Dear Stacy

Happy Birthday Beautiful

Part V

Cont...


My food issues were indeed out of control. Still are, in fact. I classify these issues as restrictions, because I wasn’t allowing myself to feel good, my mother’s suicide wasn’t allowing me to function normally. One week was exclusively dedicated to Golden Oreos for lunch and dinner. Sometimes I would only eat salami. I recall going on a hotdog binge. And I wonder why I’ve gained 20 pounds since last the summer of 2005.

I would often find myself thinking about sitting in the kitchen with my mother. She danced ballroom in that kitchen, a cook to boot. I would attempt to conjure up images of her making the sausage stuffing at Thanksgiving and many other delectables I can not physically afford to write about at this time. I would make myself frustrated at the fact that I had spent countless hours with her in the kitchen and couldn’t take note of temperature, of mise en place.

I bathed, washed the face, brushed the teeth, waxed…but looking in the mirror was weird. I could say I didn’t recognize myself, but that’s just putting a cliché to something far weightier. What I saw in the mirror was a girl with too much soul, a girl of yesterday and today but never tomorrow. My face was never quite as clear as it should have been. It didn’t take to makeup, to lotion. It was so blurry that to even call it a mess would be lying. My vision was lost.

In the simplest terms, I felt heavy. Sometimes I’d lie awake at night unable to move body parts because they felt like anchors. There were moments when I thought my heart would drop from its natural location and settle at my knees. The absolute worst were the heavy eye problem. My lids would swell to five times their size and all I could see in the mirror was a black circle where my face should be. Those eyes made my head to wobble from side to side. All I could do was lie down for fear of breaking my neck.

Part IV

Cont...

In the past 11 months I’ve made a checklist. What are the common factors in those who commit suicide? Is it depression? Pressing financial matters? Severe or terminal health issues? Substance and alcohol abuse? Sure, it could be anyone of the above. If there is a list of ten possible reasons, I can probably choose fifty percent of those and relate them to my mother’s suicide. But who really cares at this point. She’s dead.

I don’t know at what stage of grieving paranoia sets in, but at some point I considered that my mother faked her own death. (Frankly she was never that clever.) I believed that perhaps this was a forced suicide. (This is not the Middle East.) Perhaps she was murdered? (The medical examiner ruled out homicide.)

This is not an episode of CSI. This is my life here. I know my mother, and I know she took the handgun that was purchased to protect my family against robbers and Charles Manson-types and decided she had enough. It was time to rest. It was her time.

Since she died, I have not had any rest. All she does is badger me: in my sleep, when I’m cooking dinner or watching Desperate Housewives. Frankly, she’s a big pain in the ass. I hear a song in the car like Joe Cocker’s You Are So Beautiful to Me, and I openly weep. For months I was taking up to three baths a day just so I could place some boundaries on my emoting. If I limited myself to one place, at least I wouldn’t feel like such a basket case. No such like. I’m so sick of this.

I found great comfort in water during the first six months after her death—obviously with all of those silly baths. Living in Ithaca, I obviously couldn’t swim during the cold months, but I had the sound of water flowing, of lapping from the various waterfalls that make this little city so alive. I suppose it quite Civilization and Its Discontents, but I’m not referring to any basis of religion here. I am referring to the oceanic feeling as the symbol of life, death and the unknown. I am referring to the idea of being unrestrained. When I’m near or in water, I can feel my skin move. I like my skin in the water. I like myself around water. I’m recognizable again.

So you understand better, this suicide has brought about so many restrictions for me. For a brief time last winter I was unable to drive. After a few missed stop signs, an ignored red light and tires that regularly shrieked, I surrendered my car keys. It felt good. I didn’t want to feel responsible for something else.

A few weeks after she died, I wore her sweaters every day—mostly three cardigans, one pink, grey and black. My father said that was not good. I think I told him to go fuck himself. I still wear those sweaters, but for much different reasons. Her smell no longer accompanies them.

Then there were those prized times when I felt socially awkward around my closest friends. To me, when I was with them, I felt as if there was always a pink elephant in the room. I felt nervous and overwhelmed. I had to fight the urge to run out the door and bury myself in a pile of snow. God, I hated me. The thing is I was so desperate for them. I wanted so badly to make them laugh and see their smiles. What I really wanted was for them to make me feel like me again. For so many years when any of us had a crisis, heartbreak, a “God please tell me I did that” moment, we could find a way to cheer each other up with a $10 bottle of wine, a dirty joke and some slanderous gossip about some waif Hollywood actress. None of the above would help in this situation. They—the heartiest, funniest, savviest creatures on the planet—couldn’t even help.

Part III

Cont...

She was also smart in ways I could never be. She had this organic sensibility that led her to always have the answer. I ran to her. I wrapped myself around her. As a child, I hesitated to believe in any other way but hers.

When she was sad and frightened, I was strong. Did I really have a choice? My brother needed clean socks. My sister had a birthday party to attend. The pugs needed a walking. The man delivering the oil needed to be paid. You see, the house doesn’t run by itself.

I’ve been mediator. I’ve been big sister. I’ve played mom. I’ve been eldest daughter and granddaughter. I’ve been career woman. I’ve been the child that puts her parent into a mental hospital. I’ve been lover and fighter. I’ve been devastated.

When a life is taken in such a way, a big mess is left in return. My father doesn’t even bear a close resemblance to the man that raised me. My brother must tell me he loves me even when I briefly leave the room. My sister, well, I could say she has tuned out, but that would be too easy. She feels fucked.

Even the pugs have felt loss. Right after my mom died the little one scratched the fur off her head leaving angry red patches. The fat one just sticks to herself these days. And the old one … she was my mother’s favorite … some six months later my sister came home from school to find her dead.

Grief often prevails.

The kids and I have tried to stick together, but it’s been impossible. I can’t be their mom though sometimes I would like to be. I would like to give them that because they deserve to have a mom. I think that I could do a better job than she. I mean anyone could, right? For Christ sake, she left her two teenage kids alone forever one dark fall night. They were just in their bedrooms watching television or IMing their friends as teens do. She made the choice to miss my brother’s first day of high school, to not send my sister off to her first day of senior year. She will miss the birth of my first child, something that is not currently in the mix, but something that I stay up at night crying over. She always promised me that she would watch her grandchild whenever I needed her to. I remember the day when she told me that I would be a great mom.

This is all the talk of grief-stricken girl.

The other night me and my best girlfriend estimated that I pay $1500 a month in medical fees; the vast majority of funds going to therapy. This suicide has cost me a bloody fortune. And all I do is talk about the same thing … her.

There are no doors to unlock, symbols to decode, mysteries to solve. Suicide is what it is. There is no universal cause. I can think of a million reasons why it became easier for her to shoot herself on October 26, 2005, but I can also think of a million reasons why she might have looked twice at the gun, closed her eyes and stepped away, never to feel that cold metal in her hands.

Part II

Cont ... Please read Part I - right below this post - to keep up.

I turned 30 last month, and my mother wasn’t the first person to call me. I said goodbye to my troubled 20’s, to the 29th year of my life that included the loss of my mother. I will never be able to explain my longing, my wish to be little again so that I could look up at her.

Nor will I ever be able to explain who my mother was.

We became friends at some point, confidants in a way that I really never thought possible. I listened to her talk about her difficulties raising my brother and sister and her fears about the ending of her marriage to our father because of his affairs. Sometimes, at very careful moments she would admit to me the mistakes she made as a parent, as a wife, as a lover. She would talk about her childhood of pennies and beatings, of drunks and hooligans. She was usually drunk at these times. Sometimes she would discuss her short marriage to my biological father, a man I knew very little about. I would ask her questions about the memories I had. I was only four or five when they separated.

In return, she understood my fear of marriage and my reluctance to commit to a man that was perfect for me. She understood my own melancholy. She knew I wasn’t a stranger to men or to vice in multiple sorts. She knew that I was my own worst enemy, that I could personally sabotage everything good in my life in one hot minute.

And sometimes she wouldn’t stop me. She’d let me learn a lesson. Other times, she’d call me out and I’d run off in a rage or cry out of embarrassment and foolishness.

Every day for nearly 29 years, my mother had been my world. And she will probably continue to be until I have children of my own. Until new life helps me let go of loss. Until love helps me to shed grief.

You see, no one I have ever met has ever had such a commanding presence as my mother. She could silence, criticize and maim me with a passing look. If she chose, she could also declare me a goddess. At moments I was a genius, the brightest child to ever exist. I was so hardworking, so articulate, to talented, so pretty that I could model, and style to boot! Gosh, she loved me.

That presence of hers, that force doesn’t allow me to say goodbye. From the grave she tells me to cry for her, to blame for her, to hate for her. I feel as if she will never let me get over her pain.

I am threadbare.

I remember her as parts, which is primarily how I feel, how I’ve always felt before and now after her suicide. That’s how I know that I am hers and she is mine.

Mama was mean and scary at times. I ran from her. I hid from her. As an adult, I told her she was draining me.