On my nightstand is a photo of my mother and father sitting on the couch with all of our pugs. I believe that it’s Christmas of 2004 and both my parents have that sleepy look in their eyes like they’ve been up all night wrapping gifts. I can’t help but comment on the smug look on my father’s face. It’s the look I’ve become accustomed to the last ten years. It makes me both laugh and cry.
My mother gained a pretty significant amount of weight (unusual for her) the last four years and didn’t feel much like posing for the camera. There are very few pictures of her in recent years, so my nightstand photo is particularly precious to me. I light a candle by the photo most evenings. I also give her kiss and say goodnight before I turn in. All of this has become necessary parts of my day. When I travel the photo comes along and finds a place by my bedside.
After a recent disturbing conversation with my sister where she informed of my father’s recent behaviors, I decided that I didn’t want that picture on my nightstand any longer. I hated his fucking smug face. It was about 11:00 a.m. and I tore through the house like a whirling dervish in search of a new picture of my lovely looking mother sans Smugface.
It was a bad night. Since I’ve become holder of the enormous family photo collection, I’ve spent countless hours carefully placing them in photo albums. There are boxes of photos in my office, on our kitchen table, on our bar. I was up and down the stairs. Lots of crying. Dan followed me, closing all of the windows because he knows the cries will turn into screams and at some point I may start talking to my dead mother very loudly. On top of it all, I’m already feeling the drowsy affects of the sleeping pill I downed right after I got off the phone. I’m very obviously hysterical at this moment and it’s very liberating.
I finally locate a picture - me and mom on my college graduation day in May 1999. My parents threw me a fabulous party where we all got tanked and ate tons of yummy Italian food. It was great fun. It’s also the last picture I have of us together and that was nearly eight years ago. I can’t even begin to explain how bad this makes me feel.
I stomp back upstairs to find a picture frame. All of my movements are disjointed as I place the photo into the sky blue frame. My head is pounding. I pop a vicodin. Dan brings me water and tissues. I am snotting on his shirt. He finally settles me down in our bed.
The next evening I notice the glass from the sky blue frame is cracked. I don’t recall this. I put the picture with Smugface back on my nightstand and light a candle. I miss him.
Friday, October 06, 2006
Thursday, October 05, 2006
The Hot List
Must see movie: Half Nelson
Favorite new actor: Ryan Gosling
Kimmee's new title: Celebrities Editor
Favorite new show: Brothers & Sisters
Hottest cast in a TV show: Smith
Best drama going down in the tabloids: Anna Nicole Smith's Baby Daddy
Most tired celeb: Jennifer Anniston
Stacy called it: Kate Hudson & Owen Wilson
Best book read recently: Danni Shapiro's Family History
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
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.
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.
Monday, October 02, 2006
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.
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.
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