Haunted by the inevitable

At some point, we are all going to die.

Not like this is ground breaking news that we all didn't realize before, but it's a fact I never really focused on until becoming a mom. Maybe it's because before starting a family, I really didn't care if I met my demise anytime soon. Maybe it's because I feel like I now have something to lose. Whatever the case, I feel like I'm constantly haunted by the inevitable.

Now that my boys are growing a little bit older, my husband and I have more freedom to go out on our own leaving them behind with a sitter. We are enjoying date nights at concerts at The Aggie and Mishawaka and have even started to do some overnight stays at hotels in Denver. The freedom to enjoy these moments with my husband is amazing. Long gone are the days of being home-bound and bored with limits and restrictions that revolve around diaper changes, nap schedules and feeding regimens. Through time, the shackles of babyhood have been broken, leaving us to run free.

On our last kid-free adventure, we drove up to The Mish with friends for a concert. Music blaring, friends laughing, the warm wind blowing through our hair as we rode the twists and turns of the road hugging the beautiful Poudre River while driving up the canyon. Our kids at home with the sitter and safely tucked in their beds, I couldn't help but think how dangerous this trip was. At a moments notice, we could be in a head-on collision, swerve off the road and into the river, or a true reality, hit a deer.

My biggest fear is not knowing what would happen to my kids if both my husband and I were to die at the same time.

Most families are fairly normal. When you have your first baby, one of the most important steps in becoming a parent is drawing up a Will, laying out a plan of care for your children if you should expire earlier than you hoped. Normal families have Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, or some trusted adults named to take over and keep your kids safe. We do not. Without going into a long list of specifics, there is nobody I trust enough with my kids if I should die.

This fact recently hit me like a ton of bricks a few weeks ago after reading the news story in The Coloradoan. The one about the parents who made some very poor decisions, speeding and driving drunk down Lemay, only to end up in a fatal and gory car accident at the insurance office building. They left behind children with no plans for their care. Friends and family rallied to raise money to take care of the mourning children and their future was uncertain.

I can't even begin to explain how disturbing this was to me. Not that my husband and I make stupid decisions like speeding while driving drunk, but life is unpredictable. Anything can happen at any time. My boys could easily be in the same situation, parent-less and bouncing from house to house, or in foster care, while people manage the mess of the aftermath.

These thoughts are often buried deep within the halls of my mind, but every so often a door is opened and I'm tormented by what has surfaced. I don't care about an afterlife, meeting a maker or simply returning to dust. I care immensely about what happens to my children after I'm gone. And until they are able to care for themselves, I will always be haunted by the inevitable.

Kristin Mastre

Hard Times

My sister-in-law’s mother-in-law (don’t think too hard about it) is dying. She had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year and is now is at the end of her life. She is in hospice with her family gathered. She is not responsive. Everyone is waiting. It is hard to think about. How can you be here alive one minute and gone the next. Everyone is waiting for that moment when she lets go.

Even though I am not close to this person I have been thinking about her everyday. Her consciousness is gone but her family suffers still. Not wanting to leave her alone for a minute but essentially sitting with someone who is already dead. They are waiting until she no longer takes a breath and her heart no longer beats. I feel so much sympathy for them. The waiting is hard.

It makes me think about my own mother’s death. Hers seemed to be much quicker. Once she was in the hospital she began to sleep more and more until she just slipped away without a word. I sat with my brother. Waiting together. Making small talk and thinking about the past. When she took her last breath I disconnected the oxygen mask as then the room was quiet. I touched her hand and smoothed her hair. I waited for a few minutes and then went to tell the nurse that my mother had died.

There was much business after that. Phone calls to be made. Possessions to be gathered. Forms to be signed. We left the hospital with her things and drove home.

It still seems unreal. I still feel like when the phone rings it will be her. I still think I have to call her to share some new story about my kids. In a way she is still alive.

I don’t know why I write this – only to let my sister-in-law know that we are thinking of her. I know there is nothing anyone can do, but I share this experience with her now. And that I know it is hard.

Secrets

“I have a secret”, she said.

My stomach lurched as I stood to leave the room. She was laying on the couch cigarette in hand, the room lit by the glow of the television.

“Please don’t tell me if I don’t want to know,” I said standing in the kitchen where she couldn’t see my face. My heart was pounding. A sense of De Ja Vu washed over me. I have been here before I thought. Standing in the tiny apartment kitchen I grew up in my mother lay in the living room wasting away from cancer. She was too thin and needed help getting up from the couch. In the past when she would tell me some secret confession it was because she was manic. During those times I learned many things about her past that I shouldn’t have. It occurred to me that she might be manic now despite the fact that the cancer didn’t allow her to stay up all night or rearrange furniture.

“I am going to tell you anyway,” she said. I listened from the kitchen refusing to come out to look at her, ears alert nevertheless. “I have had a lover for many years.” She told me who it was.

“But mom, he’s married.” I heard my words as I spoke them sounding like a prudish 13 year old. She was unapologetic.

I remembered the time that I was 12 and she insisted on sleeping in my bed with me. She woke me often throughout the night to tell me something else. She told me that she was married before she married my father and that she had an abortion. She told me that when she was in a car accident she heard her aborted child cry out for her.

I knew she was sick the previous March. When she came for a visit I could see she had lost weight. She looked old. But then when we saw her in June, she seemed better and we went to the Natural History Museum with the kids and to China Town for dinner. Now it was September and she lay dying on the couch. Did she know she was dying? If she did, she did not bring it up. She did not offer any goodbyes. She did not tell me she was proud of me or that she loved me. Instead she told me about her lover.

I wasn’t sure that I believed the story to be true. I called my brother who was equally suspicious. She dropped her cigarette on the couch. I snuffed it out and tried to get her to go to bed.

The next day we had her admitted to the hospital. I was unable to keep up with her increasing demands and thought that we would be able to set up some help during the admission. She was reluctant to go but finally agreed. I thought that she would return home. Did she know that she would never return to her apartment? Did she know that she smoked her last cigarette across the street from the hospital?

Days later my brother and I watched her take her last breath. I touched her hand and smoothed her hair. Her fingers were swollen with death. I ached to feel more, know more about her, feel closer to her. My brother cried quietly sitting in the chair.

Her death left us exactly as I knew it would. I knew she would just slip away without any emotional final words or goodbyes. She left no will, no letters to us. She just floated quietly away. It was as if there was still unfinished business, words never said, feelings unresolved. Had we failed her or had she failed us?

I replay that last week over and over in my head as I lie in bed trying to sleep. I miss her so much, yet I am not sure why. Years of confusion, upheaval, anger, and fear all brought to a sudden end. Who will fill her void?

During the days and weeks that followed while cleaning out her apartment we found the evidence that she was telling the truth. We called to tell him that she had died unsure of what to do. Her final secret exposed by her own hand.

Elisabeth

How to know someone

I finally did it... I had the courage to re-read the things that my mother wrote. Years before she died, she sent me a folder of "essays" that she had written. At the time I encouraged her to finish them and submit them. I offered to help - thinking perhaps this would be the thing that could bind us and maybe I would come to understand her better. But to her, they were finished. I guess she felt that they were perfect and beyond criticism. I filed them away in the tall black metal cabinet.

I came to view that attitude as part of her disease. She was bipolar and "delusions of grandeur" seemed very descriptive to me of how she saw herself. The flip side was that it made it difficult for her to ever be truly productive. I on the other hand seem to have the opposite problem. Although I can usually sit down and get the job done, I have no real talent. I'm just a plugger - but that often seems to be good enough to have some success. I may never experience her highs, but I won’t experience her lows either.

My mom seemed to me to be a person who lived in the past. And indeed, her writings reflected that. I often wondered why she did not write of her children much, especially since I had young children who seemed to occupy my every thought. Her thoughts seemed focused on past lovers, a failed marriage, and her many disappointments. I came to believe that this was also part of her disease.

And then I found it. A two-page essay entitled "-E-". Finally some thoughts about me. They were there after all. I had a place among all of her past memories. I hope I managed to bring her some joy. My thoughts have been so occupied with her since her death. I still yearn to know and understand her and death has not changed that. Reading her thoughts now I feel less defensive and more open to understanding her. Something that might have been more useful when she was alive. I have her actual words on paper... something that not many of us get to have.

I miss her terribly and I miss the possibility of knowing her. Whether knowingly or not she has left me a great gift. Maybe that is why we all write… so the next one reading may have a better understanding of who we are. We can say so many things in print – even things that may be too hard to say in life.

Elisabeth

Fear?

Dora the Explorer is interrupted with a honking warning sound as the emergency broadcast system is being tested. "Tomato!" "Tomato!" my daughter starts shouting and crying at the same time. She is 3 and thinks that this warning sound means that we are about to have a tornado. Not that she knows anything about tornados. She has never seen or been in one, I have never spoken about one, and I am not afraid of one happening here myself. But for some reason she thinks that something dangerous is about to happen - not to mention that they are only testing the emergency broadcast system.

How do we become afraid and more importantly how do we stop the fear. For her, it must be just an urgent and scary noise that has interrupted the normal dullness of the routine and Dora's perky quest to find the missing treasure. As we grow up we learn to fear things that seem to be more possible each day.

I hold her and reassure her and lie promising that we will never have a tornado here and that everything is fine and safe and that I will protect her forever. It seems to work for the time being, but I feel a little guilty with my promises, even though she is only three years old.

Now that she is nine, I still make promises that I cannot keep. When my mother died she immediately made the connection that I could die one day as well. I promised her that she will always be OK and that I wont die for a very long time. My four year old is unfased, "I am sorry your mother died he says, obviously mimicing what others before him have said. Then he says we are all going to die but not for a very long time", mimicing what I have said.

Everyone has fears. Here is my incomplete list: I am afraid of dying, leaving my kids, getting cancer, getting old, getting fat, getting Alzheimer's disease, spending too much money, losing a child, looking stupid, looking incompetent, dying in a plane crash, food poisoning, high fructose corn syrup, insomnia, and global warming.

We all have fears but we somehow manage to keep them at bay. If we did not, we couldn't function. I think it is because as humans we are stupid. We actually think that these things won't happen if we don't think about them. Some of us try to face our fears, but really what does that do. You know that old saying we have nothing to fear but fear itself - that seems ridiculous to me. There are a lot of things that we really should be afraid of. We just need to think about the reality - later.

That must be why we have TV! Television, whatever your poison be it the Real Housewives of Orange County or the Bachelor or Iron Chef allows us to not think about our fears. In fact, it is usually when I am lying in bed at night when the house is quiet and my husband begins to snore that I think about my list at all. The trick must be to keep occupied with all the other stuff. Maybe the interruption in Dora is what did it to my daughter. Maybe kids are smarter than we think.

Elisabeth