November 2019
“If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that I’d like to do
Is to save every day till eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you
If I could make days last forever
If words could make wishes come true
I’d save every day like a treasure and then
Again, I would spend them with you
But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do, once you find them
I’ve looked around enough to know
That you’re the one I want to go through time with“
Shut up, Jim Croce.
My mom loved that song, “Time in a Bottle.” When planning her memorial, my dad and I considered playing the song.
Vetoed.
There was other beautiful music. I refused to let Jim make a mess of me that day.
“Bad, Bad, Keri Brown, the baddest man in the whole damn town…..”
Anyway, my mind is working in time these days- tied to time. It never weighed too heavily on me in the past, except a bit around my girls’ birthdays. Particularly at my eldest’s 5th birthday, I remember feeling quite sad and having the desire to stop time. My girls were just too damn precious at that stage and I didn’t want them to change and grow. A similar tug has occurred each passing year. It can be hard to accept the truth that children age and you want to savor it all, but you’re also pretty tired.
Since my mom died, I am begging to slow down the time. Internally, I worry that the further I get away from that last day with her, the bigger the missing will become, the more I could forget her voice and face and sayings and it makes my throat clench it is so scary. I don’t want my life to feel normal without her. I don’t want a new routine. I don’t want my children to make new memories without her. I want to freeze it all. Completely fearful to move forward, I don’t want to get further from her than I feel now. I am frightened.
My mom called the TV remote “the clicker.”
Can I press the life pause button on “the clicker?”
“It takes time.” This is the quote that keeps on giving when one is grieving- I say it to myself, I say it to others in defense of myself, many folks say it to me, it is written on cards. A deep cut doesn’t heal overnight. My mom had a stomach ache and then died a few weeks later. Those few weeks were a battle. And it feels like I got seriously wounded in the battle, but I have to keep getting up for work in the morning.
“It takes time.”
What is the “It” part of that statement?
This is where my brain is currently parked: I have reached a time in my life that people will just keep dying. It happened too early with my mom. But no one is immune to their parents dying. My shoe has dropped… into a gully with a loud bang….and in time, with large scars, my heart and body will feel less sad and mad. I think? BUT, I will be waiting for the other shoe. I have gotten to the tipping point in life and ahead is a downward slope. There is not just one more shoe to drop, but a bounty of others that will sting each time they fall. And I don’t want it.
My youngest child’s initial response to most things is “NO.” This is followed by seconds of pondering, and can often change to yes, but is always “no,” first. When she was 1, her speech was garbled, but she always made herself understood. The most frequent delivery was by waving her hands in front of her little meatloaf shaped body and saying, “I do’n wan it.” She did not want it. I heard it thousands of times. I would like a little white flag I can wave around that reads, “I Do’n wan it” a trillion times.
Yesterday was Thanksgiving. I have not felt thankful. I live an extremely fortunate life. I want for nothing…. well, almost nothing. I should be thankful. We had lovely company who brought a bit of warmth. I drank wine. I don’t like wine.. Cheers!
Anyway, on Tuesday evenings the girls and I go to our Helping Place. Generally, I sustain those evenings with a large lump in my throat, but not tears. With extra big feelings this holiday week, the three of us took turns crying- a bit for our own pain, some for our new friends- circled up together in grief.
Not that good.
There is a little library at our Helping Place filled with sweet, and yet incredibly depressing, books. Want to help children understand suicide? Draw a little bird on the front cover! Use calming shades of blue! My youngest looked at the cover of one such book on Tuesday and, with very little expression, turned to me and asked, “Is this one going to be about someone going real crazy and shooting themselves in the head?” How I responded, I can’t recall, but the question sure stuck in my noodle.
On Thanksgiving I woke up feeling void. This is not unusual… Not mad, not necessarily sad… just not really. Most often, my mornings begin at my little desk with coffee and quiet (and back before June, praying) and my computer. Thanksgiving morning followed suit, until my eldest came from the Den in her pajamas and broke the quiet. “Just now, for just a fleeting moment, (yes, she speaks this way) I wished I was dead so I didn’t have to hurt this bad. Or I wished I had severely broken my arms instead.. anything else.” And she choked on her words. And I wanted to throw my coffee in the air and scream, “REWIND.”….
Please, anyone, rewind the time. Go back, go back, please go back to last year when my mother was alive. Please, I am desperate. Rewind the time. Let me feel grateful and not miserable. I want to rewind. I am begging. I am worried.
Too bad, lad. There is no clicker.
I can push the feelings down. I can do the things. I can serve the food and, soon, fill the stockings. But I cannot go back.
When my children are hurting and things are hard they say, “mama” instead of their usual, “mom.” They want only mama; to be present, hold them, say kind and calm things.
I concur.
“I am frightened, Auntie Em, Frightened.”
My mom hated that movie, but she knew in her soul how much I loved it. As a preschooler, I became absolutely obsessed. At 3, I attempted to change my name to Dorothy. At 16, I named my car Dorothy. When I had my first baby, I named her little owl lovey Dorothy.
I just washed that little cloth Dorothy today and will soon tuck it into bed, next to my long torso preteen child. Time fades the little owl. Time grows the baby girl. I will say kind and calm things. I will try to look sure.
When I tuck myself in later, after I take my meds, in my mind I will play, “Oh. Auntie Em, Please don’t go away, I am so frightened. Come back. Come back.”
The desperation in Dorothy’s voice often brought me to tears there, toward the end of the movie. That poor girl can’t be reached by her friends and she is pleading for the touch of her family. As a little girl on the sofa, I knew just when to hit fast forward on the clicker to avoid that scene.
“But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do, once you find them
I’ve looked around enough to know
That you’re the one I want to go through time with“
Mr Croce doesn’t explain what to do when you realize his sentiments too late.. Or how to pass the time when one of your “ones” leaves you too soon.
Maybe he didn’t know.
Not That Good Grief 