Two Very Different Kinds of News

Mom News
I tried to tell Mom today that it might be better if she came to Annie's and my house for a week or two when she's released from the care facility. (She has fallen twice since my father died March 17 and has been in the hospital and care facility for rehab for weeks now.)

All she said to me over and over was, "I want to go home. I want to go home." It broke my heart. So...I'm taking her to her house next week. I'll stay with her as long as I need to, watching over her and setting up in-home care and other systems. It's hard to even think about all this is going to take when I'm still grieving my dad ... and still grappling with all the years he was ill ... and all the changes I'm seeing in my mom physcially, mentally and emotionally.

But I just have to keep reminding myself: this isn't about me. It's about helping my mom get her life in balance. She's 74. I'm only 44. I lost my dad. She lost her spouse of 49 years. I can regain my balance more easily.

Cannes News

I'm still eagerly waiting to hear from my friend Janelle who is in Cannes with her daughter, Dina Ciraulo, who was invited to show the trailer of her film in progress, Opal. Annie and I had the pleasure of watching a day of filming last summer up in Sausalito, one of the jewels of California.

The film is based on the mysterious real-life story of Opal Whiteley. (Read more about her here.)

I hope Janelle will have some juicy celebrity sightings to share. The celebrity I would want to meet most (call me a liberal nerd) is Michael Moore! I can't wait to see the new film he's screen at Cannes, Sicko.

Give em hell, Mike.

Yes, I Will Take You

"Hey Mom, do you want to eat in the dining room?"
"No, there are a bunch of old people in there."

Words from my 74-year-old mom, who is now in a rehab facility for about a week or so for rest and physical therapy. She'll be released when she is less of a fall risk.

Who can blame her for not wanting to identify as an "old person." Up until my father died in March, she was going to the gym, writing articles and books, attending a weekly writing group, making dinner every night, tending to my father's varied and many needs, and being active in a variety of ways in the community.

After he died she had two successive falls, and suddenly she has lost her husband, her home, her health, her independence.

I'm whirling from it all. I know my sisters are. My mom? I can barely imagine.

Grief? Loss? What are the right words?

My friend Gabriele Rico sent me the perfect Ellen Bass poem, with the perfect words. I'd read it several times before in Mules of Love, and re-reading it re-reminds me that what my mom and my family are enduring right now is ... well ... the human condition.

Here's the poem:

The Thing Is

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs.
When grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, how can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you,
I will love you, again.

Giving Mom a Bath

(from www.simplytom.com)

As I helped her ease down to the stool in the shower, gingerly careful of her broken shoulder, and lathered her hair with minty shampoo and ran a soapy washcloth across her back...

I thought about all the times she bathed me. She'd sit on the toilet lid as I splashed around with with my washcloth and yellow squeaky duckie.

I thought about how when I was growing up she wrote out a dinner menu and stuck it with a magnet to the side of the fridge. Monday, Meatloaf, string beans, ice cream. Tuesday, Baked Chicken, potatoes and salad, cookies. There were always vegetables and dessert. She shopped every Sunday to buy all the ingredients needed for the week because in addition to raising three kids and a husband (!) she worked as a school nurse.

I thought about how she used to hang all the clothes that needed ironing in a closet and then once a week fold out the ironing board, heat up the iron, and make all our clothes presentable.

I thought about how she volunteered as a nurse at a camp summer after summer so my sister and I could attend a ritzy camp for free. For her, it was a summer of dispensing medications and tending to kids with stomach aches. For us, it was a summer of horseback riding, waterskiing, hiking, archery, and campfires.

I thought about how she used to sit on my bed when I was cozy in my pajamas. She'd be holding a cellophane-covered book we'd gotten from our weekly visit to the library. I'd read one page and she'd read the next, and she'd let me turn the pages.

I thought about how she once told me, "Don't ever worry about my feelings or what I think when you're writing. Write whatever you want." She was telling me to feel free to be myself as a writer and a person.

I thought about how, after 48 years of marriage, she lost her husband--my father--last month. And then a week later she fell and broke her shoulder. And I thought about how no matter what I do now to help her make it through, I will never be able to repay her.

Maybe Dad's Finding Ways to Say Hi?

Example #1: The Phone Rings
The day after my father died, my mom and I were sorting out some things in the kitchen, and I came across a piece of paper written by my father's hand. It said "Bob Newman"--a name unfamiliar to me--and a phone number. I held it up and was just about to ask my mom if this was something to keep, when the phone rang, interrupting me.

I picked it up. The person on the other end said, "Hi, is Bob Newman there?"

I looked down at the piece of paper in my hand, eyeing my father's familiar scrawl. "Bob Newman" it said in Dad's loopy blue ink. And now someone on the other end of the phone was asking for that very name, at the very moment I was about to ask my mom who Bob Newman was.

"You're not going to believe this," I said, "but I'm holding a piece of paper in my hand with the name Bob Newman on it. Who is this?"

"This is Jim," said the male voice. "I'm in Bob's poker group."

"My dad, Don Evans, was in a poker group."

"Yes, that's the same group," he said.

"You called his home."

"Don Evans? Your father? Oh, I'm so sorry. I just heard he passed away."

I asked him what number he was calling. He said the number. It turns out that my father's number was accidentally listed as Bob Newman's on the Poker Group phone sheet. I just can't get over the fact that at the very instant I was holding a piece of paper with Bob Newman's phone number written in my father's handwriting that the phone would ring, with someone asking for Bob Newman.

Example #2: Goulash
After the funeral, when Annie and I were back home, our friends Lisa and Marissa asked if they could come by and bring us dinner. A very sweet, compassionate gesture given all we'd been going through. Besides, we love to hang out with them and talk about life. They came through the door carrying a wonderful-smelling pot of something and bags of other items.

"Wow, smells great!" I said. "What's for dinner?"

"Hungarian goulash," Lisa said.

"Did you know my dad was Hungarian?"

Lisa and Marissa looked at me. "We had no idea."

And so...
...there you go. Hi Dad. I miss you.

Post-Father Life

I'm starting a new blog in the midst of total life change. I'm now in my post-father life. My father died on St. Patrick's Day. I was with him and my mom when he died at his home, in his bed, in the middle of the night. I suppose I have a kind of post-traumatic stress or shock right now. It's hard to focus, to think, to be in my skin.

My father was quite ill for a long time. But he was so obstinately in love with being alive that I never thought he'd really let go. Up until his last day he was living big.

I miss him like you wouldn't believe.

Or maybe you would.

I know most people have gone through deep loss.

Welcome to age 44, I hear the universe saying to me.

Here's a piece I wrote about my dad, with some pictures:

http://kateevans.drumtable.com/My_Father__a_Tevye_at_Heart

May Sarton once said she never truly felt free until her parents died. I feel free in the way an unanchored boat or a helium balloon let go feels free: wavering, lost, floating with no direction, no path.