Today is the two year anniversary of the last conversation that I had with my mom. I was at Second City killing time before playing a training center show. I was sitting at Starbucks and gave my mom a call. The week before I had been in Iowa visiting her. She had completed the treatment for the multiple myeloma but that procedure is basically a hard reboot of one’s immune system. The cancer was out of the system but they were chasing a myriad of complications.Also she had gained enough weight in the treatment that she was having trouble walking, sitting, and standing without assistance. When I had visited her she seemed to be in good spirits. She was also a bit looped out on painkillers which made it even more interesting.
Anyway I called my mom that day to check in. She said they were testing issues in her kidneys, they were testing if she had pneumonia, and I honestly don’t remember what else was said. We said our “I love you’s” and I went to go do my show, drink with the cast afterwards. Friday night!
Mom was so proud of how much I had grown in my career and would withhold telling me how serious things were because she didn’t want me to worry. She would say “your job requires you to be in the moment and if you had my problems on your mind, you wouldn’t be able to do your job.” What’s funny is that, my M.O. is to use my work as an escape. One thing I love about my work, especially when I do improv, is that I can throw myself into the moment of creating something with a group and connect with a community that will support me. My training has taught me how to let go of my life drama and focus on the work.
The flipside of this escapism is that my anxiety about my mom’s health was an underlying stress that I had masked in saying yes to to many people, overbooking myself, filling up the space so I didn’t have to think about what was going on. I was also still at the point in my career where I just wanted to prove that I could make money doing what I love and what that looked like to me was seeing how many things I can juggle and I committed to filling my schedule to show that I could do it...and also to impress my mom.
The day after we spoke, mom was moved from the hospital to an assisted living facility for her to continue rehab and work on being able to walk/ sit and stand unassisted. Within 12 hours of being there, she went into respiratory distress, her heart stopped in the ambulance, the brought her back after she was out for 3 (later they told us 5 minutes) she was put on life support in the hospital.
I got the call about all this from my Aunt that Sunday morning (July 31st). I checked in with my dad and he said he’d give me updates. I went to the church picnic. My dad called me while we were at the church picnic. The situation was so bad. Mom was on life support, not conscious, enlarged heart, kidneys failing, pneumonia, and they weren’t sure what sort of brain damage she had suffered during that period in the ambulance where her heart had stopped. I was sitting in the park by the lake eating potluck snacks and I knew my mom was going to die. I hung up with my dad I went up to Adam, the minister at the time, and said voice shaking “hello conveniently placed minister can we talk for a bit?” I don’t remember much of the conversation but he said some sage stuff about grief. My friends at the picnic gave me a big bowl of fruit and chocolate and I hung out for a bit, then Sam and I walked to get beer and look at Mega Bus options for the next day.
I spent August 1st-3rd sitting in a hospital watching my mom breathe. Late in the afternoon of August 2nd she was moved from Waterloo to Iowa City. They had also found a fungus in her lungs and thought that it would be better for her to go to the ICU down there. So this lead to a stressful road trip and booking of a hotel and learning the way around a different hospital (although we were already familiar with how that hospital worked as that’s where the initial treatment had taken place). They told us they were going to do an MRI and see the extent of the brain damage. We got a call later that night that damage was significant and we were going to make a decision in the morning.
The morning of August 3rd, mom was moved to palliative care. I posted something about it on facebook. An improv friend who was checking in with me conspired with other improvisors and had pizzas delivered to the hospital. It was this bizarre mix of joy and sadness and grace and a few other feelings that can’t be named. “My mom is dying. I haven’t been sleeping enough. My friends in Chicago just sent me a buttload of pizzas. And salads.”
Then we waited.
She was off the ventilator, breathing on her own, breathing more labored mixed with snoring. We’d stand by the bed grab her hand go back to doing our own thing. My hometown minister was there and we’d mix those poignant bedside moment with watching stupid internet videos in a corner. At one point my brother and I ran around the hospital playing Pokemon Go because there was a Pikachu somewhere.
I was angry. I was angry that I had no idea what had been done to her brain. I had no idea of how much she could hear us or if she knew we were there. I had no idea if she knew we were there and couldn’t respond. I was sad and angry that she wasn’t conscious of it. I was sad that she wasn’t awake to make feisty sarcastic comments.
She had told me that if she was ever in a situation where she was dying and wasn’t conscious she wouldn’t want everyone just staring her watching her breath. So around 10 or 11 that night we left the hospital room. The last words I said to her, whether she was able to hear it or not were “I love you. Do what you’re going to do. We’ll be ok.”
We went back to the hotel. I got the message that she passed sometime around 4am on August 4th.
I call this week my “grief stations of the cross” week. I feel like every year, at least for a bit, I’m going to remember these bullet points and reflect on what I have learned. It’s been a journey over the past two years.
I keep thinking back to mom saying “your job requires you to be in the moment. I don’t want to distract you.” Over the past two years of processing loss, I’ve learned more about what this “being in the moment” means. I find myself more in touch and honest with my emotions. I’m embracing the fact that “there’s room for all of it.” Grief has taught me to take things one moment at a time, one day at a time whenever possible. Life is overwhelming and there are a million problems to solve and worry is just trying to solve all the problems at once.
I find myself being grateful for each day and also recognizing when I start to speed up, called by the fear that comes with realizing that death is most definitely a thing and time is limited.
Life is a big, complicated, messy, wonderful, terrible, awesome awesome roller coaster and I appreciate what it has to teach me as I allow myself to feel the depth of what I have experienced. As my mom would say “I’m a woman who has been to Hell and back and knows all the good restaurants.”
This Friday and Saturday (August 3rd and 4th) I’m participating in a project called “the 24 hour concert.” Myself and 4 other composers get assigned three random musicians out of the pool of musicians (so I could get a violinist, vocalist, and trombonist or something like that). I’ll meet with the musicians and have some time to work with them that night and then I have until 7am the next day to write them a 5 minute composition. They’ll work on it throughout the day and then there’ll be a concert of all the new pieces the night of the 4th. I haven’t done anything like this and I’m excited.
There is a good chance that this challenge may bring me into the wee hours of the morning. I may be writing music at the exact two year mark of mom’s passing. I am embracing that fact and am open to whatever emotions come up. Mom didn’t want her health to interfere with my work but her passing and the experience of grief have transformed me into a more whole hearted human and artist. If feelings come knocking on the door they’re just going into the arrangement. It’s funny how that works.
So as I approach the two year mark I am allowing myself time to be present with these feelings but also doing the work I need to do. I’m finding balance in this still relatively new world without my mom and I'm loving life. She would be proud.
