Silent night.

(I'm not cheating on you, but I posted this on Facebook today because I wanted to send love as far as it would reach.)

Friends and family, I love you. Those I don’t know well enough to love like that (because it’d be weird)---I love you as fellow human beings and as my sisters and brothers on the planet.

I had a fall to my knees, “Why, God? Why?” moment when I heard the news today---full on Sally Field. I thought of those parents and the mammoth agony tearing through them now and how it will inhabit them always. I thought of the presents they might have in their closets and how much it will hurt to look at them in these next days when they reach for a sweater. How they may beat themselves up for not giving their child some special sled or stuffed animal the moment s/he asked for it, waiting instead for a Christmas morning that never came. I thought of how much sorrow this time of year will bring them from now on.

My thoughts shifted then to what to do? What to do for those people and also what to do with my own pain.

And there’s nothing really to be done...except to tell everyone I love them.

It’s all I can think of. I don’t feel like being angry with anyone this particular moment. I understand the anger---we’re grieving and anger is a part of it. But while I’m sure I will feel angry tomorrow or in 10 minutes or in a few months or for a few months, right now I am not angry, nor do I judge those who are. There is no sense to be made of any of it, so I am closing my eyes and trying to picture a current of love flowing from my own tight chest southwest to Connecticut. I’m picturing my love and prayers meeting yours there and holding those families tonight. I know I sound like a smelly hippie---I know. But maybe prayer does something. Maybe energy helps with healing. And as it’s the only way I can figure to help, I’m putting love out there in the hope that it contributes to some greater collective love that reaches those families and all who are hurting tonight.

So, all of you---even you, person whose status updates sometimes bug me---I love you.

I also wanted to share this from Brene Brown's latest book, Daring Greatly.

“When I asked people who had survived tragedy how we can cultivate and show more compassion for people who are suffering, the answer was always the same. Don’t shrink away from the joy of your child because I’ve lost mine. Don’t take what you have for granted – celebrate it. Don’t apologize for what you have. Be grateful for it and share your gratitude with others. Are your parents healthy? Be thrilled. Let them know how much they mean to you. When you honor what you have, you’re honoring what I’ve lost.”

I’m opting for a night of quiet and gratitude tonight. I have a warm home, a pretty tree in the living room, and all the kids I love made it through the day safely today. I am grateful for this and to be alive and for the capacity for gratitude. Love you all...even you FarmVille weirdos.

Peace to all your hearts.

'Cause no matter how far away you roam

I'll be thinking of them...

So, the battery story ended like this: It wasn’t the battery that was the problem.

I didn’t get out to get a new one so Dan brought one home. It’s a good thing because imagine my frustration had I made a mission of it and then realized it wasn’t the battery at all. Goddamn Motherfucking Frustrated, that’s what I would’ve been. GMFed.

Turns out there is something wrong with the opener’s receiver or something...I don’t know, I lost interest. Dan called our landlord and the situation is pending. (I will miss the magic of the landlord bat phone should ever we buy a house). When I first started writing the Goddamn Motherfucking Battery entry it was titled, “The Psychology of a Monday Morning” because there was more to it than my simply verbally swatting at Dan for being a Goddamned Motherfucking Mosquito buzzing in my ear with his barrage of questions. (Words must be chosen carefully when spoken before I’ve had my coffee. This was in our vows.) Mostly it was the stuff of two people who could’ve used one more day in the weekend. (It was also a little bit the stuff of, Are we still having this conversation? Just write it the fuck down. And also the stuff of, Didn’t I say months ago that we really ought to figure out how to work the code in case we lose the opener? And, if I’m being fair to Dan, it was also the stuff of, My Darling Lola, it must be hard being so right all the time.)

Bottom line is we’ve been able to get into the garage because my brain somehow retained the four-digit code the woman who had the garage before us assigned it (It is hard, my oft-wrong Danny) and for some reason it's working now. I don’t know why I’m even still talking about the goddamn motherfucking garage opener. Maybe so you’ll finally rest easy tonight knowing that Dan and I are no longer separated from our crap.

And we're getting our extra day this weekend.

Remember this little trip from last year ?

Well, Dan really liked the whole Christmas card/shopping getaway so this time we’re heading up to North Conway which is just about two hours north of where we live. My family rented a place up there every February vacation when I was a kid and those trips were a lot of what got me to pick New Hampshire when I decided to move from RI all those years ago. It’s funny though---I went there every year as a kid but have maybe been there three times in the last twelve years of living here. Not sure why. I’m looking forward to the getaway, though I know there will be some sad turns down Memory Lane.

It’s just how it goes. The first Christmas without both my parents on the planet. The shock surrounding my dad's death is fading, leaving only the throb of loss. I miss my mom every single day, that never fades. It's even more pronounced during this season. I was so the kid who packed all my dirty laundry into the car and blasted “Home for the Holidays” as I set out for my parents’ house every December. Home for the Holidays was my mom. It was her huge greeting---”My Laura is home!”---from the table when I walked into her kitchen. It was my Dad coming in because he heard my mom’s excitement and asking if I wanted him to put on a fire. Home for the Holidays is the saddest thought to me now because there is no such thing anymore. I was lucky to have had it, I know. And I am lucky for Dan, my home now, but Home for the Holidays is another loss in all of this. So I can’t pretend this season doesn’t have a sadness to it now for me. It’s a constant chest ache even during moments of joy.

So, I know there will be some of that this weekend especially as I see the old spots where my family went cross-country skiing or where I can remember my dad breaking out the video camera and my mom doing head counts of all us kids and our friends. And Dan knows that---I think he wants it for me even. He’s the one who booked the place and then got on me to make an appointment for a massage while we are there. He just gets it---all seven hundred emotions I feel at once. How the good days are ones where I cry because it means there’s release and a break from fighting all of it back.

He’s my Home For The Holidays now. No Goddamn Motherfucking pressure, Boo.

(Pretty snow pictures to come if there is pretty snow up there! If not, pictures of dirty side-of-the-road snow to come!)

What kind of battery was that again?

We need to replace the battery in our garage door opener. Because the code for the garage keypad has never worked, the remote opener is our only means of access. Fortunately we don’t keep a car in there and it’s only a spot for storage---but still, we need to be able to get in there.

This morning, as Dan got ready for work and I sat trying to get an early writing start, he said he would pick said battery up at the store today.

I, unsure if perhaps I would want to get into the garage before his approximate 7pm return home, suggested he write the battery size down for me just in case I wanted to tend to the task myself before then.

Apparently, “before” is a complicated concept to digest because it seemed to confound Dan. Why, he wondered, would he write the size of the battery down on the off-chance that I make it to the store when he would definitely be making it to the store and purchasing said battery today.

I had not yet realized the extent of the communication impasse we had reached and didn’t look up from my work---nor elaborate on the concept of before---and suggested he write it down just in case.

But “just in case” was not enough to squelch the fire of incomprehension that roared inside Dan, who again questioned the necessity of his writing the battery size down.

“I might want to get in there, so can you just write it down in case I---”

“But I am telling you I am going to pick it up today, so why would you also pick it up?”

“CAN YOU JUST WRITE THE GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING SIZE OF THE BATTERY DOWN SO THAT I CAN GET IN THERE BEFORE YOU GET HOME IF I WANT?”

Seems an entirely appropriate response even now, hours later.

After he left for work, I found this on the counter:

It is in these moments that I love Dan the very most.

It hurts to write. No, really...

Hello, Lovelies Out In The Universe Whom I’ve Been Avoiding But Whom I Miss and Love. That includes you, Friends I Haven’t Called Back. And also you, Adored Ones Whose E-mails I Have Not Returned. Hugs to ya, Everyone I’ve Let Down.

Apologizing feels a little weak at this point since I’ve done it so many times, but what I’m really just sorry about is that I’m doing the best that I can and sometimes that best falls short of demonstrating how much I care about and am grateful for All Of You. So, I’m not so much sorry for my absence as I am just regretful of the unfortunate circumstances that have limited my capacity for consistency with regard to human interaction. (I should really write greeting cards.) There’s a dearth of consistency on the whole in these parts. Or, to put it less writery and rationalizey----there are good days and bad.

I’m sitting here going back and forth between explaining what’s been up/ keeping me away or not doing that because it will feel boring to you and blah, blah, blah to me.

But of course part of my intention in keeping this blog going through my parents’ illnesses and deaths was to share the experience honestly, so trying to edit myself now that they're gone in order to sound less whiny (or sad) sort of defeats the purpose...and also causes two-month posting gaps.

Since today’s small goal was to simply show up, I’ll keep the explanation of where I've been brief. Really it’s just the stuff of dead parents, depression and anxiety, oh my. Just that. Really, boiled down, it’s just that.

Sometimes I need to isolate. Sometimes I feel too fragile for the vulnerability required to share my work. Sometimes it’s just too painful to write.

Emotionally painful, yes, but as of late it’s been physically painful as well.

About a month ago I made an appointment with the eye doc figuring I just needed stronger glasses because I was increasing the font on my computer to size 87-year-old, and the doc discovered I had a hole in my retina and sent me to see a retinal specialist. (There is such a thing.) Though it had taken me over a month to get an appointment with the eye doc, I got an appointment with the retinal specialist just a week later, something I now recognize to be indicative of an urgency I didn’t pick up on at the time. This was when I learned that not only was there a hole, but my retina was actually partially detached and I needed to have laser treatment...that very day. The idea is to scar the area around the tear so that it can’t rip further. This is done by BURNING MY EYEBALL WITH A FUCKING LASER! It was some crazy shit, guys. I had my face in a machine and there was a flashing green light searing my eyeball and I might have even time traveled for a minute. When the nurse led me out to Dan in the waiting room afterwards---eye patch and all---I declared (with a smidge of whimper), “I was brave!”

Dan couldn’t be in the room for the procedure because the doctor said something about the indirect laser exposure being a risk to him (although apparently perfectly safe when aimed directly into my retina and right through to my soul). But he was able to be with me before the procedure and watched as I GOT AN INJECTION IN MY EYEBALL! He said the anesthetic created a bubble of fluid on the surface of my eye, though in all my Googling I’ve not been able to find a picture of it so I can only offer Dan’s artistic rendering.

That is exactly what my face looked like. He could probably do courtroom sketches.

The whole procedure made my eyes pretty sensitive in general this last month---reading and light were especially tough----but it worked. My retina is not likely to rip further though I’ll have to have my other eye examined somewhat regularly since I’m predisposed to this kind of thing now. The seriousness of the situation was again made clear when I saw how relieved the retinal specialist was at my follow-up appointment to see that it had gone as planned. He said I was really lucky it was caught when it was---totally a fluke thing since I didn’t have the typical symptoms. If it had detached entirely, I could have had permanent vision loss.

It’s pretty messed up and there’s no explanation for it. Not aging, not advanced diabetes, not a blow to the face. Everyone kept asking me if there had been trauma or injury and I think it was code for, “Is everything okay at home?” which amused me to no end since of course Dan is Dan and, let’s be honest, the least likely of the two of us to be the abusive spouse.

He is, however, the most likely to say that were I to lose my vision he would rearrange the furniture and watch me stumble around the apartment. This was his first thought upon hearing that I could have gone blind.

My first thought: I’ll have to learn how to write dirty words in Braille.

So you see, I have been thinking of you guys...

Just thinkin'

Tonight Dan and I are going to see Idina Menzel in Boston. She's famous now but the first solo show of hers Dan and I saw was at the Regattabar in Cambridge---a famous, but really intimate jazz club inside the Charles Hotel. I didn't even really know what she looked like then, so when Dan told me as we stepped off the elevator in the hotel that we had just shared the ride with her, I was shocked and then pissed that I missed it. Though I do recall that I was a little drunk---we had just finished a bottle of wine on the back deck of a little Italian restaurant near the hotel--and I'm sure I would have embarrassed myself. Tonight's show is at the Wang Theater...I'm doubtful we'll ever share an elevator again.

It's been hard to get myself out of the apartment lately---in large part because I'm writing again, so I'm not complaining---but I am making myself go (and made myself buy the tickets) because Idina Menzel's voice is nourishment for me. The thing about music is---there's no thinking, just feeling. As a person who can muck up feelings with layers and layers of thought, music is sometimes a Lola-to-Lola (Lola-to-Laura? Laura-to-Lola? Sybil-to-Sybil?) translator. With music, my brain gets totally bypassed as the processing center and while sometimes the result is the stuff of shedding a mood to dance alone in the car, often the result is sudden, aching weeping. It's why sometimes I dodge musical entirely but also why it's sometimes the only way to get release and relief.

I'm a little nervous going into the concert tonight though---like I'm bracing to be ripped open. The last time we saw her was the spring of 2010---two months after my mom was diagnosed---and for the encore she sang "Tomorrow" from Annie and my whole body just caved in on itself as the tears roared up in an out-of-nowhere cry. Because just thinkin' about tomorrow all of a sudden felt totally terrifying. I saw that tomorrow and the tomorrow after that and those that would follow would be the tomorrows when my mom would get sicker. Would be the tomorrows that would take me to the tomorrow when she'd be gone. I could take being stuck with this day of gray and lonely forever because my mom was still alive. She sang that tomorrow was only a day away and it felt like a threat. I was overcome with panic that I couldn't stop time. I cried and thought, Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I hate you. Stay the fuck away.

The song doesn't offer any more comfort now, even as I know that the cobwebs and the sorrow of today are exactly what it promises relief from. When I listen to it now it feels like my chest muscles are straining to hold a load beyond their strength---the weight of yearning for yesterday, steeling myself for today, and fighting for the absence of fear and the cultivation of enough optimism to want tomorrow. Time feels like a betrayal now and tomorrow is a day traveled further from my mom and dad and the memories of their smallest details. Tomorrows fade the details, they already have. People look down on visiting your yesterdays, but I never feel worse than when I tell myself I shouldn't look back. That's what now feels like to me. I know I should want tomorrow---I know it's coming (it came) no matter what I want, so it would be helpful to look forward with hope. But this is the stuff of thinking versus feeling that I was talking about. What I know is moot---what I know has no power and soothes me not.

It will be a barometer of healing, this song. If listening to it ever again reminds my heart (as it used to) that time holds dreams instead of pain, well then I'll know that, wow, I'm in that tomorrow now. I've already felt whole minutes of that tomorrow, just not whole days. And maybe that's what this song will eventually mean to me---that time is no longer concrete. That yesterdays, todays and tomorrows will just always exist on top of each other from now on...come what may and come what already has.

Even in this post I've gone from feeling to thinking (hence the time-as-abstract-concept meanderings). I'm sure I'll love the concert. It will unlock me from my brain.

My dad's birthday is next month and I've been shutting my eyes when I think about, like I'm hiding from my own thought. The two-year anniversary of my mom's death will be days later. My body is re-experiencing her dying---the trauma of watching her get sicker, of not being able to protect her from her pain and fear, of knowing she was going---through the cellular memories triggered by the changing season. This used to be my favorite time of year and I am hiding from the leaves she loved---we wheeled her onto the deck to see them---and the memories carried on the changing air: her hand holding mine, our connection still tangible and resting on the lap of her cotton nightgown; hugging my crying father as we stood alone on an early fall morning and said to each other, she's gone.

And now you're gone too, Dad. And your birthday is coming up.

My body is telling me in its cute way---insomnia, conjunctivitis and a cold sore---that it's best if I just acknowledge this escalation of sorrow rather than create further sickness with my resistance. It's a time for self care and compassion and I'm trying. I began beating myself up for something yesterday and then I heard myself saying, "You're doing the best you can, you're doing the best you can, you're doing the best you can." I heard it afterwards, as if through a two-second delay and I thought, when did that voice move into the neighborhood? I ought to make her a pie.

I'm dreading the holidays. Better that I say it out loud than try to pretend I feel otherwise because I think I should or wish I could. In bed the other night I told Dan that I wish I could just wake up in January and it made him sad because he once knew a Lola who lived for this time of year.

I don't think I'll feel this forever---today just feels sad.

Tomorrow? I'm not betting my bottom dollar on sun, but I do feel grateful to have one.

Also, the lines on my computer are all wavy.

So...hi.

Hi, guys.

hi.

I am trying this now because, well, I miss being a writer and I miss you all and I'm so close to hallucinating, having slept maybe five hours in the last 48, that I figure a blogpost will be proof that this night really happened.

I CANNOT sleep. CANNOT. cannot. It's been days of this.

And it's not the productive kind of not sleeping---it's the cracked out kind. It's the a-brain-can-really-only-take-so-much-of-this kind.

This is going to be a strange reentry to our thing here, isn't it? And I'm just going to try to go with it---no picture, and blob-like as it is---because lowered expectations on the whole are probably a good thing.

I'm seeing spots.

Love y'all.

Something fierce.

I've been drinking!

Dear guys,

That’s how I just started this post---as a letter. Like I’m writing to my family from prison.

I’m not in prison, though I do watch MSNBC’s Lockup to help me get to sleep. (Dan has suggested that this is unwise but I think he’s just mad because I ripped a hole in our mattress so I’d have somewhere to store my toothbrush/shank.)

I’ve been gone because...

I’m just sad---that’s the title of the memoir at this point.

I’m just still fucking sad. (And there’s book number two.)

I’m sad and pissed and just all sorts of unpleasant right now. (A self-help trilogy?)

It boils down to this: I miss my mom and dad and I wish they hadn’t died and I’d like things to just go back to how they were when I was stalking my next-door neighbor and all was right with the world. (The fact that writing those words makes me feel like a 10-year-old kid does not help.)

I’m assuming at this point that you understand my longish absences to mean I’m struggling/hiding. Maybe I should change the entry titles while I’m gone to keep you posted on the state of things---a sort of Spew weather channel.

Monday: Hot Mess.
Tuesday: Miserable Fuck.
Wednesday: Trying to not worry and be happy.
Thursday: Bobby McFerrin is a douche.
Friday: Inexplicably horny.
Saturday: Aha---ovulating. God’s a dick for making everything harder for chicks and inventing centipedes. Also, giving both parents cancer and nabbing them? Not cool, Dude.
Sunday: (Intentionally left blank.) (Despondent.)

The last few weeks were actually more the stuff of anguish, mania, and a kind of pathetic bewilderment that took the following form:

I painted the wood paneling in my dad’s office white.

I watched the entire first season of Showtime’s Episodes. (And also what’s aired of the second season. Solid show.)

The form it did not take: writing.

That’s not true, actually. I was writing. I just stopped writing. It’s more cause of the crazy than effect.

See, I wrote my way into a sad patch---I often can’t see where I’m going---and then I ran. I painted. I Episode-ed. I ran and ran.

I tried to write an e-mail to a friend and the sad patch showed up there too! The computer ratted me out! So I ran again.

The sad patch wants to be written and I don’t want to write it. I don’t want to feel it.

So I’m putting on a third coat of paint in the office.

I’m thinking of getting into Web Therapy.

Also, I’ve made a new friend. Her name is white wine and she’s the shit! She’ll hang out any time of day---screw 5pm! She’s pretty much orange juice’s prettier, more sophisticated cousin.

Sometimes though...sometimes...right now...white wine brings along sad patch and I’m like, “What the fuck, white wine? I thought you were cool!”

And she’s all, “Really? I’m pretty sure you learned in 10th grade about my depressant properties.”

And I’m all, “Did you really just say ‘depressant properties’? Cool it with the three-syllable words, Miss Smarty McSmartSmart.”

And she’s all, “You’re going to have to look at sad patch sometime. You might as well---”

And with that, I have to run.

I know I sound like a fucking lunatic. I know.

But it’s coming on fast and I’m feeling too sad to breathe so I have to go.

More to come.

Love,
Lola