Eight Years Ago Today...

....Mom died.

And another

As I was telling someone the story of the hearts, I looked down and
this one was laying on the corner at our feet! We both got a chill!

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Today is Mom's birthday. She would have been 62. Someone on Rosie's Blog mentioned this song today. I had never heard it. But the words are sure right for today...

Artist: Cyndi Lauper

Song: I Want a Mom That Will Last Forever

I want a mom that will last forever

I want a mom to make it all better

I want a mom that will last forever

I want a mom who will love me whatever

I want a mom that'll take my hand

And make me feel like a holiday

A mom to tuck me in that night

and chase the monsters away

I want a mom that'll read me stories

And sing a lullybye

And if I have a bad dream to hold me when I cry

Oh,

I want a mom that will last forever

I want a mom to make it all better

I want a mom that will last forever

I want a mom that will love me whatever, forever

When she says to me, she will always be there

To watch and protect me I don't have to be scared

Oh, and when she says to me I will always love you

I won't need to worry 'cause I know that it's true

I want a mom when I get lonely

Who will take the time to play

A mom who can be a friend and a rainbow when it's gray

I want a mom to read me stories

And sing a lullaby

And if I have a bad dream, to hold me when I cry

Oh,

I want a mom that will last forever

I want a mom to make it all better

I want a mom that will last forever

I want a mom that will love me whatever, forever

I want a mom that will last forever

I want a mom to make it all better

I want a mom that will last forever

I want a mom that will love me whatever, forever

I want a mom

I want a mom

I want a mom that'll last forever

I want a mom that'll last forever

I want a mom

I want a mom

I want a mom that'll last forever

I want a mom

I want a mom that'll last forever

I want a mom that'll last forever

I want a mom...

Mom

7 Years Ago Today...

Mom died 7 years ago today-- still feels like yesterday sometimes.

I love this picture, taken about 31 years ago when Mom and Dad went to England. Unbridled laughter. It's how I like to remember her.

Book Report- "Sick Girl" by Amy Silverstein

Working part time at a book store, I frequently come across books that I never would have found otherwise. I have shelves and shelves of them at home, waiting to be read. I recently stumbled across "Sick Girl" by Amy Silverstein and, after hesitating for fear it might hit too close to home, decided to give it a go. I was right. It was WAY too close to home.

The book is a memoir about a typical type-A law student who, at age 24, found her carefully planned out life in shambles due to an unexpected health crisis. After a period of misdiagnoses (far too common in women, even today) she discovers she has congestive heart failure, and must have a heart transplant.

When her transplant finally arrives and she struggles with a world that expects her to be unconditionally grateful at her good fortune and to pull herself up by the bootstraps despite the fact that she has simply traded one set of problems for another. She is misunderstood and isolated in her feelings, and struggles to portray to role of a "recovered" sick girl for the benefit of those around her. All the while, on the inside she faces the daunting and endless threat of rejection and a series of opportunistic infections and other physical side effects from the immunosuppressant drugs.

I really wish I had had the opportunity to read this book while Mom was still alive. I found myself realizing as I read it that I was just like the friends and family in the book-- well-intentioned people who inadvertently put insane amounts of pressure on the transplant recipient to "be normal" again. To be grateful for being alive and not muddy the waters with tales of shingles and annual heart biopsies and further illness.

Mom had her transplant at age 47, and as far as I was concerned was supposed to get another 20 years. I remember ONE number when we found out that she was going to have to have a heart transplant back in the winter of 1993-- that statistics showed that over 85% of heart transplants were still alive after 5 years. That's all we had at that point, since "routine" transplants had only been being done for about a decade at that point. I focused on the 85% alive, and the fact that what would happen beyond the 5 years was conveniently and definitively swept under the rug.

Mom always said that, despite the pain from the actual surgery, she woke up from the transplant feeling better than she had on months, maybe years. Did I stop paying attention then because I needed to take it that all was good? Did she feel "sick" every day--even after she was "healed"? I know there were complications that came along, but I always thought of those as occasional bumps along the way. Did I not ask because I didn't want to know the answer? My not asking, and not understanding, must have felt awful for her. Is that sort of sense of isolation what led to her depression?

In the book, Silverstein talks about facing the constant fear of "transplant artery disease" and rejection. Mom's official cause of death was listed as "chronic rejection of transplanted heart." When she started going downhill, the doctors told us that another transplant was inevitable. As the family member, my attitude was "fine, let's do it" even though I knew that the likelihood of it coming as fast as the first one (an unheard of 4 days on the list) was pretty slim. Also, I knew that mom had real misgivings of going through it all again. I wanted to beg her to fight, but I knew that she didn't have much fight left in her.

I did not like Amy Silverstein for a good part of the book. I guess I joined the ranks of her family and friends that just wanted her to be thankful and shut up about the rest. But I learned from her, and for that I appreciate her willingness to share all the ugliness that she experienced, in addition to what we are conditioned to call "the miracle of a heart-transplant." Reading this memoir provided an insight into what Mom must have been feeling during those 7 years, 10 months, and 3 days between her transplant and when she died.

I am grateful for that.

Here are a few passages that I found particularly powerful:

"The people closest to me, whose understanding would have been invaluable, could only run my ordeals through their own filters and then invent wildly far-fetched, impossibly upbeat conclusions that had no basis in my reality as a heart-transplant patient. Their creativity had more sting to it than they would ever realize, but I knew they called it up for a good cause: optimistic nonsense about my health situation made everyone feel so much better. Except for me."

" I love my family, but I can't live for them. Maybe that makes me a bad person, I don't know. But Scott [her husband] gets up every morning and goes to work, and my son goes to school. And I'm at home feeling sick. Or at the hospital. I can't just be this fixture that hangs around so the people I love can check in on me every now and then while they go along with their busy lives. Call me selfish, but I need to have some meaning besides living for other people."

Everyone who knows someone who has expereicned a transplant should read this book to understand their loved one's perspective a little better. It will be scary. It will make them worry about the future. But it is honest, and it will paint a realistic picture for them of what they may need to do to be more supportive and compassionate.

Here's a link to the Reader's Group Guide for the book.

Mom

(here's another post about some of this "stuff" from last year)

Home is Where the Heart is...

I found these two hearts in the driveway right outside my apartment... I didn't have my cellphone with me, so I couldn't take the photo of them where I found them as I have been doing, but I'll forgive myself and my obsessive-compulsive nature just this one time. Something didn't feel right about going back out and "re-staging the scene" of the heart finding incident, and I didn't want to risk not finding them amongst the gravel of the driveway if I went to get the camera...

I heard today that Kelly has been noticing hearts now, too. She's not the first person that has told me that after hearing the story of Mom's hearts they have started finding them as well. I'm thrilled that Mom's energy/love/Force/spirit (whatever you want to call it) is still being spread around in this special way. It's the only thing that makes the horrible emptiness of missing her in any way bearable.

Back when I was in college, one of my ex's (Paul) ended up coincidentally being cast in a play with Mom, Dad, and Matt a few years after our relationship had ended. At the time, the irony and awkwardness added just the right amount of silly drama in my own little world, since this was my first "real" relationship and, as they often do, it ended with heartbreak. We had stayed in touch a little, but until I went to see the play (which, by the way, featured a scene in which Paul and my Dad's characters had a drunken slow-dance together) we hadn't really been close since it ended. Mom, Paul and I spent a lot of time together over the few weekends of the show (including a secretive late-night post-castparty drive that I won't commit to the permanency of the written word, but suffice to say we laughed a lot and had a major case of the munchies when we got home). Ever since then, Paul and I have stayed in touch.

So you may be asking what does this have to do with the cost of tea in China...

Well, Paul once told me that he loved Mom from the first time they met. (It was ironic, because we spent the duration of our relationship sneaking around to avoid having to explain who/what he was to me-- had the timing been different, he would have LOVED the in-laws.) He said that he found her easy to talk to and referred to her as "an old spirit" whose presence has obviously been in the world much longer than her physical body. It profoundly impacted the way I looked at my relationship with my mother, allowing me to see her, perhaps for the first time consciously, as someone other than "mom." She didn't let people in easily, but when she did she was fully engaged in that relationship. She had tons of acquaintance-friends, but relatively few deeply close friendships. I'm very much the same way. But Paul was so right about her-- she IS an old spirit, and I know that me finding the hearts is how the universe keeps me connected to her. And I know that the fact that some people that are important to me tell me that they find them now too is just the ripple effect of that love.

Mom's Birthday

Today is Mom's birthday. It was the first thought I had when I woke up, and the last thought as I fell asleep. People who say that it gets better with time don't know what they are talking about... you just learn to deal with it better.

I do dream about her more than I did, which I am grateful for, but the dreams never make sense, and I can never really put all the pieces together when I wake up. I usually have fleeting memories of the dreams sometime the next day, out of nowhere. Today I have vague recollections from a dream last night of us flying, as if on a kite or something-- not on a plane. But there was a sense of conflict, or something very wrong. Grandma B was there too. And Dad. They weren't flying with us, but we were trying to get back to them when we crashed on a beach. And we had to avoid someone, for some reason. Craziness in my dreams...

I was happy to find this heart on her birthday. I kept seeing it on the floor across the room, but never looked closely. I kept catching it out of the corner of my eye, and each time I felt like I needed to look more closely. When I finally did, I saw that the glasses are covered with hearts... :)

Sad News

Gretchen Wyler, the Broadway and TV actress who became a leading animal rights activist, has died at the age of 75, The New York Times reports. Wyler, who brassily celebrated "Stereophonic Sound" in Silk Stockings, died from complications of breast cancer in her home in Camarillo, CA on Sunday, May 27th.

Born in Bartlesville, OK on February 16th, 1932, Wyler made her Broadway debut in the original production of Guys and Dolls, in which she appeared as a replacement in the role of Miss Adelaide. She also created the role of Janice Dayton in Cole Porter's Silk Stockings, appeared as a replacement Lola during the original run as Damn Yankees and as a replacement Rose Grant during the original run of Bye, Bye Birdie. Other Broadway credits included Rumple and Sly Fox.

Wyler also had an enduring career as a television actress. She was notably a regular on the short-lived series "On Our Own" and also spent a season appearing on "Dallas." Other TV credits included "Providence," "Judging Amy," "Friends," "Falcon Crest," "Charlie's Angel" and "The Phil Silvers Show."

Wyler became committed to animal rights in 1966, after seeing the poor conditions of a New York animal shelter. After managing the shelter for a decade, she became the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals' first female board of directors member. She formed Ark Trust in 1991 and ran the organization until it joined with the Humane Society in 2002, after which she became the Humane Society's vice president through 2002. She also founded the Genesis Awards in 1986. The awards "honor the media and entertainment industry for shining a spotlight on animal cruelty." This year, The Beatles legend and animal rights activist Paul McCartney was the first recipient of the Gretchen Wyler Award.

Humane Society President and CEP Wayne Pacelle said of Wyler, "The humane movement has lost one of its brightest stars. Gretchen Wyler devoted 40 intense years to protecting animals, and the cause gained so much ground during that time because of her extraordinary achievements and advocacy -- in the media, in law-making, and in raising public consciousness."

This photo was taken in 1983 after closing night of "Mame" with Music Theater of the Rockies in Colorado Springs. Mom, Matt, and I were all in the show (the first of many shows we all did together). Mom played several character roles and struck up a friendly relationship with Gretchen because of their common attachment to animals.

After Mom died, I made a donation to the Ark Trust in her name and sent this photo with the check. Gretchen wrote back a personal note saying how she remembered Mom well, and was sorry to hear she had passed away. Mom always said that Gretchen was her favorite of the old "MTR Stars" and they had exchanged Christmas cards through the years, so it meant a lot that she wrote back.

We'll miss you, Gretchen. Although our paths crossed nearly 25 years ago, "Mame" was a wonderful memory for so many reasons!

Dadoons

I was exploring the woods behind my apartment and literally stumbled upon a raccoons nest with three babies (really more like "young teens" I guess) all piled up on top of each other. It startled me a little, but they didn't scatter-- they just looked up at me. I fought the temptation to try to pet them and snapped these shots with my cell phone camera instead. Then I got to wondering where the mother was, and figured it would be better for me to go away in case she was not as calm about me being there.

Mom used to literally hand feed the raccoons in her back yard. She called them her "dadoons" and had names for them... Crazy. I have actually played around with a children's storybook called "The Legend of the Mysterious Raccoon Lady" based on it. It's about family and death, and attempts to put loss into a hopeful and uplifting light. One of these days I'll have to work it out and see if it goes anywhere.

40 Years

Mom and dad would have been married 40 years today...

No coincidences...

This isn't the same as finding "my hearts" everywhere, but it was a nice moment anyway...

I was at Barnes and Noble today and this book was left open to this page. Mom loved "Lady and the Tramp." And one of MY favorite Disney films is "Bambi." Hmmm....

For Mom...

Here's an email Dad sent this morning. The email (see below) had a bunch of other photos that I didn't copy, but there was one of a Mountain Pass that looked like Trail Ridge Road in Colorado. Dad said it was Mom's favorite place on earth. I had the photo posted for a while, but for some reason it stopped downloading with the page... Oh well. In your mind, imaging all those gorgeous mountains for the "Lord of the Rings" movies -- that's what it looked like.

Here are a few more images of Trail Ridge I got online...

Mama/Mommy/Mother/Mom

The young mother set her foot on the
path of life. "Is this the long way?" she asked. And the guide said: "Yes, and the way is hard. And you will be old before you reach the end of it. But the end will be better than the beginning."

But the young mother was happy, and she would not believe that anything could be better than these years. So she playedwith her children, and gathered flowers for them along the way, and bathed them in the clear streams; and the sun shone on them, and the young Mother cried,"Nothing will ever be lovelier than this."

Then the night came, and the storm, and the path wasdark, and the children shook with fear and cold, and the mother drew them close and covered them with her mantle, and the children said, "Mother, we are not afraid, for you are near, and no harm can come."

And the morning came, and there was a hill ahead, andthe children climbed and grew weary, and the mother was weary.But at all times she said to the children, "A little patience and we are there."

So the children climbed, and when they
reached the top they said, "Mother, we would not have done it without you."

And the mother, when she lay down at night, looked upat the stars and said, "This is a better day than the last, for mychildren have learned fortitude in the face of hardness. Yesterday I gave them courage. Today, I've given them strength."

And with the next day came strange clouds which darkened the earth, clouds of war, and hate, and evil. And the children groped and stumbled, and the mother said: "Look up. Lift your eyes to the light.”

And the children looked and saw above the clouds an everlasting glory, and it guided them beyond the darkness. And that night the Mother said, "This is the best day of all, for I have shown my children God."

And the days went on, and the weeks, and the months, and the years. And the mother grew old and she was little and bent.But her children were tall and strong, and walked with courage. And when the way was rough, they lifted her, for she was as light as a feather. And at last they came to a hill, and beyond they could see a shining road and golden gates flung wide. And mother said, "I have reached the end of my journey. And now I know the end is better than the beginning, for my children can walk alone, and their children after them."

And the children said, "You will always walk with
us,Mother, even when you have gone through the gates."And they stood and watched her as she went on alone, and the gatesclosed after her. And they said: "We
cannot see her but she is with us still. A Mother like ours is more than a memory. She is a living presence......."

Your Mother is always with you....

She's the whisperof the leaves as you walk down the street;

She's the smell of bleach in your freshly laundered socks;

She's the cool hand on your brow when you're not well.

Your Mother lives inside your laughter.

And she's crystallized in every tear drop.

She's the place you came from, your first home;

and she's the map you follow with every step you take.

She's your first love and your first heartbreak,

and nothing on earth can separate you.

Not time, not space...not even death!

____________

Dad also suggested we listen to "I Know You're Out There Somewhere" by the Moody Blues. Here's the video. It's right on! I know Mom's out there somewhere.

Here's a link to the video on YouTube, in case the embedded video isn't working (I've been having trouble getting it to stay up consistently.)

First Day Back

Found this outside Dunkin Donuts this morning. It's my first day back from vacation, and I'm feeling a little overwhelmed. Nice to get this heart-message from Mom to remind me she's out there...

Black Friday

6 years ago today Mom died.

Matt and I have referred to that day as "Black Friday" after a book by James Patterson with that title that Dad was reading at the time. It was on the table in the family area of Mom's room when she died. It was actually a few years later that we realized we had both made that connection, and I think this is the first time that this date has fallen on a friday since then.

I always buy white roses on this anniversary, as well as her birthday and Mothers Day.

I'm trying not to be grumpy with everyone around me today, but it's hard.

Hearts on It's a Small World

Mom always loved this ride (eeeesh!) so I posted this one for her.

Another heart found me last night at about midnight...

Here's the background on the hearts. It's a long story, but you'll understand what all these heart posts are about...

If I click my heals 3 times, can I have my mommy back?

Back in late 80's, Mom and I made a date to go to a museum in Denver for a "Hollywood" exhibit. She drove up from Colorado Springs, and I drove down from college in Boulder. We had lunch and spent the day browsing the exhibits. It was such a wonderful day. The highlight was seeing the actual Scarecrow costume from "The Wizard of Oz."

God, I miss her!

A Hippie Honeymoon

When we were growing up, Mom always told us that this was a picture of she and Dad on their honeymoon... I'm still not 100% sure she was kidding, although I think there was something in there about a visit to Washington, DC too...

Either way, I always loved this picture.

As it lay...

Just came across this one on the carpet at Barnes and Noble this morning! If I think about it, I'll snap a pic on my cell phone camera and moblog them on the spot like this one to show them as they find me...