A did some beautiful writing yesterday. I'm so grateful. She did some talking too. I was glad I hadnt gone home yet. I didn't feel useless and out of place yesterday though this house is still done with me. The trick will be to leave before the new dust settles.
Last night A said if I'm feeling non pukeish enough we will have our coffee headed towards the water this morning. I might get to see the ocean today.
I might get to see the ocean today. I don't know why the ocean heals all my pain. It always has. It's home. T wrote me yesterday about how we will be at the ocean together again. It made me cry too. I hate crying.
***
Think or imagine a time of magical thinking or the less sexily named denial. Did you think you could fly off the garage roof? That you could drive with all that alcohol on board, That you could kill the boogeyman. That you could call the rain from the sky. That if you wished hard enough... what? Sometimes magical thinking works. Or is that faith. I mix them up sometimes.
or
While we were sitting outside on the still clean back deck with the dog and the redwoods and the rusted pick up truck, I felt a heavy, sharp metal stake ram through my left eye. Migraine. I covered my eye and ran for the Advil, took three and prayed.The last bad, unchecked migraine I had put me in the hospital with scary high blood pressure from the non stop vomiting. I had gone to work that day, despite the pain and the puking. I was still in denial about having migraines. I was still that kind of worker who went to work no matter what.
Chuck the janitor who used to sleep a lot at work and never much liked me offered to drive me. He gave me a giant industrial sized black garbage bag and said, "If you puke in my new truck I will kill you." I liked him for that. I laughed just as I buried my face in the plastic and vomited again. He said, "I'm not joking." He wasn't but he made me laugh again. He was the only person who offered to drive me. That's kindness. A non stop puking woman in your brand new, hard saved for, shiny black and silver Chevy truck.
By the time we were at Kaiser I was down to throwing up neon green bile. I was still under the impression that I did not get migraines. No matter how many times my doctor said that I had them I always insisted they were just headaches. That day at Kaiser my blood pressure was so high the triage nurse very kindly said how would you like to lay down and worried voices were talking urgently as they got me on a gurney and rolled me into an exam room. I was treated immediately and several hours later when I asked the doctor what had happened to me he said you had a migraine and tried to work through it. Next time stay home.
I don't get migraines I said. You do now he said. I asked the question that really makes people crazy, especially doctors, lawyers and School Board Officials. are you sure? His eyes rolled and he wanted to hit me. He was sure. That bit of denial was punctured. I now act accordingly when it feels like my eyeball has a stake through it.
I ate small and careful. We kept it dark. When we went to Walgreens I wore R's animal print sunglasses and bought an ugly tan baseball hat for 50 cents. I looked like an overweight actress in serous disguise.
No puking. Thank goodness.
Migrraines run in my family. Both my kids had them bad when they were little. T has them bad. I spent a lifetime refusing to have them because my mother did. A lot. It meant living in a dark house and lots of narcotic abuse and puke pans and cool washcloths. It's not that she didn't have migraines but she absolutely abused narcotics. Once she made me call my friend B who was a doctor and beg her for what? Codine? Something more serious? I can't remember. I just know her other doctors (she had several who didn't know about each other) wouldn't give her anymore drugs. She kept saying you have to call B, you have to call B. I finally called B. B filled a prescription and told me never to abuse our friendship like that again. I never felt so small and horrible. I couldn't explain that I couldn't say no to my mother. That would take years of therapy to understand, and years more to learn to say it. The first time I said no, we wouldn't be staying the night for Christmas, started a month long siege. Phone calls, visits to my apartment where I wouldn't let them in and finally an angry call on my machine saying my father had died and she hoped I was proud of myself. Of course my father hadn't died. No one died, though that was the imagined consequence of saying no to my mother. I remember how relieved I was that my children hadn't heard the message. Did I mention that my mother was mean and crazy and crazy mean? That's a smallish example.
The power my mother had over me was as strong as that metal stake in my eye. It's part of why I couldn't see her when she died. It's why I cried yesterday wishing I could have done for her what I did for S. I will carry this grief for my whole life: My mother died with strangers. I had to say my goodbye on the phone in my therapists office. On a good day I tell myself if you want your daughters with you when you die you should be a mother. On bad days I simply hate myself for not being stronger. For shrinking down to tiny in her presence and fearing absolutely everything I knew she could and would do to me. For being small and puny. For falling down the rabbit hole into my youngest selves again.
I'm still waiting for her ashes to come so my sister and I can let her loose in the water at ocean beach.
I don't get migraines I said. You do now he said. I asked the question that really makes people crazy, especially doctors, lawyers and School Board Officials. are you sure? His eyes rolled and he wanted to hit me. He was sure. That bit of denial was punctured. I now act accordingly when it feels like my eyeball has a stake through it.
I ate small and careful. We kept it dark. When we went to Walgreens I wore R's animal print sunglasses and bought an ugly tan baseball hat for 50 cents. I looked like an overweight actress in serous disguise.
No puking. Thank goodness.
Migrraines run in my family. Both my kids had them bad when they were little. T has them bad. I spent a lifetime refusing to have them because my mother did. A lot. It meant living in a dark house and lots of narcotic abuse and puke pans and cool washcloths. It's not that she didn't have migraines but she absolutely abused narcotics. Once she made me call my friend B who was a doctor and beg her for what? Codine? Something more serious? I can't remember. I just know her other doctors (she had several who didn't know about each other) wouldn't give her anymore drugs. She kept saying you have to call B, you have to call B. I finally called B. B filled a prescription and told me never to abuse our friendship like that again. I never felt so small and horrible. I couldn't explain that I couldn't say no to my mother. That would take years of therapy to understand, and years more to learn to say it. The first time I said no, we wouldn't be staying the night for Christmas, started a month long siege. Phone calls, visits to my apartment where I wouldn't let them in and finally an angry call on my machine saying my father had died and she hoped I was proud of myself. Of course my father hadn't died. No one died, though that was the imagined consequence of saying no to my mother. I remember how relieved I was that my children hadn't heard the message. Did I mention that my mother was mean and crazy and crazy mean? That's a smallish example.
The power my mother had over me was as strong as that metal stake in my eye. It's part of why I couldn't see her when she died. It's why I cried yesterday wishing I could have done for her what I did for S. I will carry this grief for my whole life: My mother died with strangers. I had to say my goodbye on the phone in my therapists office. On a good day I tell myself if you want your daughters with you when you die you should be a mother. On bad days I simply hate myself for not being stronger. For shrinking down to tiny in her presence and fearing absolutely everything I knew she could and would do to me. For being small and puny. For falling down the rabbit hole into my youngest selves again.
I'm still waiting for her ashes to come so my sister and I can let her loose in the water at ocean beach.
***
Magical thinking. They were just headaches. I could save my mother from herself and her drinking if I loved her right. I could learn to love her right. She would love me back. It wasn't really abuse. That I was imaginative and a good liar. What happened wasn't that bad. If I'm strong enough I can do anything. Well I still think I can do anything. Sometimes that's true. Sometimes force of will trumps physics. Things happen that are not predicted or proscribed.
Magical thinking. They were just headaches. I could save my mother from herself and her drinking if I loved her right. I could learn to love her right. She would love me back. It wasn't really abuse. That I was imaginative and a good liar. What happened wasn't that bad. If I'm strong enough I can do anything. Well I still think I can do anything. Sometimes that's true. Sometimes force of will trumps physics. Things happen that are not predicted or proscribed.
I had to look up proscribed to see if that's the word I wanted. Not exactly and yet...it rings true of my childhood.
Definition of PROSCRIBE
1
: to publish the name of as condemned to death with the property of the condemned forfeited to the state
2
: to condemn or forbid as harmful or unlawful : prohibit
***
Last night A said if I'm feeling non pukeish enough we will have our coffee headed towards the water this morning. I might get to see the ocean today.
I might get to see the ocean today. I don't know why the ocean heals all my pain. It always has. It's home. T wrote me yesterday about how we will be at the ocean together again. It made me cry too. I hate crying.
***
Think or imagine a time of magical thinking or the less sexily named denial. Did you think you could fly off the garage roof? That you could drive with all that alcohol on board, That you could kill the boogeyman. That you could call the rain from the sky. That if you wished hard enough... what? Sometimes magical thinking works. Or is that faith. I mix them up sometimes.
or
What is the last thing you or a character cooked for someone else? Was there a recipe? or
What was the last meal cooked for you by someone else? Or a time when food was part of a seduction. Or was food the seduction?
***
She always knew she could...
She always knew she could...
***
They were never meant to... or they were always going to...
They were never meant to... or they were always going to...
***
The house always smelled of...
The house always smelled of...
***
and- a gorgeous poem El sent me yesterday. Perfect.
Day of Grief
by Gerald Stern
I was forcing a wasp to the top of a window
where there was some sky and there were tiger lilies
outside just to love him or maybe only
simply a kiss for he was hurrying home
to fight a broom and I was trying to open
a door with one hand while the other was swinging
tomatoes, and you could even smell the corn
for corn travels by wind and there was the first
hint of cold and dark though it was nothing
compared to what would come, and someone should mark
the day, I think it was August 20th, and
that should be the day of grief for grief
begins then and the corn man starts to shiver
and crows too and dogs who hate the wind
though grief would come later and it was a relief
to know I wasn't alone, but be as it may,
since it was cold and dark I found myself singing
the brilliant love songs of my other religion.
lots of lines to write from...lots of beautiful line breaks. You could take a part of a line that pulls at you and start there. Or start anywhere at all. Just start.
I want to thank you for reading these prompts during this strange hard time of dying and post dying. I want to thank you for your writing. For your words, for your sharing. For your reassurances that you are glad to be receiving them when they feel too dark or jumbly or all wrong to me.
Tomorrow I hope for words of ocean and sand and shells. For cold and fog and that sweetness. That's what I long for in this moment, for me and for you.
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