Word Play

As a little girl, I remember learning the word “fuck.” I repeated it over and over again with emphatic volume in the laundry room. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” My brother overheard me and told me to stop. I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was free. On fire. He pinned me to cold cement floor and told me he was going to tell my parents. “Fuck, fucker, fucking, fucked!” What was once unknown and forbidden was now mine. I feared no punishment. I felt powerful and alive.

It’s been almost 40 years since I learned that glorious word, but it still feels just as good to say. It’s not just the long, drawn out “f” or the hard “ck” closer that makes me smile (though I do love them both), it’s saying something taboo, uttering a word that no one is supposed to say.

There is another other taboo word that I’ve come to know in the past year. It’s a word that carries an immediate feeling—a word that instantly connects me to whoever says it. Instead of power and control, this word brings a sense of sadness, calm, and even a small hint of joy. But it’s a word most people don’t want to hear. Not from a friend, not from a co-worker and most certainly not from a child. It’s uncomfortable and intimate. And, get ready, I’m gonna say it…

Grief.

There is something so raw and open and untidy in that word. It hangs on the lips like a sore—blistered and open. Only there is no drug you can take to ease its discomfort. No salve to numb the pain. Believe me, I’ve tried finding a remedy. There isn’t one.

Felt in solitude, grief is empty and forever. You don’t get your loved one back. You don’t get another shot at saying goodbye. You don’t get to make even one more memory together. Like all emotions grief is felt alone, but it doesn’t have to be lonely. There is something so beautiful in the raw openness of grief—shared grief—that it feels almost soothing.

Before I truly understood grief—before my mom died—I worked at a counseling center devoted to grief and loss. I remember vividly something a client once told me. He said he wanted to go back to the week of his brother’s funeral. That being around people who were wiling to share their grief together felt wonderful. Sure, he was still mourning a huge loss, but somehow he felt seen, understood, and connected during that week. Powerful stuff.

Anyone who has tasted grief knows it’s distinctive flavor. There are no gradients, no “better” or “worse” feeling of it. By savoring the bittersweet flavor together, though, it’s bearable.

There is strength in numbers. Fuckin' right there is.

Unless

Below is the essay I read at the Listen to Your Mother Twin Cities show on May 8th 2014. It was a wonderful opportunity to share an very private experience with lots of wonderful guests.  Enjoy!

Unless

By Laurie Lethert Kocanda

May 8, 2014

Listen to Your Mother Twin Cities

She looks likes you, this stranger. Same conservative dress, same comfortable shoes, same short haircut. Even walks like you: careful and slow. I stare at her, maybe a little too long, but she doesn’t notice. Doesn’t notice the obvious longing I feel when I look at her. When she glances my way, I smile and turn away quickly because I don’t want her to know what I’m doing: pretending she’s you. Pretending she’s my mom.

I walk behind her into the grocery store, blurring my eyes just a bit so that what I see reflects your presence even more. I’m trying to remember, to feel like I’m with you again. I’m not exactly following her, but I am pacing myself in hopes we converge near the end of the produce section.

I see her wedding band and wonder if she has kids, grandkids. I wonder if they know how lucky they are to have her. Alive and mobile. I want to speak to her, say something. But I’ve nothing important to say, really. I just want her to hear a few kind words; something that tells her she’s special.

Our carts bump. “Oh, excuse me,” she says, surprised. “No problem,” I assure her. “I needed something to wake me up.” My words fail to communicate any real sense of kindness, though I’m hopeful it shows in my smile. She grins back at me, repositions her cart, and heads off toward the bakery.

I don’t see her again until I’m back in the car. I wave as I pass by her in the parking lot. As she disappears out of sight, a shadow of shame moves over me like a hard-earned hangover.

I am a cheat. 

The last time I saw your face was just before we closed the coffin at your funeral mass. I kissed your forehead and touched your hands; neither felt like you. Cold and hard, the exact opposite of what you were in life.

It was me who picked out the clothes you were buried in. I brought them over to the funeral home the very day you died. I picked the collarless blazer you bought when we went shopping many years ago, the blue one with gold buttons and flecks of purple and pink. The casket hid your shoes, so I settled on your blue flats—well worn and comfortable.

My friend Janelle did your hair, curled back with a soft wisp of bang over your forehead. I regret not being there. We planned to bring some wine along with the curling iron, offer a toast to you, but I got cold feet when the time came. I’m sure she talked your ear off without me.

I apologize for not visiting yet. Seems easier for me to find you in that grocery store stranger than at the cemetery. It’s not that I don’t know where you are buried. I will never forget seeing your coffin as we left the gravesite, sitting all alone next to an empty tent with empty chairs on a still empty vault. I craned my neck to see you for as long as I could, until the grass and trees and cars got in the way. Until my gaze moved from the rear window to my kids, who will never get to know their grandma as adults.

If you are at the cemetery you’re trapped, beneath the earth and alone. I think of that when the weather is at its most extreme. If you really are there, you would be cold in winter, hot in the summer and alone almost all of the time. The “escape kit” we snuck into your coffin just before closing it would get you nowhere. And so I remind myself that you are not your body. I will not see you again.

Unless.

She looks like you, this young woman with red hair and fair skin. I’m watching her closely and there is no doubt she can see me. As she turns towards me, my gaze deepens. A soft pink fills her cheeks and she knows what I’m doing: I’m cherishing this moment as her mom.

She runs to her sister, your namesake, to share my attention, perhaps divert it in a moment of pre-teen self-consciousness. They start moving and jumping and running together in what seems like a dance, some sweet tandem rhythm only sisters can share.

As they stop to catch their breath, I’m tempted to say something. I want them to know how very special they are. With their dirty hands and skinned knees and unbrushed hair, they are perfect.

Nothing comes out, because there are no words to capture what I’m feeling. And just as I realize this, I see something familiar in them both—a smile, a glance, a laugh. I can’t put my finger on it, but I somehow know it’s you.

You’ve been here all along. 

When you least expect it

The problem with grief is that it is unpredictable. Things can be clicking along pretty happily, when suddenly BOOM! It hits you like a slingshot to the face. It’s like that with all the tough stuff in life, our work-in-progress topics; they develop a mind of their own. No matter how much we ignore them or pretend they don’t exist, eventually they find their way back to us like an oozing, crusty cold sore that’s impossible to overlook.

What triggers the flare-ups can be anything from the obvious—a birthday, anniversary or holiday—to the unexpected—a song on the radio, a story in the paper, a glance from a stranger.

In the almost six months since my mom’s death, I’ve had my share of emotional breakdowns, some surprising, others not as much. What’s funny, though, is that so far the obvious, more planned treks toward pain and discomfort haven’t been as effective in helping me really experience the raw emotion of grief as the unplanned.

For example, when I called my dad and unexpectedly heard his answering machine say, “I’m not available” instead of, “We can’t come to the phone right now,” I instantly hung up. Tears filled my eyes and I was immediately pissed at him for moving on with his life. Sure, it was no secret my dad had started dating soon after my mom’s death, but it was that call, that 15 second recording, that helped me realize and feel the anger that was hidden in my grief.

The holidays, which everyone said would be terrible, weren’t so bad. I prepared and disconnected, steadied myself for a week of tears that would never come.

In a recent exchange of e-mails with a distant relative (someone who’d recognized me by my maiden name on a Facebook comment to a mutual friend), I was asked, “Was your mom Maggie?” (Emphasis on the word was.) Simple enough question, but hearing my mom referred to in the past tense, stung. “How dare you?” I thought. As if she wasn’t real anymore. But then I thought, “She gone, isn’t she?” and my mind painfully returned to the morning of her death.

Last week I decided to change my cell phone contact information from “Mom and Dad” to “Dad.” I’d avoided doing it for a while, but it hurt too much to see her name appear when I made or received a call from my parents’ home. It’s always been my mom who called, my mom I called. Seeing her name appear when my phone rang felt like bait and switch. I made the change and waited to feel the pain of my treachery. Nothing.

You just don’t get to plan for it.

Music—and not the stuff I downloaded for her during the last month or two of her life—no, that would make sense. Instead, anything that speaks to loss or love is a potential trigger.

Say something I’m giving up on you.

I’m sorry that I couldn’t get to you.

So I’ll sit in the back row of yoga, in the corner of the coffee shop, with tears streaming down my face. Right where I need to be.

Picture Boards

It's amazing the frenzy I can work myself into. I was pretty sure looking at the picture boards from my mom's funeral would be an awful, painful, teary experience. Thought they might make me feel sad, which is an emotion I don't need any more of right now.

But guess what? I was wrong.

Decided to take them out and share them with someone on Monday. Again, expecting an outpouring of emotion, I decided to bring them with me to my weekly hour on the couch (it's no secret I'm an advocate of therapy!). 

To my surprise, opening them up and going through the photos with someone who had never met my mom actually made the experience fun. I got to talk about her, tell her story, smile. Heck, I even laughed a bit. 

I have a friend to thank for suggesting I show them to someone... Thanks for your wisdom, Korey. I wish you didn't know firsthand that it would make me feel better, but you do. You're next to "meet" my mom and to hear the stories. Until then, I'm gonna share her beauty, spirit and smile here.

Enjoy!

I'm always amazed that my mom moved to San Francisco when she was 20.
The friend she went with ended up returning home after a few months, but my mom stayed.
Not sure I would have been so brave!

My mom gave us everything she had. Thankfully that included lots of laughter and smiles.

"Ask not what your mother can do for you. Ask what you can do for your mother!"

It was fun remembering her favorite things...
Come to think of it, we should have put "The Sound of Music" on there too!

Starting Over

Between the wall and the couch I’m sitting on are the picture boards from my mom’s funeral. There are three of them, each detailing a different era in her life. I haven’t looked at them since I brought them home in July, but I know they are back there, untouched but for some dust bunnies and wayward dog hair.

I thought about taking them out today. About showing the pictures, her story, to someone who has never met her. Thought maybe it would help me spend some time with her, remembering what a wonderful person she was. To talk about her and celebrate her life for a while.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I quickly redirected my thoughts to something more pragmatic. Molly and I really need to find the time to clean out her closet and dresser, to go through her jewelry and keepsakes. 

But really I’m in no rush. As long as most of her things are still in my parents’ house, there is some sense of her being there, I guess. Of everything, it’s her sock drawer that really sticks out in my mind. All paired up and ready to go.

Only they’re not going anywhere. 

Truth is, I don’t think I’ve been dealing with my mom’s death all that well. I haven’t cried much (save for my weekly hour of couch time) and I try not to think about her very often. Maybe I’m subconsciously afraid of how much it’s going to hurt, of admitting how much I’ve lost. Usually as soon I start thinking about her, I shift my focus to the things right in front me (chair, window, the ache in my low back) to get my mind in a safer place. I lie and say I'm being mindful of the present moment. But truthfully, I'm avoiding the present moment when I abandon my sadness and look for something else.

Not sure I’m ready to pull out the picture boards yet, but I did just reread the eulogy I gave at her funeral service. I’ll share it here. And maybe soon I can share those boards…

Back to the beginning and starting over, it seems. 

Mom's Eulogy

It’s nice to see so many people here. I see faces I’ve seen since the day I was born, lifelong friends and family that have been with my mom throughout her entire life. They knew her as a little daddy’s girl with curly red hair growing up on Fairmount Ave. in St. Paul, as a shy and skinny kid at St. Luke’s grade school and then at the Convent of the Visitation for high school.

I see the faces of people who met my mom as an adult, watched her marry and become a mother. I see women who learned how be wives and mothers alongside my mom, people that were close to our family through the various ups and downs of life.

She loved you all and there is nothing she would have liked more than to be celebrating her life each and every one of you. It’s a shame we don’t plan events like this for the living, but I know she’s here in spirit.

There are some of you here who never had the chance to meet my mom, but if you’re here because care about someone in her family, that means you care about her because everything good in us is a reflection of her. Pat’s wit and commitment, Billy classiness and love for tradition, Molly’s compassion and devotion to caring for others… my goofiness.

She was the number one fan of each of her four children. She was committed to her job as a stay-at-home mom and there was nothing she would have rather done. She was a volunteer, room mother, cook, nurse, and taxi driver. She was even a leprechaun once a year, secretly delivering a hat full of candy to each of our classrooms on St. Patrick’s Day. She never told us it was her, she just enjoyed hearing the kids and teachers talk about it and try to figure her out. It took us years to finally figure out it was her.      

She rarely missed a game for any of the dozens of sports we played from T-Ball to varsity sports. She drove my brothers to hockey games all over the state and even played in a mother-son game. She once got two cars stuck on our driveway hill before getting the third one out so I could go to basketball practice. She’d even agreed to let my push her in and adult jogger for part of a marathon relay this past May, but decided to sit out when her health got the best of her. I thought I was doing something for her by going on runs with her… but it really was the other way around.

When Molly was in the hospital after her snowmobile accident back in 1979, she was at her side every day. Getting kids to school, heading to downtown St. Paul, then coming home again to care for the other three when my dad arrived in early evening. When Molly came home, my mom took care of her with gentleness, patience, and a kind spirit that can sometimes be hard when caregiving. She had to manage one kid on the mend and three other ones who were taking liberty with their newfound freedoms. I’m sure it wasn’t easy, but she did it with the grace and style that was the hallmark of my mom. 

She was silly, goofy and loved watching us laugh. She did things like put a rubber band around the trigger of the kitchen sink hose so the next kid to turn on the sink got sprayed. She hauled us around in a big blue suburban and let us roll around in the back end while she swerved on country roads. When we were old enough (well, almost old enough), she let us try our hand at driving on those same roads.

We spent countless hours with her playing duets on the piano and lying in her bed watching The Carol Burnett Show, Dallas, Knots Landing, and Nightline with Ted Koppel. There was no place we’d rather be than snuggled up in her arms.

And yet she was the closest thing to a walking Emily Post Etiquette book you could find.  Short from citing the page number in the book, she knew the “proper” or “mannerly” way to handle most situations. And it was never about being “stuffy” or “putting on airs,” it was about respecting others and showing them you cared.  My brother Billy is no Emily Post, but boy did she love enjoying the finer things in life with him when she’d get to put those manners to good use.

But she wasn’t just a mom to us; she was a mom to so many more. On more than one occasion, she welcomed kids into our house (teenagers nonetheless!) whose families were going through hard times or had been relocated during high school. She mothered them like they were here own. That’s how it was with any of our friends that came into the house. Our house was a place kids knew they could come to be happy—and she made it that way. And with all she endured the past year, she still cared enough to ask about our childhood friends.

As adults she never stopped mothering us. She dropped cookies off to us at work, invited us down for coffee and doughnuts, and took us out to lunch whenever she had a chance. She visited and answered the phone at the family business just to be closer to my dad and siblings, often riding shotgun for a chance to catch up.

Being a mom wasn’t just a job, it was her passion.

But if there was one thing that my mom enjoyed more than being a mom, it was being a grandma. The other day Pat was talking about my mom’s “mystery date” to Build-a-Bear Workshop with the first three grandkids. She had fun taking them out, but more than anything she just loved having her grandchildren around, and doted on them whenever she had a chance… taping their pictures and handmade cards everywhere in the house. She loved watching her children care for their children… perhaps she saw her young self in us returning the favor to the next generation.

My mom was also a committed wife. One month before she died she celebrated her 50^th wedding anniversary with my dad. They were pretty funny near the end of her life, getting on each other’s nerves now and again with a playful spirit that kept each other in check. Just two days before she died I was snuggled up with her in bed and she asked me to get my dad. She wanted a hug. And I heard her thank him for a good life together.

Of course at least half of that good life was her doing. She cared for him in every way possible. And for the most part, she did it without complaint but with desire. She was a hunting and fishing widow many weekends of the year, always happy to see my dad return.  I’ll assume it was because she missed him, but my guess is that sometimes it was the joy of knowing that reinforcements had arrived and her weekend of being terrorized by 4 kids was over.

She had a strong, quiet faith. She was at church every Sunday and Holy Day throughout her life, even had some God-sent radar that knew when as teenagers my brothers decided that “going to church” meant just swinging in to pick up the bulletin. She felt closest to God when she was visiting the nuns at Visitation. Molly and I used to talk about what a good nun she’d make.

Our hearts are broken this week and while we’re all sad she’s gone from us, I know she’s here celebrating somehow… and will be waiting for us all at a picnic table just inside the gates of heaven—with cold milk and warm cookies straight from the oven.

What Goes Through Your Head?

“When you see a friend for the first time since your mom died what goes through your head?” A friend, who lost her mom just a month before me, sent me that question in an e-mail last week. I think I’ve finally come up with my answer...

I wonder if they know.

Do they have any idea how completely different I am? Do they know about the metamorphosis that has taken—is taking—place inside me? Can they tell how I have been forever scarred? That in some ways I’m as weak as I was the moment I heard, “she’s gone,” but I also have the strength of her life within me? That the scar, while painful and fragile, is doing something to the rest of me? Making me hardened, wise and a thousand times more compassionate all at once? Do they know how confusing it is to be torn apart, to be a child and a wise elder at that same time?

Then, I wonder if they Know.

Do they know this feeling? Do they Know, with a captial "K"? Am I standing with someone who has felt this same tug of emotions? Has their heart been ripped in this same way? Have they made it through to some “other side” in their grief? Is that even possible? Is this someone who, with just a nod and wink, could make me feel understood? Whose words are completely unnecessary? Someone who will make me feel wrapped in love because just by having stood in my shoes I know they have no choice but to hold me in their heart? To keep me from feeling completely alone?

So I guess it’s a two-part answer, my friend…

My thoughts first go inside, to me… “Can’t you see how changed I am? I’m a totally different person now. Nothing is the same for me. It will never be the same for me.”

Then my thoughts move to you, the friend standing before me… “Do you know this pain? Have you experienced this life-changing, and completely human experience? Are you different, too? Are you and I the ‘same’?”

I have a feeling this response will fade over time, but in some way I know it will be there forever. You and I, we'll continue to miss our loved ones, but if we stay connected with those who remain, we'll be stronger. We'll give peace to those newly (and begrudgingly) entering the group of Knowers. 

Peace, sister.