December 2019
When I go to the movies I like to recline, eat my soft pretzel bites with cheese, drink my soda, and then turn off most of my brain. Simply, I’d like to have a giggle, or watch a romance unfold, maybe feel a warm fuzzy or two. I want to leave my thinking at home.
On Sunday, I took my girls, husband, and friend to see Meet Me in St. Louis at the movie theatre. A Treasured classic starring one of my favorites, Judy Garland. I had not seen the movie in about 20 years. I was introduced to it around the age of 8, the same as any other classic movies I know, by my “grandma next door,”Nancy. She loves her some TCM channel goodness.
Meet me in St Louis, in current time, is charming, slightly strange, and for me on Sunday, deeply upsetting. My children liked the music, but inquired as to the actual plot. There really isn’t much of one. The song, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” was written for the movie and Judy Garland made it famous.
On the big screen on Sunday, while wearing a stunning red dress which highlights her flawless, 6 month old baby looking skin, she sang:
“Have yourself a merry little Christmas”
Not likely, Judy.
“Through the years we all will be together,”
Not this year. Or next.
“If the fates allow.”
My fate has been decided.
And it all got me thinking, and stuffing my tears, at the movies.
I wish we’d seen ELF instead.
My mother was not a big fan of old movies, but loved almost any other kind. She was willing to give anything a chance and generally found something positive to say about everything she viewed. We were opposite like that.
Her favorites were Die Hard and things starring Morgan Freeman, preferably in a law enforcement position. She loved action with handsome actors, including Jaws and all Star Wars. I’ve never seen a Star Wars movie and plan to keep it that way. My mom described them as, “really cool movies.” I am not a fan of Sci-Fi and I can tell George Lucas made that original ship thing in his garage, Jeri.
The last action movie I viewed in the theatre was one of the Batmans. I spent the entire movie contemplating if Maggie Gyllenhaal’s real name was Margaret and also judging the outfits of the people sitting around me. I whispered my opinions to my husband, sitting next to me. He claimed, “never again.” Only a few things my mother and my husband had in common: their affinity for Stephen King, cheese baked into food items, and taste in movies.
Sometime in the 1990s, I have clear memory of watching the movie Hope Floats with my mom. It starred Sandra Bullock, in her prime, and the adorable Harry Connick Jr. At heart, it is a romance film, but it also showcases a complicated, but loving relationship between a mother and daughter. In the movie, Sandra Bullock is uptight and in a bit of a midlife crisis. Her mother and she are vastly different in personalities, with the mother being quite eccentric. My mother had neither of their traits. Likely, I’d be described as a bit of both characters- bossy, opinionated, and definitely in a crisis. Personally, I would never describe myself as “extra.”
The mother in Hope Floats dies. Previews for the movie showed the cute little grand-daughter, but never even a hint that the wise and feisty grandmother drops dead. It is not a classic movie.
Sandra does a responsible job of portraying the immediate frantic part of life that follows the death of a mother. In vivid detail, I can recall her character ripping through her mother’s closet to find a black dress to wear at the funeral. In my own home, I tearfully applied a leftover bit of my mom’s lotion yesterday. I swiped the half empty bottle from her vanity two days after she died.
After our viewing of Hope Floats, I recall my mother and I talking about the movie; we liked doing those things together. In agreement, we declared it nice Sandra and Harry got together in the end, but we were also sad that the fictional mother died. Did the plot need that arc for Sandra to eventually live her best life?
As of the 11th of this month, my mother has been dead for 6 months.
Generally, most trauma in books, movies, and life is referred to as “a nightmare” or a “bad dream.” I can’t think of any other way to describe it, either.
On the daily, the only piece of information I need to remind myself is in fact, a fact, is that my mother is indeed dead. It’s bad.
Nightmares are rarely fully true, some pieces often true, but the hope is that the dawn brings relief. For six months, my oldest daughter has been plagued with nightmares. A few mornings ago, she crawled into my bed weeping. She retold her nightmare, in great detail (as always), of one of her best friends dying. In it, she watched as people performed CPR, but he never came to. Within the dream, she stood next to his mother and pleaded for her to say it wasn’t real. The mother declared him dead. She woke up sobbing and scared.
After she finished telling me about it, I said, “He is not dead.” She said, “I’ve been waiting all morning for you to say those words.”
Pleading, she followed, “I hate these nightmares and every night I have asked God to please hear me and to give me good dreams, or no dreams. Why isn’t He listening to me?”
She asked a similar question 6 months ago. My eldest has been faith filled for most of her life. She has a spark for Christ and takes her beliefs seriously. My husband said of her at 3, “she’s touched.”
The weeks my mom was sick, said daughter prayed relentlessly. I lost her in the hospital foyer one day and found her on her knees in the chapel. The day her Maya died, my grief stricken girl screamed, “I prayed for a miracle. I believed. Why didn’t we get the miracle????”
Every mother wants answers and protection for their children.
I’m void. No answers for my girl.
I’d like our hope to float. I’d like to have the Christmas that Judy hoped to be true.
Instead, daily, I have to remind myself the truth. This is a bad dream that won’t be woken.
The folks at The Helping Place kindly remind me that it gets less scary. The facts, not faith. Brains process. Emotions simmer. Biology, or Psychology, or something.
At the end of Meet me in St. Louis, the patriarch of the family decides to cancel moving everyone to New York City because he sees how much his family wants to remain in their hometown. Problem solved!
After Sandra portrayed the role of a grieving daughter, a director called “cut” and she got to go home.
When my Mother was at St. Joe Hospital for three weeks, it became my home. My children were merely visitors in my life at that time. It was Spring and my eldest decided to bring her piano music to the hospital one day to play in the foyer. Her little fingers played Disney songs and other happy tunes while people gathered around to rest and smile. It filled her little internal bucket. She asked a few days ago if I would take her back to that hospital lobby to play Christmas music, hoping to bring a little cheer to the weary. I agreed.
This morning, with this entry mostly finished, my eldest sat down to practice her songs. As she beautifully played “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” I nearly wept.
It almost felt like a little sign, and I am not really into signs. Or possibly the wall I’ve been building actually blocks any potential signals.
I had my eyes closed while I listened to her play, and was surprised when I heard a thunk on the desk in front of me. Opening my eyes, I found my youngest daughter beside me with a determined look and a Barbie, in some sort of wheeled contraption, in front of me. With lovely music in the background she proclaimed as she pointed the doll, “She is a crippled mute.”
There was zero pretext. And I am tired. So I didn’t ask any questions.
Thankfully, I was quickly informed that my child had built a vehicle for Barbie to get around and she also designed a portable computer for communication needs. My youngest found a way for the hope to float, even within devastating confinements. Barbie is living her best life.
Christmas time was my mom’s absolute favorite. She loved every part of it including looking forward to any blockbusters released at the Holidays.
Truth: She and I can’t see a movie together this year.
I wish we could at least do it in a dream, or I could see her smiling there. Instead, I replay over and over again my mother taking her last breaths. Other dream stuff fills between- me stranded on a burning boat, Judy Garland and Jim Croce trading pills, Buddy the Elf smoking a cigarette on his way through the Candy Cane Forest- that sort of thing.
My girls and I- we are not finding solace in dreams and rest. But, gratefully, we have other outlets.
My oldest child has music. She has been belting out Natalie Merchant songs, circa 1996, every morning and afternoon. She plays the piano to rest.
My youngest gets lost in pretend play, mixing species and time periods on a whim. Just today I spied a scenario on her table involving a clown figure, a pony with a tiara, and a dragon, all inside of a pyramid.
I have this blog to fuss, like Charlie Brown. Too difficult in real time, I can’t seem to let my tears or words flow. It’s good to write them out here.
We go each week to a Helping Place.
One day, my girls may look back and wonder what robot mom was thinking in 2019. Part of my motivation here is to be able to share with them, when they are grown, that I was indeed thinking and feeling and struggling so very much. And trying. We certainly aren’t currently living our best life. But I’m getting out of bed each day. And I’m listening.
I can’t answer my daughters’ profound questions and I can’t stop our nightmares. But I can take my girls to the movies. My mother is dead. Their mother is not.
Not That Good Grief 