Daisys in Concord

Edited Flowers to highlight the yellow in Concord MA

Family Reunion

Before moving back to Austin, I took my parents to visit my grandparents. A family reunion of sorts. Yes I bought flowers, and set my parents urns up as if they were still alive and visiting my grandparents. I’m sure it was a sight to see at the cemetery. Honestly I couldn’t get a fuck. Both my parents died before they were 60. They had so much life left to live. Maybe in staging these pictures, I can give them some of their life back.

I can imagine them talking. My Dad making bad jokes. My grandfather going along with. My mother and grandmother rolling their eyes. Eventually they’d talk about me and I can’t decide if the conversation would focus on how they’re worried about me or proud of me. Probably a bit of both. I’m sure my grandfather would wonder if I was settling down. My mother would defend me saying I had bigger things to worry about it. My dad would ignore the whole thing.

See it’s a life for them in my head.

Scoorge McDuck and Holidays of the Past

I’ve been through enough therapy to know that Holidays should be a fucking shit show for me. I mean it’s a popular trope that if you’ve lost someone your a mess around the holidays. Seth Rogan even made a movie about it. Ironically it came out the year my mom was diagnosed with cancer. I swear that asshole is following me around and using my life as story fodder. Back to the point I should be a mess once the Holidays start to set in, and if you’re me that’s half way through September, because I didn’t just lose my mom and dad during this time of year. I lost both of my grandfathers as the holidays approached. My dad had stroke when I 10 on December 7th. And a week before christmas in 2015 we found out my mom had cancer.

So yeah there’s a lot of trauma around this time of year.

Be that as it may my lack of a meltdown every year and my intense holiday spirit are a sign that the holidays aren’t a shit show for me. I think the big reason for that is because of how my parents treated the holidays while they were alive and how the holidays have gone since they past. So what did the holiday season of my past look like? Get ready.

In my house the holidays started in September. That’s when my mom started planning cookies. She made her list of who got cookies and what she would be making this year. Where there new recipes to add and old to take out of circulation? Did she have any new ideas? On top of that, this is when we started cleaning out the freezer. Cookies gotta go somewhere.

This really started rolling around October. Dad would decorate the outside of the house but inside smelled like Christmas. The plan was always to get the bulk of the cookies made by Halloween because once November hit…well between Thanksgiving and Christmas prep you can kiss your free time goodbye. Just so you have an idea the last year my mom made and sent out all her cookies was 2014. She made close to 2000 cookies that year. She didn’t finish in 2015 because she got sick. Now apart from cookies and decorating our holiday movie marathons would begin around October. As a family we had to watch Hocus Pocus, Nightmare Before Christmas, and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. It was always an event that came with a home cooked dinner and a couple cookies.

As a got older, mom and I wouldn’t wait until November to start planning Thanksgiving. When I was fourteen she started roping me into helping with Thanksgiving. It started out simple. for almost four years I just made the stuffing. Nothing else. Then the first few years of college she let me take a break, but Thanksgiving 2009 changed that. I came home from school the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and she told me I was responsible for everything except the turkey. Wednesday I made the cranberry sauce (yeah we do homemade), all the dips and salsas we ate during the day, and the pies. Thanksgiving I had to do the stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy. I did that for two years, basically being my moms sous chef. I can’t tell you how much that bonded us. When she let me take over we knew what the other needed in the kitchen without saying a word. I lived for the Thanksgiving because it was a day I spent with my mom doing something we both loved. It’s one of the few things I literally can not put into words. Thanksgiving weekend was a family weekend. Friday we’d go shopping and see a movie. Saturday dad would put up the Christmas lights, and Sunday we would put up the tree and decorate inside.

In the build up to Christmas we had little traditions that were mostly spent at home. There were certain movies we had to watch before the big day. Love Actually, the Family Stone, Elf, etc. Mom would start answering the phone, “Buddy the Elf. What’s your favorite color?” The Sunday before Christmas we always went to Downtown Disney, ate at your favorite restaurant, did some christmas shopping, and saw a movie. In later years by best friend joined us. We’d split up my dad and I going together and my mom and my best friend going together. I always got my mom a disney ornament in a nontraditional color. Her dream was to have a christmas tree covered in mickey ears. This is also where my mom and I started getting each other the same present.

Christmas Eve was filled with tradition. We always saw a movie, usually my choice, and got dinner. Except for the year when we stopped at Wendy’s and the dinning room was closed. We ate in the car while my dad complained about the movie choice. Sweeney Todd. He really shouldn’t have been surprised. He raised an emo kid. My mom didn’t want to see it either but anything that annoyed my dad she was game for. So the next year we made chicken and dumplings before the movie.

When we got home is when we put the packages around the tree. It was a tradition my dad grew up with. Christmas Eve night everyone had to bring out the packages to be placed under the tree. One rule: you can’t carry your own package. I’m an only child and I can tell you, without shame, this is the one time of year I was spoiled rotten. The package parade was always a little difficult.

Christmas day was quiet. We got up and leisurely opened our presents. My mom made caramel rolls and we drank our coffee out of Christmas mugs. Later in the day we’d go over to my Aunts. We’d have a shrimp boil and mac and cheese for dinner. Then cookies and some kind of cake I’d whip up. I’d rope everyone into watching a movie I’d gotten that day, though only my mom and I would stay awake for it.

The holidays should be hard for me because they revolved around my parents. But everytime something traumatic happened during the holidays my mom made those thanksgivings and christmases as amazing as she could. The Christmas that her father died, she filled the house with everyone that she loved. Everyday was filled with us all doing something, whether it was shopping or building ginger bread house. That Christmas was filled with love. She did the same when my father had a stroke two years later and again when I was 17 and my fathers dad died.

I couldn’t do the same for her the Christmas that she was diagnosed. At the time we didn’t know it would be the last Christmas with my dad. Our first Christmas without him she pulled out all the stops, even as she was going through radiation.

Christmas 2017 she couldn’t. We were two years deep in cancer treatment, so I stepped up. My mom and I threw every tradition out the window and spent christmas at Disney. I decorate our room and we did away with presents for time together. It’s the best Christmas I have ever had.

Without realizing it my mom showed me how to get through the Holidays when some of the people you love are gone. She gave me a guide book without realizing it. Keep yourself busy, make new traditions, and most importantly surround yourself with people who love you unconditional. That’s what I’ve done, but that’s a story for another time.

Dead Parent Jokes Explained

I make a lot of Dead Parents jokes. Probably what some would consider an inappropriate amount. If there is an opportunity to make one, or reference the fact that I don’t have family in a funny way, then I’m gonna take it. At a job, shortly after my mom died, my manager mentioned our company’s Holiday party and that we could bring our families. Cue me loudly saying, “Well I haven’t got one of those.” My closests friends at that job laughed, use to me doing this. My manager…not so much. She made the comment that they were my family (that’s laughable). That’s not what I wanted from her in that moment. My attempt at her humor was to take the spotlight off my baggage, to make it seem like I was okay, to spot the pity.

The problem was my joke wasn’t a response to my personal grief. It was just me adding to the conversation out of no where. So it brought the spotlight to me. It only only been two months since my mom died. I was still learning how to deal with things.

My tactics have since altered. When the topic comes up, when someone asks about my family directly, thats when I make a joke. Then there are the conversations when we’re all commiserating about how much our families suck. Everyone looks to me, waiting for me to add in, but I don’t have anything to add in. Even before my parents died I didn’t have anything to add in. Now though it’s when a joke comes in. Because if I add in that my parents are dead the conversation will change. It will become about my grief and the pity will set in.

Those of us dealing with grief don’t want your pity. We don’t want to see that look on your face, showing how sorry you feel for us. That look can fuck right off.

So I make a joke. You can’t pity me if I’m making jokes about my pain.

The problem with the humor though is that it invites everyone else to make jokes. That’s the thing there are certain people in my life who can make these jokes with me. They knew my parents and were there with me through all of the shit. It’s not a lot of people. I can honestly count them on one hand. But there the ones that are okay with me breaking down. That know when the anniversaries and birthdays are and make a plan to be there. They structure holidays to keep us busy but also make new traditions. They don’t clam up when I talk about my parents but they also don’t push. They’ve made all this so normal that jokes aren’t a defense mechanism but just us making jokes.

They’re the few people I don’t have to explain my grief to.

That’s what the whole humor thing is really about anyway. I use it as a way to avoid that, because to explain my grief means walking you through everything, seeing your pity face as I tell you I was a caregiver to my mother as she battled cancer, that my dad committed suicide a year into her diagnosis, that I put my life on hold to take care of my mother, my soul mate, only to haver her die. It’s exhausting walking people through that. It’s exhausting dealing with the attempts at comfort. It’s all fucking exhausting.

The dead parents jokes are for me. They’re a wall to protect my heart. But a word of warning…I can make these jokes. You can’t.

The Ever-Changing Nature of Grief

As I work through things I’m constantly surprised at what brings me comfort and what triggers me. It’s never what I expect and it changes constantly. When I was first diagnosed with depression, almost 14 years ago, I had to figure out what would trigger an episode and what my signs where. I then had to share that list with my therapist and my mom. If either noticed something off, they had to talk to me about it. If nothing changed, they had person to do what needed to be done.

Thankfully nothing needed to be done.

But as football season has started back up and I’m actually able to enjoy it this year, it got me thinking about what my triggers are now and what comforts me.

Triggers

• Cooking
  • This is the biggest one that hasn’t gone away yet. The urge to cook has left me, but it’s more then that. I use to spend hours scrolling through sites finding new recipes. Everytime I was in an airport, I always picked up a new Bon Appétit and Food & Wine. I lived for taking a book and learning every recipe in that book. Now though…I prefer to keep it simple. I prefer to not cook. I don’t get the joy and reset that I use to when I would spend all day prepping a huge feast. Now it just feels like pain.
• Certain TV shows
  • If I watched it with my mom chances are I haven’t started watching it again. There are some exceptions (The Crown, One Day At A Time) but for the most part no. My favorite show is Supernatural. I haven’t watched it since my mom died. It was the first show that I convinced her to watch. She became as dedicated of a fan as I was and we referenced it constantly. So watching it now…it’s not comforting. I can’t call her and ask her what she thinks is gonna happen next week, what does this mean for the big bad, etc. I can’t look at her and just say “Son of a bitch,” or yell “Sammy,” and get an instant laugh.
• Hospitals and Doctors
  • To be fair some hospitals sting more than others. Our hospital stings more than others. It’s a place that was my life for over two years. It took over my life. Some good things happened but more bad happened.
• Me
  • I trigger myself…that sounds right? It’s more the person I was. There’s very few items of clothing that I still wear from before my parents died. I’ve chopped all my hair off and gone back to blonde. I’ve gotten rid of my bangs. I’ve shed my “vintage” look and moved to something similar to what my mom wore in college. It’s like I’m trying to change aspects of myself, desperately, to see a different person in the mirror then the one who went through everything I did.
• Orlando
  • Yes an entire city triggers me. It’s where I lived with my parents, where I lost my parents, and where I started to grieve them. Every damn section of that city has a memory relating to those three things. So yeah, I get fucking sad when I go there.
• Keytruda commercials.
  • My mom was on Keytruda…so yeah…pretty self explanatory.
• Movies
  • Like TV shows there are some of these that hurt and some that comfort. I can’t watch Lion, True Grit, Hell or High Water, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Love Actually, The Family Stone, Wrinkle In Time and so many more. So many of these movies are tied to traditions. We had movies we watched leading of to Christmas every year, that’s a crap shoot now. Then there’s movies that just remind me of them, remind me of the loss and the memories we had.
• Tennis
  • My mom was a massive tennis fan and it drove her crazy that I wasn’t…that is until the 2016 olympics where I finally watched Tennis and became obsessed with Nadal. I watched every open with her the next two years. Our favorite players battled each other and she taught me everything she knew about the sport. Now though…it’s hard to watch. She passed during the 2018 US Open. In fact the day after she died her guy Del Potro beat Nadal. I joked it was her getting back at me. That was the last full tennis match I watched.

Comfort

• Football
  • What was unbearable to watch just a few years ago has once again started to bring me joy. I can watch a game again, but more importantly I can enjoy a game again. I wasn’t able to the do that the past two season. Sitting here with friends, stressing over a game, feels normal. I feel like myself.
• Disney
  • It’s stings sometimes. I always cry during the fireworks and the excitement of the park doesn’t hit me. It’s not the same as it was when my parents were alive. There’s not the rush of racing through to get to Space Mountain. I don’t feel like a little kid anymore when I go to Disney. Walking onto Main Street feels more like a hug, someone pats me on the back and tells me its all gonna be okay. The same goes for Disney movies. I struggle to hold in my tears as I watch Moana but watching it makes me feel better. Watching any Disney movie makes me feel better.
• Musicals
  • I keep waiting for these to trigger me. Musicals are an obsession passed on to me by my grandfather and mother. When my grandfather died, I couldn’t watch any musicals for months. With my mom, though, they’ve become a comfort. The joy and the happy endings everyone gets continue to inspire me. Everything’s gonna be okay as long as we all just keep singing.
• New Orleans
  • I don’t know why a city I’ve spent less then a week in gives me comfort but it does. There’s a family history there on my moms side so maybe that’s it. I always thought of New Orleans as the start of our family’s history. It’s filled with food that I love, having grown up on a combination of italian, southern, and cajun food. Everyone has an accent I know. Most importantly when I’m in that city I feel a deep connection to my parents. It’s like there sitting at the table with me at the Gumbo Shop as I dip my spoon into a bowl of etouffee. It’s our city.
• Atlanta
  • I really do have a history here. My parents met at the Atlanta College of Art. We lived in Stone Mountain till I was nine. The bulk of our friends still live there. When I drive up there for Christmas it always feels like coming home. While Orlando is filled with good and bad, Atlanta just has good. It’s home.
• Friend-Family
  • After my mother died I was quickly adopted by our family friends. I looked around expecting to be alone, only to find myself surrounded by my extra moms and my adopted sisters. I didn’t realize how important they were to me until I moved to the other side of the country. I was no longer a days drive away. I was a $600+ plane ticket away (if I shopped it right). It’s what made living in LA so hard. I was away from everyone who helped pick up the pieces and glued me back together only to realize that the glue hadn’t set yet.
• The Holidays
  • I keep waiting to hate the holidays. Everything tells me I should. It’s a day full of traditions with my parents, a reminder that they’re gone, that everything has changed. But that’s where that friend-family came in. We made new traditions and I was welcomed into their holiday as a family member. The pain has only hit once even though I lost my dad just weeks before Christmas in 2016. You could say it’s cause I had a plan but I think it’s because I was surrounded by love and acceptance. Those two can do a lot to cover any grief.

I know my triggers will change as the years go by. The same can be said of what comforts me. That’s the thing about grief, it’s mercurial. What destroyed me two days ago can give me comfort now. The joy of cooking will come back and Disney may become a source of pain. Nothing stays the same.

Dead Parents and A Ton of Baggage

A lot of my grief is tied to the idea that I wasted time. Maybe I shouldn’t have moved to Atlanta for a year, or Austin for two. I could’ve spent that first year and half in LA at home with my parents. Those handful of evenings when my mom was sick I spend on dates could have been a handful of evenings spent with her. Did I really need to go to the movies or have time to myself once a week? At the time I told myself it was self care but honestly it just feels selfish now.

I spent a little over 4 years, about 50 months, roughly 200 weeks, a whomping 1,400 days away from my parents. I can’t help but see it all as wasted time, even though those years cover when I was in college and building my career. I look back and honestly question whether or not it was worth it. My Mom’s voice screams in my head that it was but that’s just a voice…my subconscious…telling me what I think she would say. It’s not her.

I’ve avoided this aspect of my grief because the reality is it changes my priorities. So much of myself has changed in the lose of my parents. There’s a quietness about me that I didn’t have before. The urgency about starting my life that I felt pre-cancer diagnosis isn’t there. It’s hard to want a life when the people that were suppose to share it with you are gone. I know there are big days facing me that will only make me sad because what’s a wedding, a birth, a career look like without the parents you cheered you on and helped make it happen? There’s more anger in me then ever before. Anger at life…at God…at myself. I don’t have patience like I use. You won’t see me lose my patience but trust me its gone. I have regrets, something that is completely new for me.

Though I can’t deny that some changes have been for the better. Recently I was watching Grey’s Anatomy (it’s been my quarantine binge) and a moment resonated with me. Derek told Meredith her dark and twisty nature was a strength not a weakness.

“If there’s a crisis, you don’t freeze, you move forward. You get the rest of us to move forward. Because you’ve seen worse. You’ve survived worse, and you know we’ll survive too. You say you’re all dark and twisty. It’s not a flaw, it’s a strength. It makes you who you are.”

I’m dark and twisty. I have dead parents and ton of baggage, but I don’t freeze in crisis. It’s cheesy but this moment opened my eyes that I’d been viewing my loss and the way changed me as a handicap. I look at the way I’ve handled this covid crisis. I’ve lost my job and had to move across country. Like so many I live in a constant state of flux, but I know this is all temporary. We will move past this.

I heard something recently, something someone said in passing. “I guess we have to get use to seeing our loved ones in hospitals.” I stopped for a moment and it took me a bit to remember that’s not the norm. From 2016 to 2018 my life was spent at the hospital, watching my mom fluctuate between getting better and sicker. I’ve slept next to her and woken up everytime the night nurse came to check her vitals. You do get use to it. You find the funny in the worst moments and you keep going because you have to.

December will be four years without my Dad. I just hit two without my mom. I’m still in mourning. I wake up sad almost every day and I still struggle to get out of bed. I think that’s why my priorities have shifted. In February of 2019 I ran away to Los Angeles. I ran away from my grief and tired to find the person I was before my parents. It took over a year to realize that person no longer exists. My hope was that if I worked through my grief I’d get back to her but that’s impossible. Death changes you. It makes you dark and twisty. It gives new flaws and new strengths. It reshapes what you want out of life.

Right now I just don’t want to miss anymore moments. I’d do anything to get those four years back. I’d get a teaching degree and teach at my local high school, staying close to home. I’d have 1400 extra days worth of memories.

My guilt might be smaller.

The Kind of Human Wreckage That Ya Love

Two days ago it was the two year anniversary. I don’t really know how to feel, except that there is an emptiness without my Mom’s guidance. I’m not sure of the steps I’m making because I don’t have her to check in with. I wish the pain of all this was sharper or suffocating. But In reality it’s just emptiness. I suppose that’s worse as it just settles in the pit of my stomach and stays there. It’s not overly dangerous or obvious. It’s just there with me all the time.

I’ve said this many times, my mom and I had a very close relationship. People have describe it as co-dependent, which I hate. There’s a negative connotation with that word. Using that word to describe us gives an unhealthy tinge to our relationship. I’ve always seen my mom and I as incredible independent. I moved to the other side of the country with her cheering me on. Did we talk on the phone everyday? Yes but it never infringed on my life. So no we weren’t co-dependent. We were each other’s halves. I could be in LA while she was in Orlando and tell her exactly what she would want for dinner. She knew exactly what I sounded like when the depression was creeping in and knew what to say to get me out of if. I didn’t have panic attacks until she was gone. When we worked at the art store together, a running gag was asking my mom and I the same question to see if we’d give the same answer. Word for word we did every time. Every Christmas we got each other the same present. We joked that we shared a brain but the reality is that we were each others person.

Sometimes the love of your life isn’t romantic. You don’t get some Nicholas Sparks story filled with romance and drama. You get a really simple one about a mother and daughter who would give the world for the other. My mom was the love of my life, she was my soul mate, my other half. How to you move on from that kind of a loss?

For the last six months I’ve been debating writing a book about my life with my mom. I struggled with how to start it. What moment in our history deserves to be the beginning. The beginning. While I was there for it, I don’t remember any of it. It was told to me countless times but the nuances, the way my mother felt, I couldn’t know that. That didn’t stop me from writing it down. It was as if she took over my fingers, told my brain what to write, what she felt.

It’s been sitting on my computer for a month or so and I don’t know what to do with it. Right now, it feels right to share it here:

Human Wreckage

I never planned to fall in love, let alone have children. Which makes me wonder how I got here with my knees pushed up to my shoulders trying to push a bowling ball out of my vagina.  He did this, this guy next to me, my husband, who’s puking in the sink. It was all him. At some point in our four years of marriage, probably after to many drinks, he convinced me to have kids. I’m sure thats how it happened. He knew I didn’t want kids a few weeks into dating. I went tirades about having children to anyone who would listen, but some how this asshole changed my mind. Thankfully he hasn’t conquered me on the love part. I picked him specifically. He’s a good guy. He’s got ambition, a sense of humor, and it helps that he’s kinda cute. I know, though, that I’ll never love him as much as I love myself.

Yes that makes me sound like a crazy person but there’s a reason. I spent my formative watching my big sister fall head over heels in love with every man she dated, loving them more then she loved herself, and getting destroyed every time the relationship ended. I’m not doing that. I see that look you’re giving me. Trust me. If you met my sister you’d understand.

That’s how I ended up here.  I guess if I’m being fair he didn’t trick me into having kids. That was the pain, drugs, and shame of watching him bitch out and throw up in sink, talking. Truthfully by the time we got engaged I knew I wanted at least two kids. I don’t know when my mind changed but it wasn’t that idiot at the sink.

“I swear to god, Joel, if you don’t get your gag reflux under control, I am never letting you live this down.” I tell him through gritted teeth.  He pukes again. 

All I know is that at some point I changed my mind. The nomadic artist lifestyle wasn’t as appealing as having a kid. Twenty-one year old Addy would kill me right now. That is If these contractions don’t. Why did no one tell me it was gonna hurt this much? I guess that’s what moms are for, coaching their daughters through this moments. Well I don’t have one of those, but that’s a story for another day

“Just a couple more pushes and were almost there,” my doc tells me.

“That’s what you said five pushes ago.” I’m not lying. I push again and give everything just to get this bowling ball out of me. 

POP.

“What the fuck was that?” I didn’t just hear that pop, I felt it. At least I think I felt it. I don’t know what I feel anymore. 

“That was the tailbone. It must’ve given way to the head. I just need one more big push Addy and we are there.”

“My tailbones broken and you want me to push again?”

“It happens when the baby has a large head.” He’s shrugging. My doctor just shrugged at me.

“I blame you for all of this.” Joel has the sense to look shameful.  Good. “Okay. I’m ready.” The Nurses brace me for the last push and with a deep breath I scream through the push. Quickly there’s small cry coming from the doctor’s area. It’s so tiny and sounds so scared. I can see this small little bundle being passed from the Doctor to a Nurse. They wipe it up and bring it to me. 

“Congratulations. It’s a girl.” 

There’s a baby in my arms.  A baby girl. “It’s a girl.” If you’re surprised by the shock in my voice then you should know I didn’t expect to have a girl. “Are you sure she’s mine?” The nurse just laughs and walks away.

Joel’s leaned closer. He looks as shocked as I feel. “We didn’t pick out a girls name.”

His statement barely registers because I’ve now looked into that little girls eyes. I can’t speak. I can’t breath. With one blink she’s stolen my heart, completely. “I’ve got you kid.” She smiles, like she knows I would give everything in me to protect her. If I say that to the nurse she’s gonna look at me like I’m fucking crazy but she smiled and I know she knows. 

“Do we have name for the baby?” one of the nurses asks but I can’t tell you which one. I can’t look away from her.

“No we…”

“Teresa. Her names Teresa.” Guess I had named picked after all.  The nurse nods and smiles.

“Was Teresa on the list?”

“Uh-huh.” I don’t even look up at him. When I was sixteen I promised I would myself I would never love anything as much as I love myself.

Today I broke that promise.

One Week to Two Years

One week from today it will be two years. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that. How could it possible be two years since I heard my mother’s voice and held her hand? It all still feels so fresh. Back in January I started therapy. It had been about a year since I had been and it was starting to become clear to me that I was not handling my grief. I told my therapist what I was going through and what happened and he explained it simply, I wasn’t grieving a parent, I was grieving my soulmate.

Soulmate has a romantic connotation. We hope that’s who are eventual spouses are. But hiring my grief described this way made so much sense. Sometimes the love of your life is a platonic love. My mom was my soulmate. Maybe it happened because my dad had all his issues and to survive we latched on to each other. Maybe it was destined to happen no matter what. The why doesn’t matter. The fact is that the nature of our bond changed my grief and I didn’t expect it. Because at the end of the day how to grieve and move past losing your soulmate at 30?

There’s an anger that comes with it. Why me? Why am I the one who loses her person so early? It’s bull shit and infurating. There are days I spend screaming in my head that this is unfair. Then I hear my mothers voice.

“Nowhere on your birth certificate does it say fair.”

For a time the angry briefly melts away and I’m left with my sadness until it comes again.

That’s when the missing happens. It’s the little things I miss. The ability to know what she wants for dinner even though I’m on the other side of the country. The inside jokes that no one got. I miss being able to call her and talk about absolutely nothing for four hours.

I miss our road trips together, spending hours in a car and never getting annoyed with each other. It was one of the few times I would get quiet. I’d stare out the window and watch the scenery pass with a sadness. I’m a naturally sad person, but I hide it really well. My mom always saw it. She’d never say anything, just reach across the car, grab my hand, and give a light squeeze. There was no expectation to talk after that. Just her reminding me that she’s here.

I miss that more then anything.

Push Away The Unimaginable

If you spent anytime with my mom and I between June 2016 and September 2018 then you know we listened to Hamilton almost everyday. I discovered it first and told her she had to listen to it. She laughed, clearly thinking another History that she’ll encourage but never fully understand.

Jokes on her, she became more obsessed with it then I did. It became what kept her going everyday. We listened to it on the way to chemo, radiation, doctors appointments. She even had them play Hamilton at the start of a surgery, as she drifted off to sleep. I bought the album on iTunes so she could fall asleep listening to it on her phone. The overarching theme of Christmas 2016 was Hamilton.

When she died…I had them play History Has It’s Eyes On You at her funeral.

I haven’t been able to listen to the album really since. I’ll play a few songs here and there but…it hurts to listen. Hamilton was one of the last things we shared together and avoiding it means I can avoid the pain.

That’s the thing no one tells you about grief. There’s a lot of avoidance. There’s avoiding tears, avoiding memories, avoiding triggers, avoiding life. If you stay busy enough you can avoid everything. That’s what I’ve been doing for a very long time.

So what does avoidance have to do with Hamilton? Well now it’s sitting in my Diseny+ queue everyday, waiting for me. In a way it’s a physical manifestation of my grief. I can’t separate the Musical from my mom. As I watch I relieve the last few years of our life. The joy and strength a few songs brought her. Our nights of watching Ham4Ham on YouTube. Our inside joke of every time leaving the house I always said “Les go,” same way Lin Does in “Non-Stop.” Then it turns dark. When the treatments start working and the cancer is stronger. She still listened to Hamilton every night to get to sleep.

Hamilton was our theme music for her time with cancer, cheering us on and keeping us strong. Then it was how we said goodbye to each other.

As I sit here watching Hamilton, writing out my rambling thoughts about grief, I hold back tears. I’ve avoided this for so long and in a way avoided my mother. It may sound ridiculous but as I watch it I feel her, in a way I haven’t in a very long time. I’ve wonder if she listened to Hamilton with such ferocity and tied it to us because she knew I would need something in it after she died.

In the days after she passed I started writing more then I had in years. I’m notoriously slow writer and can manage maybe 3 pages a day. After she died, it changed to ten pages in a sitting and it hasn’t let up. It felt and still feels like I need to write to survive. I think she knew that would happen as her favorite story to tell was that she knew I would be a writer when I was three. For almost two years I’ve looked at my writing as “writing like I was running out of time.” I missed the next line.

My mom told me very clearly that “Wait For It” was my song. I spent three years waiting with her. Waiting to beat cancer, waiting to get back to my life, waiting for everything to be okay. After she died I’ve struggled with understanding why I’m here. There are days when it feels like everyone who’s loved as died…so why am I still here. When she told me it was my song I don’t think she knew how it grow with me. Then again she knew so much more then me.

When we planned her funeral I was torn between two Hamilton songs to play. “One Last Time” and “History Has It’s Eyes On You”. I went with “History Has It’s Eyes On You” because me and so many others had spent our lives going to her for advice. She given us the same words, telling us we were destined for greatness but that we had responsibility to be better in that greatness. Better then her. The reality is, I wanted to keep “One Last Time” for myself.

Watching Hamilton this past weekend is a reminder that I can’t avoid my grief. It’s there waiting in everything I love. But with that grief comes my mom. I can’t separate the two. If I avoid my grief, then I avoid her. The final words Hamilton says to Eliza, “My love take your time, I’ll see you on the other side,” have a completely different meaning to me now. Hearing a few days ago…it felt like hearing my Mom.

Perception Is Not Reality

I’ve always been fascinated with how editing can change a photography. It changes the tone and intention. My mother use to always tell me that my perception is not everyone else’s reality. It was her way of telling me to be mindful of those around me. We edit ourselves to be okay, to look like we’re handling a situation with grace. Inside we could be falling apart. Before she died, my mom reached out to family and close friends, asking them to to take care of me. She told them I would look fine on the outside but be breaking inside, warning them I’m a high function depressive and I don’t ask for help. To be clear she did this with me sitting next to her, we had an open and honest relationship. For my whole life my mother was the only one who knew I was depressed. She was the only one who knew the signs and what to watch for. But she knew she was dying and she couldn’t watch out for me from where she was going. So she had to change others perception of me.

That idea of perception, I put it in my photographs now.

Another picture from my few days in New Orleans in February 2019. Both edits reflect things I felt those days in New Orleans and things I feel today. There’s a sadness to them, of time lost and grief not expressed. The reality is I could have sat on that water front watching the rainfall and the ships roll past me for days. I could’ve lived my whole life there. Perhaps I edited my happiness, in that moment out of my pictures. Or maybe my happiness just looks different then yours.

Like I said it’s all perspective.