You Say It's Your Birthday

Today is my Mom’s Birthday. She would have been 62.

Her firstborn, I was born 5 days after my mother’s 25^th birthday. I was her birthday gift. She was my heart.

I remember our birthdays were always fun, hilarious and love-ridden. So much goodness. In my mind, I can picture her freckled face and her beautiful smile, happy and glowing on her birthday. When I wake up on April 12^th, I always feel empty. A little melancholy. I want to call her and wish her a Happy Birthday, I want to see her and hug her. I want to eat birthday cake for breakfast with her.

We always celebrated “our way”. It was simple, but perfect. We would go to Tim Horton’s to get a coffee for her (tea for me) and a sour-cream glazed doughnut to share. After our birthday snack, we’d head over to the local Winners to buy something fun for our birthdays. I miss those moments so much. I’d hold up a shirt that would look cute on her, and she’d find something horribly tacky and wave it over the rack saying “Amy, this is SO YOU.” My friends reading this are nodding right now saying "Oh GOD, Amy does that to me all the time." Now you know where I picked it up.

Because her birthday was so close to mine, this time of year is naturally not a great time for me. I enjoy the time with my friends and family, and I’m never one to shy away from a celebration. Truth? I force myself to go out and have fun. I don’t ever wait for anyone to plan a birthday party for me, because I know sitting at home alone is detrimental. I’ve never had a surprise party because I’m afraid if I don’t plan something right away, no one will plan anything, and I will end up home alone with my memories of my Mom. I’m okay with that any other time. Just not on my birthday.

This year I have elected to not go out on my birthday. Next Tuesday, I will be staying home with Lily. I might make myself a nice dinner, and watch a movie. That’s all. It’s time that I sit with the discomfort of not having my Mom around on my big day. I can’t avoid it anymore. Although the weekend following my birthday a friend has planned a little dinner get-together, my actual birthday is mine alone. To remember the woman who brought me into this crazy world, and then left it too soon.

Today, however, is Mom’s birthday. And the friend she never got to meet but would have loved is coming with me to Tim Horton’s. And then we’re going to Winners, where we will look at hideous shoes, people watch, and maybe cause a little trouble.

Happy Birthday, Mommy. You are missed more than you will ever know. You are loved more than anyone could ever dream possible.

Rowing Upstream

I moved to Toronto in early April 2004. I was so nervous about moving away to a city I’d only visited as a kid, let alone an entirely different province. My Mom was my biggest supporter, excited for me to start my new job and life. I’d been unhappy in Montreal, and when the opportunity arose to move to the Big Smoke, I couldn’t say no. And frankly, when I tried to say no and balked at the challenge of doing everything on my own and alone, she pushed me harder. She said “I will miss you so much, but I want this for you more than I want to keep you here for myself.”

And exactly 7 months and 20 days after I moved, she was diagnosed with terminal Cancer.

And I bet you, like a lot of people, are wondering why I didn’t just move back to Montreal to be with my Mom and my family.

I don’t mind if you wonder.

I would, however, mind if you judged my choice to stay in Toronto. Or any part of my journey and the choices I made the moment my Mom was diagnosed with Cancer. Not one decision was easily made. Not one decision was made alone.

When the Cancer was discovered in November 2004, I took the train home to be with my family and met with the Doctor overseeing my Mom’s file. After the Doctor left us to digest what we’d been told, I went over to my mother and put my head in her lap, crying as quietly as I could. After having cracked a few jokes, she stroked my hair and played with my curls the way she always did, picking out the springy ones she liked best. I choked out a whisper, telling her that I would move back, and she said “No, you won’t.  I love you, but I don’t want you to move home. You can love me and support me from Toronto, and you will come home when you can.”

I had a very hard time with this. I know she did too. I called her once I’d gotten back to Toronto, and told her I didn’t want to be so far from her. She said it would make her sad for me to give everything up to come back, and she wanted me to be happy. Still, the conversations continued for months. And every time I called her she pushed back, telling me she did not want me to move home. She was proud that I’d taken the steps towards independence, and didn’t want to hold me back. She sent me funny Hoops & Yoyo Hallmark eCards every week, telling me she loved me and how proud she was of me.

From November 2004 until March 2006, I went home to Montreal every other weekend. Any vacation I had earned was used to go home to my Mom. We would lie in her bed and watch Smack The Pony and laugh our heads off. We would nap together. We’d go to Tim Horton’s and share a cinnamon roll, each of our napkins piled high with raisins because we hated them.  When I couldn’t go home to visit because I was sick, I sent her care packages with cute shoes, coffee mugs, chocolate, etc…all the stuff she loved. And when her health took a drastic turn for the worse in March 2006, I left my job on compassionate care leave and went back to Montreal.

Recently, my Dad and I were talking about people not understanding what our loss felt like, or why we made the choices we made. In his gentle way, he let me know that he was surprised that some of the friends and family we were close with thought I should have moved back home and that I had made the wrong choice to stay in Toronto.  Clearly I didn’t love her if I lived 5 hours away.  

When I turned inward after my loss and suffered deeply in my grief, family members and friends of my mother would call me to instruct me how to be. I was often told in a roundabout way that I was being selfish and not taking care of my Dad and brother the way I should be. In the eyes of friends and family, nothing I did was right. Because it’s not how they would have done it.

In an earlier post, I wrote “Grief is like a fingerprint.” If you take anything from today’s post, let it be this: Nobody has the right to tell you how to mourn. There is no documented “right way”. There is the way that makes sense to you.

Whether you blog through the bereavement process like I do, write about it on Facebook, or document it on Twitter, you have to do what makes you feel whole again. Just because someone else wouldn’t have done it that way doesn’t mean it is the wrong way. Being judged by people who’ve never experienced loss or big trauma is almost forgivable because they come from a place of unawareness. When we don’t know, we judge. It is sadly a way of life. Walk my path, and then tell me what you would have done.

What angers me to the point of tears are those that have suffered loss and think that it is acceptable to judge others in the same boat because of how they choose to mourn their loss.

To those people I say this:

You, too, have lost someone.

You’ve lost your Mom or your Dad. Perhaps you’ve lost a sibling or a spouse. You’ve felt sadness, pain, confusion, frustration. You’ve cried real tears. Maybe you’ve become unable to sleep like a lot of us. Maybe you don’t like to talk about your loss. Maybe you’ve never actually dealt with it. But PLEASE, for the love of God, stop judging the ones that ARE dealing with it every single day.

If what we say bothers you, try this: Don’t read our blogs. Don’t read our Twitter posts. Don’t read our notes on Facebook. If you can’t handle it, then you can choose not to read it.

It is beyond unfair to judge someone who is in the exact same boat as you, just because they’re holding the oar differently. The boat is the same. The direction is the same: We are moving towards healing. Being uncomfortable with your own personal grief is not an acceptable reason to make someone feel like less of a person with less worth because of how they deal with theirs. And if you ever want to talk about your loss, we are all ears. You might be surprised to learn that even though you’ve judged us, we are here to support you. Because we get it.

To those of you reading this who have suffered loss and been judged for how you chose/are choosing to get through your grief:

Please never stop sharing. Your stories are not meant to be locked away. You can’t heal if you hide. The path to healing is a bumpy one, please be easy with yourself.

This post was inspired by my tea-time confidante, Lauren. The path you choose is yours to walk, and the journey is yours to share as you wish. Namasté.

Timeless Gifts

Every now and then, I like to give my friends gifts to let them know I appreciate them, above and beyond me telling them. 

I picked this up from my Mom, no doubt. She was always giving thoughtful gifts, and nothing was ever ridiculous or overpriced. It was a hand cream, a box of tea, a pen and notepad set: Always a little something to let her friends know she was thinking of them. Sometimes when I see something I know a friend would love, I wrap it up and give it to them. Or at least put it in a nice plastic bag. Hey, sometimes I’m pressed for time. It’s the thought that counts.

I learned that early on from my Mom: It isn’t so much the tangible gift that matters, but the thought behind it that is of true value. Over the years, my mother always bought me little gifts. Sometimes because she thought it was funny, other times because we’d gotten into a fight and she wanted to apologize. Last year I had to part with a snow globe that she’d given me 13 years earlier, because it was moulding on the inside. It killed me to throw it out, because it was a peace offering after a very big argument.

And then yesterday, after seeing something a friend said on Twitter, I remembered the book.

When I was 22 years old, my Mom gave me a children’s book.  At first I thought she was joking, and thought maybe she was implying I needed to “grow up”. She wasn’t always overly subtle.

We were in my bedroom when she gave me the book, sitting together on the edge of my bed. My Mom always made a big deal about presenting us with gifts, watching eagerly to see our excited reactions. With her watching me intently, I un-wrapped the very large and hardcover book: The Velveteen Rabbit.

If you’ve not read this book, please do. It was the quintessential children’s book, about a boy's love for his stuffed toy rabbit.

When I looked at her quizzically, she said: “I forgot to read this to you when you were little, so I want you to have it now.”

And when she left my room, I cried. I cried because sometimes I thought my Mom felt she wasn’t doing a good job of being my Mom.

Her own relationship with her Mother was non-existant, and they stopped talking around the time I was born. I never met that Grandmother. Their relationship was so bad, I think that sometimes my Mom worried she would turn into her, and hurt my brother and I. She had no Mother/Daughter relationship to learn from, so ours was often fiery as we learned how to love each other.

I’m not sure I really ever told her what a great Mother she was. I say it here a lot, but maybe I didn’t say it to her enough. I don’t know. What I do know is that she made me the woman I am today. And that I wouldn’t be able to do half the things I do without having had her as my Mother. If I’m ever blessed with a daughter one day, I hope I’m a Mom just like Judi Miller was.

And if you’re reading over my shoulder, Mom, you were the best. You really really were.

Painting Pictures + Making Soup

Matzo Ball Soup, the cure all.

In the nearly 6 years since my Mom died, I’ve noticed that my absolute lowest moments are when I realize that I can’t share my hugely amazing / horrifyingly bad experiences with her.

She wasn’t there for my wedding, or my divorce.

She wasn’t there for the following months of depression, when I was trying to remember who I was or what I was all about.

And now as I work through a recent break-up and equally recent job loss, she isn’t on the other end of the phone talking me through, and making me laugh at my foibles.

In a thoughtful conversation about loss last month, my father asked me if I was angry with her for leaving me, for dying. For not being around when I need her and even when I don’t.

At first I said no. And then realized that maybe I am a little mad after all. Just not at her.

Although I know my mother can’t be blamed for getting Cancer, I often find myself feeling angry that she isn’t at the other end of the phone, and resentful that she was taken from me. Those feelings are always soon replaced by a gaping sadness, and sometimes tears.

I often wonder if there is something wrong with me, still crying at my loss 6 years later. I tell stories about her and still get that lump in my throat. Part of me wishes that feeling would go away, and the other part embraces that sadness for what it is: A colorful memory, a reminder that I’m human. And an ever present reminder of how much I loved my Mom, and how much she loved me.

Every new happening, every new experience, is a jolting reminder that I have to figure things out on my own. Although my Dad has become my sounding board, and the person on whom I can lean when I need to, it isn’t the same as the Mother/Daughter chemistry. And I’m pretty sure my father doesn’t want to hear about my leg waxes and bad dates, although he feigns interest because he loves me.

As a little kid, I would paint pictures or draw at the kitchen table. I would hardly look up from my project, dutifully coloring within the lines, or painting rainbows and houses. And every single time I was done, I would hold it up proudly for my Mother to see, and wait for her to say “That’s beautiful!” or “Good job!” It was that loving validation that made everything worthwhile. I painted for her, I colored for her, and I even brushed my teeth for her:  I only ever wanted to make her proud of me. And now, as an adult, I so miss that validation. I miss hearing my Mother tell me not only that everything will be fine, but that I’m doing a good job.

When you lose a parent, it can feel like you’ve lost your decision-making abilities. You second guess yourself. You can’t make choices without running it by them first, or at least letting them know you’ve done something you’re excited about.

In losing my Mom, I have become my own sounding-board. I do seek opinions and validation from those I love and respect, but at the end of it all the final bang of the gavel is mine. My amazing Dad celebrates my successes and gives me the best advice he can on a regular basis, but I know that I have to be able to stand behind the decisions I make. I am the only person who can really and truly celebrate my accomplishments and learn from my mistakes.

So today as I sit at home with a fever and a sinus infection, I’m making my own damn soup. It’s exactly how she would have made it, but with some tweaks from me.

And it’s really good because I said so.

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.