Difficult Decisions

A constant battle.

As a kid, I got teased at school. Small for my age, with a mop of crazy red hair and a mouth full of big Chiclet teeth, I was taunted and tormented daily. Having picked up on my Mom’s wit fairly early in life, I was sarcastic and snarky and got myself into some pretty unpleasant situations. I was too young for my sense of humor. There were few days when I didn’t come home crying, or with my knees scraped and covered in dirt from having been pushed to the ground. It was pure misery.

When I got off the school bus at the end of my street, I would trudge home with my yellow Cabbage Patch Kid lunchbox in hand, and worry about my Mom being mad at me for ruining my new tights or school uniform. I worried for nothing: There she was, waiting for me at the front door. I would burst out crying the moment I saw her, and she would hug me and reassure me. I am 26 years past the elementary school teasing, and I still feel her arms around me, kissing the top of my head and saying: “You’re a funny little girl, my Amy. The kids at school just don’t understand you yet.”

Even now, at the tail end of my thirties, I still feel like the little girl that no one understands. The difference between the 10 year old me and the 36 year old me (other than phenomenal orthodontic work and boobs), is that I’m okay with not everyone getting my humour or my way of being.

I’m the first to admit I’ve always had a big mouth. As a kid, I was too small to use fists to protect myself: Words were my shield. If you started high-school with braces, a full-time headgear and big frosty pink eyeglasses, you would have your guard up too. *sigh*

My Mom taught me the importance of speaking my pain or anger, rather than punching someone. “Words hurt more”, she said. As I got older, I became more proficient at sharing my frustration and anger with words. I also became a victim of the words of others. I’ve dished it out, and I’ve taken it too. What keeps my shield up are the judgments of those that don’t understand me, and choose to judge my journey before they’ve walked my path.

Mom and I had some very intense fights over the years, and our words were like daggers. A close friend of hers once mused that our verbal battles would seriously wound anyone else, and permanently. It was just how we fought. Our fights were as big and loud as our love for each other. Our harsh words spewed forth, each of us trying to outwit and out-sarcasm the other. Even without my Mom to battle, I will be the first to admit that my lexicon has a large volume of scathing words that I have used to guard myself. It’s what I know. Some people kick-box: I word-battle. And I fully admit that I work extremely hard to not fight that way anymore. It isn’t healthy for anyone to be a bitter fighter.

In this blog I’ve shared how impacted I was not only by the loss of my Mother, but my divorce as well. I have worked very hard to rebuild not only my life, but my relationships. My father and brother are my best friends, and they know I do not take them for granted.  It has been a very long and bumpy journey to get to this place where I am comfortable in my own skin, and at peace with the difficulties I’ve been through.

What I type next, although ill-advised to put in a blog, needs to be shared. I need to get the words out of me and I don’t know any other way to do it other than here. In my own space.  I am sharing this because no matter your journey, no matter your circumstances, it isn’t okay to let other people hurt you. It isn’t okay to let hurt fester and grow. I have been feeling a pretty big hurt that I need to let go of once and for all.

So here we go.

When I was 15, I was overly sarcastic towards a boy in my English class. He retaliated by drawing a big black swastika across 80% of my desk. My teacher did nothing about it, other than let me switch desks.  When I got home from school, I told my mother what had happened, and she called the school to complain about my teacher’s lack of appropriate action.  She said: “Amy is the grand-daughter of Holocaust survivors. How dare you insinuate that my child should forgive and forget this?” I stood there while she paced the floor, phone in hand, tearing a strip off of the Principal of my high school.  She finally slammed down the phone. I had never seen her like this.

After sitting quietly for what seemed like an hour, I asked if I should do what they said, and just forgive and forget what the kid had done. She poured herself a cup of tea, sat across from me and said thoughtfully: “Amy, you know what’s right and wrong. You decide if this is something you can forgive and forget. You choose.”

And so I chose. I chose to forgive the kid, and forget what he had done because he was 15 and didn’t know better.

I am once again in a situation where I have to make that same choice. I have to decide if I can forgive and forget what has been said and done to me.

In this case, however, the hurtful circumstances were imposed by grown and trusted adults: My family.

In May of 2011, I found myself at a family event surrounded by hundreds of teens/pre-teens on Blackberries and iPhones. An avid Twitter user, I posted some fairly sarcastic social commentary about “kids these days”. I tweeted what I felt and submitted my posts into the abyss of the Twitterverse. I got a few giggles from friends, and that was that.  No harm was meant.

When the family members in question happened upon what I had said on Twitter, they opted to publicly shame and humiliate me instead of calling me to tell me they were angry or hurt. They chose to vilify me in a single email, instead of talking it through with me, like adults.

They tore me apart. Their words were sharp and mean, and I admit that they have scarred me permanently. They questioned my love for my father, my brother, and they talked about my dead Mother in this vengeful email.  They said that they never liked me, and that I am a bad person, ruined forever by my Mother’s death. They indicated I should be more careful with my words and implied that my lot in life was due to the fact that I’m a waste of space.  You have to dig really deep to put that kind of ugly hatred in an email. They accomplished what they had intended. I was shredded.

To further intensify this horrible email, they sent it to my entire extended family, including my father and brother. They intentionally hurt my father and brother just to get to me. By that alone, I cannot abide. Ever.

In my heart and mind, the words in that email are unforgivable and unforgettable.  And so I choose to leave those people in my past, and move on.

To those family members (who don’t read this blog, having deemed it “crap”), I quote Winston Churchill:

“We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.”

I am not a slave to your words for one second longer.

Le Nouvel An

 

Well, here we are in 2012. 

Another year filled with resolutions and promises to do better and be better.

My Mom always told me to make resolutions I plan on keeping, otherwise it isn’t much worth it. She never kept her resolutions, but that’s because they were always something ridiculous like “Eat less chocolate.” Who was she kidding?

With her resolution proviso in mind, I only have two resolutions for 2012. They are the umbrellas under which most everything else falls.

In 2012, I resolve to:

1. Try and put myself first. I’ve a horrible knack for worrying about everyone else and not myself, so I’m going to try and put my heart and my health on the priority list. I have always wanted to be a runner. I have asked a few "runner friends" to help me get there. I hope to one day post about a marathon I’ve run.   

2. Stop trying to fix everyone. I need to remember that just because I’ve been through losing my mother and getting divorced, I cannot protect my friends and loved ones from going through the same things. I cannot stop people from feeling the pain I have gone through. Healing requires pain in the first place, and I need to be cognizant that I cannot stop people from feeling sad or scared: I can only support them when they do. I am a friend: Not a mechanic.

I wish I could say I will be 100% successful at achieving my two resolutions, but what’s most important is that I actually put the effort in. 

So many people resolve to hit the gym, eat better, or cut certain things out of their lives completely. There’s no stability in extreme changes.

If I learned anything from my mother, it was balance. And she didn’t even know she was teaching me. She made time for herself and time for her family, and no one ever felt slighted. She painted, sketched and wrote poems in the most beautiful calligraphy you can imagine. It was her “Judi” time, and she took it very seriously.

We should all carve out time for ourselves, to reset, refresh, and relax. If you’re going to make any resolutions to “be better”, start with being better to yourself. Trust me. It will be so worth it. 

This post would be longer, but I’ve scheduled in some “Amy” time for today, and I have to go out into the sun and walk my dog. And sing the Littlest Hobo theme song to her, because she seems to like it.

Lily Von Shtupp

I had wanted to post this on May 11^th, 2011, the five year anniversary of my Mom’s passing. Not sure what happened, but here it is:

Today marks five years that my Mom has been gone.

I woke up with a broken heart, feeling like I did so many years ago. The emptiness and loss felt so fresh, and I surprised myself with how low I felt after so long without her. The truth is that the pain and heartbreak never go away. That will never change. I will miss my Mom until the end of time.

It has been five whole years since I have hugged her, and smelled her signature vanilla, cookie and lavender smell. When I hugged her, I used to bury my face in her neck and inhale. After she died, I kept some of her clothing unwashed, so that I could sleep with it and smell her smell. The clothing is stored away now, and the smell has faded. My memories of her perfume are still as sharp.

It has been five whole years since I have heard her voice, telling me how much she loved me, holding my hand in hers as I read to her in the hospital. She looked at me intently, studying my face as though counting the freckles and trying to remember everything about me. I was doing the same thing, committing her freckles and brown eyes to memory. I can still see the lines around her eyes, created by years of laughter.

I was so moved that my close friends texted me, called me, or emailed me to let me know they were thinking about me and that they knew today would be hard. I have some pretty spectacular friends, and am so thankful for them daily.

One fantastic friend in particular helped me turn today, May 11^th, into a new anniversary. A happy one.

She picked me up and drove me in horrible traffic to pick-up a wee puppy that needed a home. *Lily Von Shtupp, named for my Mother’s favorite movie character, was adopted at 6:30pm from a dog rescue. Small and shaking with fear, I scooped her up in my arms walked with her to the car to head home. I whispered in her floppy ear: "Life is going to be good for you, I promise."

I'm pretty sure Lily rescued me: Instead of sadness, I am filled with happiness and love. She's just 18lbs, but her meaning is huge. We're moving forward together. I hope she likes it here.

May 12, 2011: Lily doesn't mind my messy hair.

*If you haven’t seen Mel Brooks’ movie Blazing Saddles, go watch it immediately. It completely embodies my Mom’s sense of humor.

Sorry About That

Recently I’ve had more than a few people tell me they’ve read though this blog, and that it made them cry. And instinctively, I apologize. I’m not sure why I do this. Maybe because I don’t expect that my words will actually cause people to feel my hurt and my loss. Almost as though I feel like I’ve inconvenienced them into feeling something.

It made me think of how often people apologize for things, and how often they don’t when they should.

When I was 16, my mother let me read her copy of Erich Segal’s novel “Love Story”.

Given to her by my father in 1971, it bore the tag line “Love means not ever having to say you’re sorry.” My mother had underlined it with a pencil. The underlining fades as the pages age, but I can see how important that statement was to her. The indent where she pressed the pencil firmly into the page is still there. She was 21 years old. Her boyfriend had given her this book as a symbol of his love for her, and she took it very seriously.

It is one of the many books that shaped my life, but unique in that it was my Mom’s way of teaching me about loving and respecting others. She wanted me to know that love takes work, patience, and sometimes forgiveness. When I was done reading it, I told her: “Mom, I think sometimes we need to apologize. Because how else will someone know you’re sorry?”

Part of apologizing when you’ve hurt or offended someone is knowing you’ve done wrong, and having the humility to admit to it. I can be extremely stubborn and opinionated (I can totally see my father/brother/boyfriend/best friend nodding vehemently at that statement), but I do make it a practice to acknowledge my wrongdoings in order to grow as a person. It’s safe to say that no matter your age or life experience, not everyone has the kind of self-knowledge required to know when to say “I’m sorry”.

I’ve always been a big believer in the power of the apology. In my mind, the most sincere apologies carry a lot of weight, and there is a very small window in which apologies can be offered in order for them to be considered truly genuine.

Whenever I fought with my Mom, we always said I’m sorry at the same time. We had the same stewing temperature. It usually was within 4 hours of whatever argument had taken place. We were fairly predictable.

My general rule is this: If you’ve done something wrong and you haven’t apologized in 72 hours, I’m kind of done with you. Yes, it’s a pretty strict time frame. Yes, it is harsh. But when you care about someone’s feelings and know you’ve screwed up, an apology should be forthcoming. And fast. It's that simple.

In the last year, I’ve had some major disappointments where apologies were due, and none came. Those disappointments were also fairly clarifying, in that they showed me who I was dealing with. When I thought about what I would tell my Mom about those people, I could hear her answer in my head. She had said it to me once before, when I was in my early 20s and had gotten into a fight with a friend who had hurt me deeply: “Amy, not everyone gets it. The ones that never apologize for hurting you or others are not worth keeping in your life because they will never see beyond themselves.”

Since my mother died, and as I continue to evolve as a person, I try my best to say I'm sorry and mean it. That's how my Mom was, and that's how I want to be: True and honest.

As this blog changes and grows with me, there will be posts like this. Posts where I pontificate and proliferate. There are so many moments in life when apologies are due, and none are offered or received. I suppose I just think that opportunities for honesty and truthfulness abound, and so few of them are seized.

"An apology is the superglue of life.  It can repair just about anything."  -Lynn Johnston

Turkeys and Thanks

Meticulous Turkey Basting 2009

It has been some time since I posted, and it hasn’t been for lack of interest. Or lack of sadness for that matter. 

It just seems like in the last few months, I’ve been feeling pretty good. The reasons aren’t bountiful, but they’re meaningful to me. I haven’t won the lottery (my Mom played the same numbers for years without winning more than $50, so I’m saving my toonies), nor have I climbed Everest: I’ve simply come to a level plateau of feeling GOOD. Certainly, there will be further mountains to climb, and valleys of sad times, but for the most part I’m feeling at peace.

It seemed foreign to me so long ago, that feeling of inner peace. I remember when something as simple as Thanksgiving dinner made me feel cynical and angry. At a time of thanks and blessing-counting, I was thankful for nothing. My mother had died, and it felt like being thankful for anything was hypocritical and without merit.

And here I am, finally able to be thankful with my whole heart. It is a strange place to be, but I like it here.

I am celebrating my 6^th Thanksgiving dinner without my Mom. At first, I didn't even want to attempt making a family dinner, hurting at the thought of doing it without her. I was her sous-chef.  

Over the last couple of years, however, I have hustled and bustled in the kitchen with my Dad, making a serious turkey (my father basting every 30 minutes like clockwork). The stuffing we make is moist and savory, the mashed potatoes creamy and delicious. The baked apples steam when you stick your fork in them, coated with vanilla ice cream. Just the way my Mom used to do it. And maybe even a little better. *wink wink* I have tried to do my Mother’s crafty side justice by collecting the ruby and gold leaves that have fallen to the ground, and placing them on the table as decoration. The perfect display of Fall’s bounty. 

Turkey prep methods? Agree to disagree.

I think my Mom would be proud of how far we’ve come not just in the kitchen, but as individuals. As a family. We have put our well-being on the table and talked about it. Picked it apart. Put it back together. My brother, my father and I: We are whole together. There will always be a part of my heart that hurts and longs for my best-friend, but I think life without her is slowly starting to evolve into something meaningful too. It has to. Change is inevitable.

So on this Thanksgiving, I am so very thankful for my Dad, my Brother, and those that I love very much. I am thankful for the friends that love me for my past and my present, and the friends that give me wings for my future. My heart has mended because of all of you. I laugh more, I feel more, and I am more.

For those of you basting turkeys and celebrating your blessings in life: Happy Thanksgiving. I raise my glass to you, your families, and your Moms. Make sure she sits down to eat tonight, because it’s a safe bet she’s hovering over you making sure your helping of stuffing was big enough. 

This is far from my last post about Judi, although I know it sounds like it will be the last. 

Simply put, I suspect that future posts might be more upbeat: Remembering what made me laugh about her. And I hope if you’re reading this you’re okay with that. Because I finally am.

Famous Last Words



I still legitimately need a bib when I eat ice cream.



As the last few posts have been fairly deep, I thought I’d liven up my Mother’s memory by demonstrating her comedic aptitude. This is the side of her that I loved best, and that I remember and miss most.

From the moment I could tell a knock-knock joke, my Mother stressed the importance of a good sense of humor. According to Mom, it wasn’t enough to just be funny and make others laugh. She taught me that it was just as important to be able to laugh at myself. That is a skill that is difficult to hone, because laughing at me means that I accept my quirks and my foibles. Let’s be honest: That is no easy feat for anyone.

Mom was the stealth bomber of humor in our house. She was smooth and quick with her witty comments and barbs, and no one ever saw them coming. My brother has inherited that awesome trait, making him one of the funniest people I know.

When my Mother was initially diagnosed with Cancer, her first instinct was to make us laugh even though she had just been told she was very sick. She always put us first, our well-being and our feelings. The doctor had finished telling our family that my Mother was essentially dying and that he would do his best to help her beat the illness. In the silence of the room, and without missing a beat, she quipped: “Well, it’s a good thing I got my flu shot” followed in quick succession with “Smoke em’ if you’ve got em’.”

My Mother’s humor put everyone at ease, no matter the situation. If there was a laugh to be had, my Mom was on it like white on rice. She was just that good.

Following her diagnosis, I tried to visit my family in Montreal once, if not twice a month. While I was there, I would often do a bit of laundry so that I wouldn’t have to do it when I got home. Often in a hurry, I would sometimes leave random articles of clothing behind.

On one memorable occasion, I left a pair of my underpants in the dryer. Much to my dismay and utter embarrassment, they were underwear that would fall under the category of Total Parental Humiliation Panties. Don’t judge. Everyone owns a pair they just don’t admit it publicly on a blog.

What made them embarrassing was that on the front of them was printed Band Camp, and across the ass was printed Flute Soloist. In a modest size 72 font, naturally.

I never asked about the missing underwear, mostly out of embarrassment and partly out of denial. Thankfully, my Mother never mentioned my forgotten frilly underthings. I hoped she would just put them aside for my next visit, and that would be the end of it.

Clearly, I was wrong. The Master of Practical Jokes had other plans.

On a scheduled visit to the Jewish General Hospital for Brachytherapy (a form of radiotherapy where a radiation source is placed inside or next to the area requiring treatment), my Mother waited for the doctor and technician to get her prepared for the radiation session. She had Endometrial Cancer, and as such would be required to wear a hospital gown, and remove all undergarments.

When the doctor came in to examine her, he was greeted by a smile, a smirk, and a pair of sexy black underwear that said Band Camp across the front. My Mother had worn my underwear to her radiation appointment.

She said it was because they were black and wouldn’t show any blood stains (she often suffered leakage and spotting from the Cancer), but I think it is safe to say she did it for the laughs.

She was the talk of the Radiation department that day: The funny little lady with the crazy underwear.

Whenever I tell this story, I feel like I want to laugh and cry at the same time. She suffered so much, but she still just wanted to make people laugh every single day. Sometimes we laugh off the things that hurt or scare us, and I know that on her worst days that’s exactly what she was doing.

My Mom always told me that one cannot get through a Cancer diagnosis without a sense of humor, and that her survival depended on her ability to keep laughing despite the disease. I believe her: Her initial diagnosis came with a measured 6-8 months to live, and she lived for 19 months. She laughed until she couldn’t anymore.

Right before she died, she asked to be put into a drug-induced coma. The pain had become too severe, and she was ready to let go. After days of peaceful sleep and shallow breathing, she suddenly woke up. She opened her eyes and said to my Dad: “I’m hungry.”

Like a man on a mission, he instructed me to get some ice cream from the freezer and ran to the nurse’s station in a panic, concerned that she would be in pain upon waking from the coma. I rushed to the kitchenette, grabbed an ice cream cup, and tried to feed my Mother a tiny spoonful. Alone in her room, I gingerly touched the spoon to her lips. To my surprise, she tenderly grasped my wrist, and pushed it away.

And then she quietly whispered her final words to me.

You always think that your loved one’s last words will be as dramatic as they are in the movies….perhaps something along the lines of “The money is hidden under the stairs” or “You have a ½ sister living in Outer Mongolia.”

Not so with my Mother. What’s important for you to know is that she had not actually awoken from the coma. After she closed her eyes again, the doctors told us that sometimes patients open their eyes and speak, but are in fact still out of it.

This means that my Mother was even funny while still in a drug-induced slumber.

So to close this post, I offer you my Mom’s final words to me:

“Where the hell did your father GO? Put. The. Ice Cream. AWAY.”

God, I miss her.

Marry Me

I have toyed with not publishing this post.  After a few rereads, I think it’s important to share it. I am not being true to myself or to the intent of this blog if I don’t.  There are admissions in here that embarrass me, and that I still might make excuses for. So be it. 

I remember when the Doctors called us to the hospital to tell my brother and I what my parents already knew: My Mom had Cancer.  My parents seemed optimistic, but I knew my Mother. And I knew her eyes. And I knew that they were lying to us that “everything would be fine”. My parents protected my brother and I as much as they could, not wanting us to hurt. In the end, the outcome was as predicted, and we lost the most amazing woman who ever walked the earth. And the hurt was insurmountable.

This was in November 2004. At that time, I had been dating someone for about 2 months. My Mother’s diagnosis this early in our relationship had me on the fence. I came home from the hospital late at night, and called him. I said: “This isn’t the flu. She is going to die. I won’t ask you to be my boyfriend because I understand if this is too much to handle. I won’t feel bad if you can’t do this.” I made it very clear to him that I would not be 100% in the relationship, and his response was: “I can handle it.” 

Trauma makes you a stranger to yourself, let alone to the person you share a life with. He stood by me through the sad moments, and the hard times. I barely noticed the crappy things or warning signs that things weren’t quite right, because I was just happy to have someone to hold me at the end of the day and tell me things would be okay. 

The first year of a relationship is considered the “honeymoon” phase. You have fun, you laugh, and you have lots of sex. Our relationship was the opposite of that. We bickered, we cried, we had zero intimacy…everything was about my Mother, my sadness, and my fears. I could not turn off that part of my life. Cancer was ringing in my ears and it wouldn't stop. When we actually did have intimacy, I cried. I cried out of horrible guilt because it didn’t make sense to me that I was having sex while my Mother was taking Morphine pills to block out her pain.

The lines of impending loss and a strained relationship were constantly blurred, and I could never tell what the root of the problem was. Sometimes I thought I was the problem, because I wasn’t being a good girlfriend. I wasn’t paying enough attention to him. And when I cried that I was sorry I was so horrible to him, he said “That’s okay”, as though he, too, thought I was the single reason things were rough.

Yet we stayed together. I was terrified to be alone, and I think it’s safe to say he was terrified to leave and look like the asshole who left his girlfriend when her Mother was sick. We were both confused and unbelievably overwhelmed. 

When my Mother went into the hospital for that final time, she was admitted to the emergency room with massive hemorrhaging. My brother and I cried in the hallway, terrified she was going to die at any moment. I could hear her crying in pain as she passed blood clots, and they wouldn’t let us see her. He held me close, and rubbed my brother’s back, soothing us. When were finally able to go to her, we all huddled behind the privacy curtain in the emergency room, where she lay with her eyes closed, tears dried on her face. 

As though it was yesterday, I remember him reaching for her hand and holding it. And in front of my brother and father, he asked for my hand in marriage. Through her pain and discomfort, she opened one big brown eye and looked right at him. With an even stare and raspy voice she said: “If you marry her, you can’t give her back. We don’t accept returns.” 

Yes. That’s what she said. 

My Mom had a love for musicals and show-tunes, and on her bad days in the hospital he would burst into her room and sing “Oklahoma” at the top of his lungs. He made her laugh and smile, and I will always love him for that. He took her for her x-rays and radiation, singing to her and talking to her in funny voices as he wheeled her bed down the cold hallway. He went and got us food because we hadn’t eaten. He walked our dog, driving to and from the hospital many times a day. He was a good man. And he wanted to marry me.

I lay on her hospital bed with her, looking at Wedding Magazines. We giggled and gossiped as we looked at the pictures of flowers, and dresses, and cakes. The truth, however, was that every new glossy page we turned was a reminder, a slap in the face, that I would get married without my Mom. After we put down one of the magazines, she touched my face and said: “My beautiful girl. You are going to be a beautiful bride. You are wonderful, and creative. It will all be perfect, you’ll see.” I can still feel her hand on my cheek.

A few months after she died, he proposed marriage. While he was in school full-time doing his MBA, I planned the perfect wedding. Planning gave me something to live for. I was determined and invigorated by what I thought was the light at the end of a very long and dark tunnel. Any nagging feelings I had I brushed aside, because in my mind this was my path. I was going to be a wife. I had a purpose. Sadly, planning a wedding so soon after my Mother died was as good as giving a kid crayons and paper to distract them during a massive raging hurricane. It was a temporary solution to a much bigger problem.

We never should have gotten married, but we were both afraid to be honest with each other. We didn’t want to hurt each other so instead of saying “I can’t” we said “I do.”

The wedding was beautiful. We began our life together. And both of us knew in our hearts that something huge was missing. The trauma of loss had changed us both so fundamentally, we had become strangers to each other.  I won’t go into the details of the demise of our marriage. I will just say that less than a year later, our relationship ended.  We divorced soon after.

Last year, in a moment of nostalgia, I thought about my past and my ex-husband. He made me laugh when I was sad, and he loved my Mother very much.  He was good to my family. And no matter the pain and hurt we both went through, I will always choose to remember the good. And how for a brief time, he made us laugh during the worst time in our lives.