I've started carrying around a photo of Mom. I don't know what my mom was doing when the photo was taken, where she was or who took the photo. The key to the photo is it feels like an ordinary moment of Mom, and she feels present.
Carrying it around makes me feel like she is with me. I've been having a tough time lately, and having her support helps me get through it.
Since Mom died, I call my dad every day. Sometimes there are specific things to catch up on. Sometimes we just chat about things that are going on in the news. Those are the normal everyday calls.
Then there are the times when I think about Mom. I often feel a strong urge to call Dad and talk to him. We typically won't even talk about Mom, but I want to feel as close to her as possible. The worst thing that happens is when I have a good long talk with Dad in the morning; we talk through all the things we could talk about for the day, but then, shortly after getting off the phone, I think about Mom and feel like I need to talk to Dad again. I'll probably wait until the evening or the next morning to call him again. I'll need to carry that added weight through the day.
The worst part of the wait is the feeling of how long I'll have to wait before I can talk to Mom again.
March 10, 2015 - 4:30PM
HCO3 (Arterial ) 7.70 mg/dL (Critical)
pCO2 (Arterial) 24.2 mmHg (Critical)
pH (Arterial) 7.13 (Critical)
pO2 (Arterial) 105.00 mmHg (High)
Base Excess -20.00 (Low)
Carboxyhemoglobin 0.4% (Low)
Hemoglobin - RT 9.5 gm/dl (Low)
March 10, 2015 - 5:38PM
PT (Prothrombin Time) 26.7 SEC (High)
PTT (Partial Thromboplastin Time) 52.1 SEC (High)
March 10, 2015 - 8:33PM
Calcium 5.6 mg/dL (Critical)
Chloride 108 mEq/L (High)
Carbon Dioxide 9.7 mEq/L (Critical)
Creatinine 2.1 mg/dL (High)
Glucose 195 mg/dL (High)
Potassium 6.0 mEq/L (High)
Protein - Total 2.4 g/dL (Critical)
Globulin 1.3 g/dL (Low)
eGFR - not African American 23 (Low)
eGFR - African American 28 (Low)
March 10, 2015 - 8:35PM
HCO3 (Arterial) 9.80 mg/dL (Critical)
Hct (Hematocrit) 23.7% (Low)
Hgb (Hemoglobin) 7.9 g/dL (Critical)
Lactate 13.9 mmol/L (Critical)
Magnesium 1.5 mg/dL (Low)
MCH (Mean Corpuscular Hemoglobin) 34.2 pg (High)
March 11, 2015 - 4:00AM
Phosphorus 12.8 mg/dL (High)
Platelet 47 Thous/mcL (Low)
Potassium 7.4 mEq/L (Critical)
RBC (Red Cell) 1.77 Million/mcL (Low)
RDW (Red Cell Distribution Width) 19.8% (High)
Sodium 147 mEq/L (High)
Protein - Total 2.4 g/dL (Critical)
Globulin 1.4 g/dL (Low)
WBC (White Cell) 4.1 Thous/mcL (Low)
Mean Platelet Volume (MPV) 10.30 fL (High)
eGFR - not African American 22 (Low)
eGFR - African American 27 (Low)
In Michigan, there are always people calling our home asking for money. We've made it on to their call list because Mom gave them money at some point (in many cases, more than one point).
For a variety of reasons, I've tried to fill Mom's shoes on her charitable giving. It makes me feel closer to her. A part of her lives on in the world. And I can try to keep the world from becoming an even worse place without Mom.
There were obvious choices for me to give to. ASPCA was one of Mom's favorite charities. Mom made a donation to Heifer International every year at Christmas on my behalf. This year, when I was reading up on charities, I found that there is some debate about whether what Heifer International does is good for the region or not. Ultimately I decided that I couldn't make that determination, and I would follow my heart and keep the tradition alive. And finally I added a new charity to the list: Against Malaria Foundation. They are the top recommended charity of www.givewell.org, and I wanted to put money some place effective that I thought Mom would support.
After I had made my donations in Mom's honor, Mom's absence felt striking. I wanted to talk to her about Heifer International and Against Malaria Foundation. I wanted her to know that a part of her spirit would live on. That she was still helping the world. But it felt like she was impossibly far away.
Maybe next year I'll know how to find her.
The month before Christmas usually involves one weekend (though it might stretch to a week) where I do all of my Christmas shopping. The most stress comes from shopping for my wife because I always worry that I'm not finding gifts that she will be thrilled to unwrap. Shopping for my parents, on the other hand, has always been very fun for me. I look for gifts in two categories: gifts that will improve their lives and gifts that they will have fun with. Somehow, ideas always came easily to me to fill both categories.
For my mom, two gifts in particular stand out. The first is the year I gave her the laptop. During the course of the year, she regularly complained that she needed a new computer. She felt it would help her with her job search and to keep up on her pharmacy continuing education requirements. I knew I wanted to get her a laptop for Christmas, so I had to keep insisting to her that she really didn't need a new computer or that she wait for my help in picking one out. I did enough to keep her from buying one for herself, but just barely. She was exasperated from having to wait so long for me to help her find one. Little did she know that, with help from Dad, I got a Black Friday deal on the laptop, so all was set. Her reaction when she unwrapped the gift is one of my most cherished memories. She was taken completely by surprise and overwhelmed by emotion.
Another highlight gift for Mom was the year I got her an iPad. I unwrapped it and loaded it with family photos and her favorite music (Ahmad Jamal). When she unwrapped the iPad, she was stunned. She never thought that she would receive a "cool" apple product. She was in such disbelief that she immediately thought that I must have rewrapped my old iPad box as a trick. She didn't let her guard down until she carefully lifted the iPad out of the unwrapped box. As soon as she realized it was no trick, she gleefully joked about how fancy she was now that she had an iPad. Mom deserved all of the best things in the world.
Last year, I got her a pair of digital photo frames that I am able to update over the internet. I had hoped they would serve two purposes. First, I could send updates on my life over the internet. Mixed in with the photos, however, I would add inspirational messages to remind Mom to exercise. I thought it would be a subtle way of giving her some motivation. I never posted the message though. The time never felt right.
I'm not great at opening gifts. I find it stressful because I'm worried that I won't give the reaction someone is hoping for. But I've learned that being truly thankful for a gift received can be one of the best gifts you give to someone else. Mom was great at that. She had some of the most genuine and emotional reactions to the gifts she received. I really miss thinking of things to get her and seeing the joy she had in opening them.
I am riding on the subway to New York and I give up my seat to two unsavory looking people as I am about to disembark. Two of my friends are there too, though they seem to have been sitting somewhere else and are lagging behind me. As I'm getting off, I see another acquaintance of mine. He has a stoic air about him. As try to walk past him, he heavily raises his arms and then stabs me with a knife that I had not noticed in the back of my left shoulder, leaving the knife sticking out of my back. I make my way off the train and to the conductor station, which is a square, open area with extremely high ceilings. There are two young people wearing red uniforms working there behind the desks. I tell them that I've been stabbed, but they give me a hard time about getting in touch with the police. They're hassling me so much that I finally decide to pull the glass protector off their table and threaten to break it. My friends have joined me at this point. The employees seem annoyed, but agree to help me. No help seems to come though, and I begin to move on my way.
Somehow I end up in a car and somehow I am in Michigan worried about catching a flight. I keep trying to call 911 from my cell phone, but every time I try to call 911, it calls home instead and Dad keeps picking up. Ultimately I decide to drive home and try to figure things out from there. Through this time, I'm wondering if I will suddenly start to feel light headed from my knife wound, but I think the reason the wound is not causing me so much trouble is because I've left the knife inside.
When I'm at home, I sit down heavily on a wooden bench in the foyer (it is home, but it isn't my actual home). I try to call a number that the person who stabbed me had given me just before he stabbed me, but it turns out to be an Amazon Air phone number, and the person who I'm talking to listens to my issue with being stabbed but just initiates an amazon order for something. I see the Amazon Air order status begin popping up in a text message on my phone. I remember thinking the number looked strange, like it was not the right number of digits. I hang up and call information to try to figure out how to get to Crittenton hospital, which I figured out was the closest emergency room. As they're talking me through it I'm looking at a map on my phone and think that I've figured it out so I hang up on them. I head off to get in a car and in the garage I see a muscly and mean looking car that I have a notion that I had stolen in another dream. I keep walking outside past other cars that seem to have back stories but don't seem to be our cars. Finally I get to the car that I had taken to get over here (also stolen I believe) and drive over to Crittenton, but it actually seems to be more of a high end shopping mall.
When I go in to Crittenton emergency, the emergency room is part of an anchor, luxury department store (like Macy's) that also offers a beauty salon. There is a plain looking glass door in the department and I can see a bored looking person sitting inside through the glass door. I think this may be the emergency room. Then, right in front of me, sitting in some chair seemingly getting her hair done or her nails done is Mom. Her eyes are strikingly blue and her hair is strikingly blond and well-styled. She looks at me with knowing eyes and smiles. I recognize her right away and I am stunned to see her. The first thought that occurs to me is that perhaps I have died from my wound. She says to me with a smile and in a playful voice, "I know you." I don't quite know what to do, but a store clerk comes over and I ask if this is the emergency room. She responds that it is not, but directs me to go back out to the hallway area, and she gives poor directions for turning left and a little backwards. She keeps saying that I should go in the direction of a sideview mirror on a car.
I walk over there and see the line to the emergency room. People keep crowding around, but finally I am able to get the attention of the two chipper people working at the front. When I tell them I've been stabbed, they look pleasantly surprised and immediately begin to walk me back to get treated. I feel like a lot of time has passed now and I'm not sure if I will get much sleep before my flight (I don't know where I was flying to). I finally see the knife sticking out of my back. It is extremely long and looks like it is homemade. I still have no idea how deep it may be, but I keep telling myself that perhaps it is not too deep given that I'm not in much pain and I'm not dying yet. I wake up as I'm on my way back to be treated.
In The Leftovers, an HBO show created by Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta based on a book by Tom Perrotta, 140 million people simultaneously disappear from the planet without explanation. The world goes on, fundamentally changed, but in many ways the same.
It feels like Mom "departed" like that. Here one moment, and the next vanished. I was with Mom when she died. I was at her funeral. But I feel like I'll never internalize her as dead. I've spent too much of my life with Mom alive, and my reality stubbornly refuses to accommodate any change to that fact. When I call home, maybe the reason she doesn't come to the phone is because she is out getting her hair done. Maybe she is resting in the other room. If she isn't at home when I'm back in Michigan, she must be out somewhere, maybe lost and searching for home.
And if she is gone, it isn't because she is dead. If feels more correct that she has disappeared to some place, but she lives on somewhere out there.
