and good memories.  Let me know if I can do anything.

And I think he's right.  I don't think the world - my world - will ever look or feel the same again.  I'm trying to come to grips with that, today and, really, since Tuesday.

It's Sunday morning, early, and I'm having a cup of coffee at the Frothy Monkey, like I have so many Sundays over the past couple of years.  The difference, of course, is that I won't leave here and drive down to see my mom at NHC Place.

Last Sunday, I got coffee early and picked up donuts then delivered them to the staff at the Courtyard at NHC Place.  It was a chance for me, I guess, to say my own goodbye to the staff and the residents. To the whole facility.  I laid on top of my mom's bed for a few minutes and looked out the window.  The empty bird feeder made me sad, as I always imagined her watching the birds from her bed in the mornings after I filled it with a safflower cylinder.  That made me happy.

I looked around her room and tried to take it all in.  Her room had been a sanctuary of sorts, for her, or so I imagined it.  In truth, in the Courtyard, she spent most of her time in the common area, or community room, as it's properly called.  At least, that's where she always was when I arrived to see her.

Still, her room had a homey, lived in feel.  Tracy and Alice did such a good job furnishing it, taking care to hang photos, pictures and a photo quilt from her house to make it feel more like home.

Yesterday morning,  Tracy and Alice packed her belongings and oversaw the moving of her furniture back to her house.  That's sad but inevitable, of course, because someone needs the room and it makes no sense to pay close to $300 a day to store her things in it.  I may try to stop by tomorrow to see the room, empty, before someone else is in it.  But I may not, because it probably will break my heart.

I'm not sure I'm grieving, as much as I'm deflecting and distracting myself with other activities.  I know that since Wednesday, anyway, I've not been dwelling on my mom's death or the week at the hospital leading up to her death.  At some point, I'm going to need to write about that in detail, I know, but not yet.

I have a mediation tomorrow.  On the one hand, it will be nice to have work to distract me from my grief.  On the other hand, though, mediations take a lot of patience on my part and the ability to manage and deal with strangers' emotions.  I'm not sure I'll be able to connect with the people I'm mediating for and to properly empathize with them given my present state of mind but I'll try, for sure.

Mostly, I feel tired.  And sad.

That will change over time, I hope.

Jane Newman's Obituary

I wanted to post a link to my mom's obituary.

https://brentwoodhomepage.com/obituary-jane-ussery-newman/

I worked on it while we were with her at the hospital.  It's the most important thing I have ever written.

Stages

At the hospital, I had a conversation with Alice one night when she seemed to be having a tough time.  As I recall, it was the fourth or fifth night, after we were move upstairs to the 7th floor (probably Monday), and we weren't sure how long my mom was going to hang on.

Alice was worn out and the uncertainty was killing her.  Jude likened it to a race, except that you don't know when it's going to end.

We found ourselves sitting around my mom's hospital bed, our senses heightened and our emotions raw, watching for even the smallest sign that my mom was near to breathing her last breath.  Every time her breathing became more labored or shallow, we were convinced the end was near.  And, at least for a few more days, we were wrong.

It's hard for me to describe how we felt, how I felt, in those moments.  There was no peace, not then.  There was stress, anxiety, sadness, uncertainty, pain, frustration and exhaustion.  Those were dark emotions in a dark, dark time.  I think part of the exhaustion - the mental exhaustion - stemmed from our minds working overtime trying to process what we were experiencing in real time.  None of us had any real frame of reference so it was virtually impossible to put any of it in perspective.

As I talked to Alice, I suggested that way I was trying to handle everything emotionally - not that it was the right way, just my way - was to take it one stage at time.

The first stage was the dying part.  We had to get my mom to the finish line.  In other words, that was our first task.

The second stage was planning and executing the funeral.  That, of course, would involve a lot of telephone calls, meetings and planning.  Legwork.  Some of it mindless, some of it incredibly sad.

The third, and final, stage was grieving.  After my mom died and after the funeral was over, there would be grief.  Wave after wave of grief.

The key, I told Alice, was to recognize that you can only be in one stage at a time.  In other words, I was determined not to try to plan the funeral while my mind was still processing the fact that my mom was dying.  I also couldn't - and shouldn't - worry about how sad I was going to be when it was all over before my mom had died or we had planned and participated in the funeral.

The point, I think, was to stay in the moment.  For two reason, really.  One, to make sure I was fully engaged and that I didn't miss anything.  Two, because my mind and, I suppose, my heart, simply weren't equipped to process all of it at once.

I reminded her of what my grandmother, Mary Alice Ussery, always said - "How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time."  Good advice.

Did that approach help her?  I don't know.  It helped me, though.

The Last Goodbye

As I walked from our house to Portland Brew on 12th Avenue to get a cup of coffee and clear my head late afternoon yesterday, it occurred to me that there are very few things in life you only do one time.  Burying your mother is one of them.

And that's what I did yesterday, just past 1 p.m. in our family plot at Dickson Union Cemetery in Dickson, Tennessee.  My mom was laid to rest beside her beloved sisters, Ann and Sue, just down from her parents, Robert and Mary Alice.

It was an unseasonably warm February day, with temperatures approaching 70 degrees.  Though it was overcast, the rain held off and the sun peeked out from behind the clouds during the graveside service for my mom.

I'm spent, emotionally, from the events of the last two weeks.  It's so hard to believe, that two weeks ago today, on the afternoon of January 23, I stopped by to see my mom and had a nice visit with her.  The next morning, everything changed forever.

And now she's gone.

Goodbye Mom

Last night, at 10:02 p.m., I said goodbye the greatest woman I've ever known.  My mom.

I'm emotionally drained.  Spent.  Numb, really.

There will be time to reflect, but the last week has been the most difficult week, by far, of my life.  So intense.  So emotional.  Nothing to compare it to and no frame of reference because I've never gone through anything like that before.

I'm running on fumes right now but Tracy, Alice and I have plans to make.  We met this morning.  We'll get through this together.

  
I love you, mom.