Being a Mom without a Mom

This piece should probably be called being a person without your person, because I don’t think missing Mom has been harder since Finley arrived. If anything he has helped. By becoming a new person in my world he has made the gaping hole she left just that little bit smaller. This piece may ring true to some of you who have lost a person though; maybe you have felt similar or maybe you have felt differently but for some reason I decided that now is the time to share my first experience of loss.

My Mom died of a heart attack in December 2001. I went to my Saturday job that morning, my Dad arrived to it in the afternoon and had to tell me that his wife, my mother, was dead. He had to do that five times in total, to each of my four siblings, one of whom was pregnant. I remember walking out of the shop into the street decorated for Christmas and I couldn’t breath. The wind had been knocked right out of me and would take a long time to return.

Before I continue my Dad is more of a hero than you even think he is right now and so I know he won’t feel left out in this piece because he knows what I think of him. He has been Mom and Dad for 15 years, he even used to buy sanitary products for me and sister in the weekly shop (thanks Dad), He did everything possible to ease the loss and ease it he did. He has now taken up the role of being Grandad and Nanny and is doing so with aplomb.

So Mom. I keep starting a sentence with when she died and then deleting it because…well what about when she died? When she died so did the future that I had been planning. When she died I lost the chance of just being 18, of just being 19, of just having my twenties. Death had knocked on my door and left it ajar. I was acutely aware that life can end, with one missed beat of a heart it can stop. It’s very hard to live in the moment when you know that that moment may be the very last you have.

As strange as it may sound I have had to work hard to accept that I would probably see the night, and the morning, and I would probably see the weekend. I had to relearn how to make plans expecting to keep them. Your brain, or at least my brain, tried to protect me from the shock I suffered with her death but in doing so it prepared me for everyone’s death, that’s a pretty exhausting way to go about your day. It’s also exhausting to be the partner of someone who lives like this. If my now husband didn’t return a call quick enough I would get anxious and I would be angry at him for making me wait. To this day when I get a call from a family member that I am not expecting for a brief second I am scared to answer. It’s unfair and it sucks for all involved, it’s hard to ask someone to buy a litre of milk when they are talking to you as if you might be the grim reaper.

When Mom died I suffered from fits which damaged the nerve in my right arm and meant I could no longer write like an adult should, I would write maybe two or three words at a time and then my arm would freeze and I could do no more. Every time I tried to write I cursed her and so in the months following her death I missed her, I hated her, I grieved for her, I begged for one more moment with her and I blamed her for not letting me have it. When she died I spent some portion of every day sitting and thinking about her face and her voice because I was so scared of forgetting them. When she died I felt her face with my eyes closed so that I could store it to memory. When she died I wondered what the hell was I meant to do now?

For those of you who never met her she had beautiful cheekbones. Her whole makeup regime involved only black eyeliner and mascara. She washed her face with soap and used Vaseline as her moisturiser and she was glorious. She always took her glasses off for pictures even though she really couldn’t see without them. She organised a holiday every summer that would take us all around Ireland, once to Wales and once to France where my brother was made sleep in a separate tent including on a night that a storm arrived and he almost got washed away. God how we laughed, my poor brother. She made memories for us without knowing that we would spend most of our life reliving them without her.

Men loved my Mom. She was funny and beautiful, she was a great flirt (sorry Dad!) but I don’t think she knew she was. A few weeks after she died the oil man arrived, when we told him she died he had to come in for tea with sugar, he was devastated. Imagine when you die that your impact is so great even the oil man is in mourning. My Mom was a treasure and I didn’t even know it. As it turns out I want to be the kind of Mother that she was, I think that would probably give her a knowing laugh.

When Finley arrived I discovered how much she loved me. God that regret of never knowing or appreciating it. Of course she told me she loved me but hey I was 18, what did I care? A few weeks after Finley was born I was really sick and I was tired, and I cried so hard for her. Where the hell was she? How could she not stay to meet my baby, to meet the father of my baby. And the hardest thing of all is that I know, wherever she is, she’s asking herself the same questions.

So being a Mom without a Mom, being a person without your person? If you’ve never lost someone close then the experience of it is far more encompassing than you think. It affects more parts of your life for longer than you can probably appreciate. You may not need to hear that but it might help with the level of empathy you give someone, and for how long you give it. When you wake up ready for your day I wake up ready for mine missing Mom. Every day feels like it starts with a -1 and while we may both end up with a +10 for an awesome day I’ve worked that little bit harder to get there. Every death, and every knock that follows hits hard because the foundation is already a little shaky. That’s what it feels like to me. Somedays I realise it, some days I don’t, but every day I remember she died. For every time you get a message, or a call from your Mom I don’t. For every coffee you have with her, for every dinner she makes you, for every smile she has given you I have not had this. And mostly now for every kiss she gives your baby, mine has received none.

How has it affected my parenting? I’m not sure because I guess I have nothing to compare it to. I know that it has affected every part of me and therefore it affects me as a mother. I know I’m anxious about getting pictures with him because I want to make sure he has them if I die. I write down how much I love him so that he knows how wanted he was if I die. Life becomes a little more about death than it should be. I accept that as Finley grows he will be interested in his Nanny but she’ll always be an abstract concept. I know that’s not his fault and I will need to not blame him for it. She will always be a part of my life but she will have never been a real part of his. Kids know what they can see, I have to learn to accept this.

I also know that I bathe in the glory of motherhood. I know that I haven’t fought with my husband as much, or he with me, because we are just so grateful to have this happiness. The joy Finley has brought us feels like a relief or maybe more accurately it feels like a release. Death is a leech, it hangs on trying to ruin your finest moments but the life of a baby is far more powerful. Finally something more powerful than death. In many ways life feels lighter and easier since he arrived, I can welcome back use of the word Mom now. It’s a small word when often used but it echoes loudly when left unsaid.

This piece feels very self absorbed and pitying, lets be honest that’s because it is. I’m writing this one for me, and for everyone who has lost a person and tries so hard to just get on with it. Perhaps Mothers Day inspired me. Also I’m interested in human experience, especially ones I have not gone through and so some of you may be interested to read this having never felt able to ask the questions.

And I want to appreciate that I’m here writing it because I was surrounded by wonderful people when it happened. The evening of Moms funeral my friends brought me back to one of their family homes and put on Shrek. I think they were probably worried that Shrek was a terrible movie choice but it has given me my  single happy memory from that time. They were only 18 too and yet how they reacted to me from then to now was perfect. The first thing my sister did was to ask if I was ok, she too had just lost Mom but in that moment she cared more about me. My sister in law sat beside me when the coffin was brought into the house, and my brother held me as my fits took hold. I like to think that each of us has protected each other and I hope this is Moms legacy, she created a family to love each other and that we do.

Hmm how do you finish a piece like this? I want to finish it by telling you to love your Mom or your person more, to tell them that you do, to listen to them when they say it back, to create memories with them, to let arguments go and not waste time but I’m saying all of that because I still live as if I will die tomorrow….maybe though instead of that being a curse it is actually a blessing?

Silent Ref(l)ucks

Remember I said I would be writing more, and then I didn’t. And then I did…..but inevitably I didn’t. Well here I am again hoping I’ll write more. I have missed the cathartic nature of writing, I have needed it more than ever the last few months but the reason I’ve needed to write is the reason I haven’t been able to.

Finley is almost 7 months old, seven whole months. Jesus. The last time I wrote things were tough and I told you about crying in my yoga class. Well turns out that was the beginning of the end of my sanity! As I suspected our poor bub had silent reflux which is probably a symptom of his cows milk protein intolerance. Basically it means he (and we) spent at least 16 weeks dealing with acid travelling up and down his oesophagus (it’s silent because he swallows it back down rather than vomiting). Medication helped and stopped the nights of non stop crying however many more tears were to follow, evenly divided between me and my boy.

So straight up silent reflux is a temporary issue which babies grow out of. It’s not life challenging or life limiting, it didn’t require hospital stays for us and therefore it is minor, almost insignificant, compared to what other people face. I absolutely accept that and it was my mantra every day. What it did do though was send me to a place of exhaustion and stomp on my fingers every time I tried to climb out. All new parents are exhausted, you know that – we say it all the time. We say it so much it’s boring, what did we expect? We tell expecting parents with glee – oh just wait for the exhaustion, you think you’re tired now? We scoff. Well reflux tired is different. Reflux tired is being kept up all night by your tormenter and then tending to their needs every day.

Wait, stop. Finley is not a tormenter, I know that. Finley spends all day smiling and laughing. He holds my face in his tiny hands and kisses me constantly. Everything I do makes him laugh, he’s the most rewarding audience I’ve ever had. He is literally a standing ovation (well maybe not literally since he can’t stand, but you know what I mean). He takes his medicine laughing, he changed to bottles laughing, we should have named him Joy and just have let him deal with the consequences. However the first hour of the morning I've had to accept another new day and the last hour of night we have had to ready ourselves for the lack of sleep to come. I have had to remind myself that he is not a tormenter, he is my gift, an accumulation of every good we had done in our lives given back to us in a beautiful package. This is the greatest test of reflux, to separate the baby from the circumstance.

What has made it so hard though? Sometimes I don’t know. Tiredness is a tricky beast, it takes over everything even your memory. I know that every day I was exceptionally happy, I know that Finley never got the brunt of my tiredness but I know that Brian did. I know that the three of us danced in the kitchen together every night, I know that every day Brian got a picture of Finley being adorable, and I know that almost every morning he had to see me have one little cry to help me get it out of my system. We have been hellbent on not letting it take over our experience of Finley and it hasn’t. Day to day has been glorious still, but somewhere amongst it all I developed a slight anxiety of night times. The anxiety probably made them worse than they actually were because I started to fear the night and what it would bring, even the times when it ended up not being so bad. It also made me slightly unreasonable when it came to letting go of control and allowing Brian to help more.

Thankfully I think (please god let it be true) we have finally got Finley settled on the right formula, his medication has the reflux under control and so we moved him into his own room to see if it would help with his wakenings. I very quietly whisper this but it has. Due to a foot injury and being unable to rock him asleep I’ve also inadvertently started sleep training and the last two nights he has woken only once. Immediately things are better for me, which is where we are blessed that it was only reflux we have had to deal with. And that brings me back here, to write it all down and document another new part of parenting that I hadn’t expected. Parenting has been a struggle at times, thankfully though Finley, our baby, has not.

And you Reflux, you can go f(l)uck yourself.....see what I did there?

PS: my next blog is going to be such a happy one. It's going to be a giant brag about my life, so much bragging you'll need a vomit bag just to get through it.  

I’ve written my healthy husbands eulogy

This title is going to have you believe that I am suffering greatly from severe pregnancy hormones and have decided to move to a female only camp and dance in the rain. Aha! That is not the case at all….well not 99% of the time.

I was inspired to put this down in words while I am still getting enough sleep to appreciate how much I love my husband. Ugh isn’t this post gross? I’m pregnant, happy and love my husband, that is anti Jeremy Kyle right there. I’m sorry. However I promise I do deserve this and I only know this because of all the times those options seemed so far from my reach.

I’ve been at a number of funerals. Some I attended to support the person grieving but many of them were because I was the person grieving. If you have read my other blog posts (although I appreciate I’m mainly talking to myself) you will see that I lost my own Mom when I was 18.  I met my husband 7 months later and was welcomed into the warm embrace of his mother soon after. Four years ago we also lost her; this came 5 months after the sudden death of a good friend. 6 months ago I then miscarried, losing our first baby at 12 weeks. Each loss chips away, sometimes you can build yourself back up but for me there are still chinks in my foundations.

But what I hope you see is that I really do deserve the pregnant, happy and love my husband moment, however I don’t take for granted that you don’t always get what you deserve.

So the eulogy.

It’s weird and I know it, however I think it is partly a response to the loss of my Mother. She died 10 days before Christmas from a heart attack. She had been fluey during the week and was going to the doctor on the Saturday. I rang the house on my lunchbreak from work to check in on her but no-one answered, I didn’t think too much about that. Three hours later my Dad arrived to my workplace, took me to a quiet room and told me Mum was dead. She went to the GP, was sent to the hospital and died right there on the bed just after she had arrived. There would be no goodbye hug or kiss; no I love you, no more chances to feel her skin warm. She was dead.

Since that day I am in an endless and sometimes exhausting battle with myself to not over react to real life. I spent some time afterwards not wanting to get close to anyone, then letting myself fall in love and subsequently fighting all my urges to wrap the people I love in cotton wool and try to never let them hurt or get sick. This is not healthy for me, but mostly it’s not healthy for them. A cold really is just a cold.

It’s this fear of loss, especially of sudden death, that has me thinking about my husband’s eulogy. I hate funerals but I also find great comfort in them. What I hate most is that of all the days in your life to be alive your funeral  really is the one. People talk about you with such love and compassion. They show how much they miss you in tears, in silence, in shock. They remember the greatest days of your life with humour and sadness. They forgive your bad days, and question why they ever felt anger towards you.

I have survived losses and sad days. I have suffered from seizures brought on by grief which took me years to learn how to prevent. I learnt to write again when those seizures damaged the nerves in my arm, and, I stood on the alter and spoke about my mother when I was 18 years old and absolutely broken. I know grief, I know loss, I know survival.

However then there is my husband and when I think of him (on those loving days) I do worry about how I can survive without him and what I need to do in life to ensure I will not regret upon death.

This is when I think of his eulogy; strangely it usually comes upon me when driving. I recall to myself the last thing we said to each other. The last touch we had. I remember the strength of his character, the gentleness in which he approaches our love and the loyalty that he gives to it. I think of how he cared for his Mom when she was ill, of his tears when our friend died and how he works to keep her memory alive. I think of stories from drunken nights, the dances we have together and the faces he pulls that make me laugh so hard I want to pee myself.

I think of when I told him we were pregnant with our first baby, how his beautiful magical face lit up. Then I think of how he treated me when the baby was lost. When I told him he should be with someone who can grow a healthy child, he told me there was no point having a child with someone else; it was only my child that he wanted to be a father to. I remember how he talks about our growing child now, how he sings to it and speaks to it and I’m pretty sure will also make this baby laugh until it pees.

I think of his long gorgeous body, his big eyes that I fall into and his juicy lips that I know so well. I think of how his hair feels when I rub it, how he smells and the sound of his voice which is like music to my ears. I think of seeing him when I get home, and then I think of what would happen if I didn’t. My heart quickens up and my breath burns. Of course I cry, every time I cry.

Then I go home and I tell him I love him and why, and I make another memory to add to my list. Most importantly though, I have reminded myself how much I love him and why. I appreciate what I have, I gain perspective into my life and what is important to me. It calms me to know that I have found a great love, that whatever the future holds I will have known a love that hurts to live without.

I hope to never walk a day on this earth without my husband, and he without I. Ideally old age will take us together, holding hands and slipping into sleep. However, what's important to me now is to know that he will have felt the force of my love, and that my words of love for him are not spoken to another without first being spoken to him.

Eulogies are a beautiful tradition but to my mind they are always said too late.