Deja Vu

We’re less than two weeks away from the anniversary of my mom’s death, and I stupidly (and, yes, incredibly) thought this would only be difficult on the actual day it occurred and not all the days leading up to it.  But then what would I know — I’m a newbie mourner.

My first clue was when the kids started freaking out.  They crawled into bed with me one morning and started asking the details about when I went to help my friend put her dog down.  When the conversation turned to cremation — and thus the same end their Nana came to — they got really upset.  Elfie started crying.  Then, when I dropped them off at camp, she didn’t want me to leave (which is very unlike her).  And when I picked them up, turns out they both had an “emotional” day where basically every little thing set them off.

When I told my friend about this, she put it together right away.  They probably wouldn’t ever be able to articulate it or even make the connection, but last year, the kids went to camp for a week, then we flew to Vegas for a trip, and when we came back, everything with my mom went downhill.  This year, they were at camp for a week, and now we’ve flown to Portland for a trip — so god help us if something else goes wrong after that.  They’ll have some sort of PTSD reaction anytime they hear, “Attention all campers!” or “Now boarding, Flight 587. . .”

So, yes, we’re in Portland, where I’d love to live if it weren’t so damned rainy.  Honestly, it’s my number one “If you could move anywhere” fantasy cities.  The houses are adorable, the downtown is cool, the people care about the environment for real.  And everyone’s actually pretty nice.  Even the drivers are nice (no, seriously, they’re nice).  Two cars even stopped for us today so we could cross the street.  I thought I’d entered some sort of parallel universe where no one’s rushed and lithium is in the drinking water.  Anyway, I love it here, but then the sun comes out, and I’m literally hit with a burst of joy, and I think, “Oh, crap!  I love the sun!”  So I guess I’ll never have my fabulously green garden or my hundred-year-old house.

So back to the depressing mother story.  I am, of course, not being affected by the upcoming anniversary of my mother’s death, therefore I keep running into women who remind me of my mother and who are taking care of young children the way my mother did take care of and rightly should still be taking care of my kids.  I met a woman in my cul-du-sac who even had a bandage on her arm as if she’d recently had something like, say, a melanoma removed (like my mom did some years ago).  And today at the zoo, I saw a woman with a wrist brace like my mom had for a chronic hand problem.  Both of them were with their grandkids.

I try to just shake this kind of thing off.  But then we do something like go into the elephant exhibit, and I suddenly remember that I had Newt call my mom on my cellphone when he was there the last time because he was so excited about seeing an elephant for the very first time.  Maybe it’s the slow and steady pile up of this stuff that’s getting to me — like grains of sand being added to a bag that I always assumed was more than sturdy enough to hold everything.  But now it appears the bag is stretching and almost bursting at the seams from the weight and stress of it all.  The thing is, I’d like to be able to say that at some point, that critical grain will be added, the bag will rip, and I’ll be relieved and feel so much better.  But I don’t think it works that way.  Instead, I think this all comes down to more reinforcement of the bag.  Which I’m frankly not enjoying.  Nor is, I believe, the rest of the family.  Because really, I’m just getting testier and crankier and less fun.

Which is nuts because that’s the last thing I should be doing in any logical fashion.  I should be enjoying my family, living the moment, and lapping up what could be taken away in an instant.  And instead, I’m just sad and pouty.  And while there isn’t a theoretical problem with feeling this way, there is a problem with my execution of said feeling because it seems like I should somehow be above it.  Like I’m more “grown up” than that.  So maybe the real problem is, I’m just giving myself too much credit.  Because in so many ways, when it comes to the relationship with our parents, we will always be children.

And for this child, camp and a plane trip have been surprisingly hard to handle.