Keep on moving though the waters stay raging

I'm coming back, I swear.

It's so hard to express what's happening right now...for all that my family is extremely close, we don't spend a lot of time talking about our feelings to each other.

Well, I don't, anyway.

Since my grandfather's brain tumor, he's had surgery and more surgeries, and chemo and relapses and more surgeries, and he's just unrecognizable now from the person he was two years ago.

Losing my grandmother was devastating. Now I'm losing my grandfather, but it's in increments, day to week to month, and the way I feel about it is something I can't describe. He's still here, but not really, and I hate it, I just hate it so much, and I feel so powerless.

When Dwayne was in the hospital I had a taste of what it would be like without my person, and I don't ever want to have to face that again. I wonder if that's how my grandpa feels...kind of at sea, without his person, my grandma, there to anchor him.

Besides Dwayne, my other people are my mom and Chelsea. (I'd kinda include my kitty in there but most people wouldn't call her a person.) I'm sure I'm one of Dwayne's people...I'm not so sure who my mom's and Chelsea's people are.

Your people are the ones you trust, and who text you all the time, and nag at you to do stuff, and you talk to them all week. They're the people you can't do without, and you tell them everything. Mostly. Do you know who your people are?

I'm not giving up, I'm just giving in

Chelsea helped me with my room yesterday. We're packing this week, among other things.

When I learned of my grandmother's cancer, back in 2009, that's kind of when things went south for me, and my room reflected that. 

We got through piles of books, DVDs, CDs, papers...the stuff on the bottom was stuff that I'd last seen 5 years ago. It was kind of like an archaeological study on depression symptom #2: not having the energy or the interest to take care of things.

I'm much better now. In the past year, especially, I've come a long way from the dark place that landed me in the hospital back then. I think I've finally hit the right combination of medicine, I have figured out coping mechanisms, I know my triggers...

But this month, I'm desperately wishing to be anywhere else. Isn't that awful? I want to drown my sorrows in something...check myself in the hospital...just lay under my covers and hide forever!

But I can't, because I'm stronger now. My brother has cancer and the pill he takes makes him sick and my grandfather had brain surgery again and he's in the hospital and I have to divide my time between packing up my life to move this week and visiting my grandpa in the hospital.

My grandfather also has cancer again, and this time they can't do anything with it. They're giving him six months to a year.

My mom and my aunt, wimps that they are, sent my brother to tell me the news. He was very no nonsense about it, much like he was when he told me that he himself had cancer.

I just want to cry.

Well okay, I have. But only in my room, late at night. 

I just can't even express how much I hate cancer.

We're one, but we're not the same, we get to carry each other...

Well.

You know, my mind tries to look at what's going on objectively, and it can't...it veers away. Weird. My only issues are that this stupid migraine won't go away; also, I'm apparently going to need to pry my floor-sleeper out of the apartment because he hasn't budged. Is he going to just keep sitting there even after we move?

But everything else, I just try to look at from my mother's perspective, and I want to be a better daughter. My grandfather has never quite recovered from his brain surgery last year, and tonight my mom is with him back at the hospital. My brother, in the meantime, is starting his third week of treatment for leukemia. We're still healing from the loss of my grandmother to ovarian cancer, and so learning this about my brother was a blow.

I had three hospital stays in three years, it's my time to be healthy; I just need to get there. I want to support my mom and not be so tired all the time. 

Life's too short.

So now, totally unrelated, I thought I'd cheer us up (or, well, me up) with a film clip! Have you ever seen "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"? You haven't? Why not???!!! This is my heritage, yo! LOLOL

So, this is my very favorite part of the movie, because the guys have been running from the law this whole time and have no idea that the record they made as The Soggy Bottom Boys has become a BONA FIDE hit! And if you feel the need to make fun of the accents or the dancing, go ahead, but tread lightly, because I grew up with grandparents and great-grandparents that sang and danced EXACTLY like this! :)

p.s. The clip isn't perfect but it's the best I could find...and oh, yeah, it's dubbed in French. AHAHAHA

10 years. 10 YEARS!

All of a sudden, ten years is today!, and I have to make a fabulous post, an hour after I've already taken my Ambien, which means...nooooo fabulous post is coming from me tonight! Maybe tomorrow...

But my ADD couldn't just leave this date empty, so this WILL be the official 10-year anniversary post! Sad, very sad, but true...

I've been trying and I can't really remember what prompted me to start blogging to begin with.

It was the days of AOL dial-up, so we had lots of open time while we were waiting 20 minutes to download one song at a time from Napster, and AOL started something called AOL Journals (it was blogging), and all us nerdy writer types signed up. And then we went from there.

And a lot of people quit along the way, or moved sites, but I stayed...I tend to stay somewhere until I'm forced from the building. Finally I was forced to move to Blogspot, and I've been here ever since. Yay!

I truly love my blog. It's a purely personal blog...when I started it, I was a young mom with a young daughter and we were having a sometimes difficult, sometimes wonderful life. 

As we both got older, our lives changed, and as Chelsea was able to take better care of herself, my grandmother got sick and my world fell apart. 

My blog became a record, and an outlet for the things I couldn't tell my family, because they were in as much pain as I was in.

So...I'm trying to gather my thoughts because the Ambien is kicking in big time! ... This blog has been a lifesaver for me. When I write down the things that have happened, the things that I have felt, I know them to be true. It's been cathartic. I think it's helped my mother and daughter, too, who've also read it.

I love my blog and I love the friends it has brought me, that's definitely the most important thing. Thank you all for sticking with me through my migraines and meltdowns and mild little freakouts; I'm totally appreciative (hope you don't stop now!), and you rock!, thanks y'all!!!

Giving thanks #2; In the land that is plentiful...

Thanksgiving has always been my grandmother's day - her Big Show. She would begrudgingly allow everyone to bring one (pre-approved) dish for Thanksgiving dinner, but that was it! She was determined to make and prepare everything herself, and worked for days to give us a veritable feast. 

This will be our third Thanksgiving without her, and it still hasn't gotten any easier. My family's very close, you know, and the 14 of us celebrate something at least a couple times a month, and there's always an empty space now. Thanksgiving hurts the most.

Despite all this, I'm reminded on Thanksgiving of how grateful I am. I gladly accept the pain of loss, because I wouldn't ever give up loving and having had a close relationship with my grandma. I don't know anyone who has a family like mine. I am blessed.

I am thankful.
I have my family.
I have my daughter.
I have my mom.
I have my Dwayne.
I have my kitty.
I'm alive.
I survived.
I had the best grandmother in the world.
I have a place to live (complete with a living room floor-sleeper, but that's another story).
I have a job.
I'M STILL ALIVE.

Love you all... Happy Thanksgiving. :)

Giving thanks #1; When I'm found in the desert place...

What I like to call 'the mess hall years' are one of the many things I am thankful for.

I am one of the privileged few who have dined in the mess hall for Thanksgiving dinner.

My dad was stationed in Germany for the second time, and this second time around he insisted on taking his family with him. For three whole years.

It was hard being away from my grandma - my mom, my brother, my grandma and I were freakishly close.

And Thanksgiving was my grandma's day to shine.

So when Thanksgiving came around, my mom didn't cook anything at all. We piled in the car, drove on base and went to the mess hall.

I thought she was mistaken. Where's my homemade dressing and gravy?

NO, none of that...We were eating at the mess hall - which would be where we had every Thanksgiving while we lived in Germany. 

We were right there on base, with the soldiers dressed in their BDU`s - single guys who lived in the barracks, who didn't even have their families to eat with that day.

Thankful.

Thankful.

Thankful.

I'm so thankful for people who sacrifice, and believe in good things. 

I'm so thankful for heroes, and courage.

I'm so thankful for love.

And, okay, I was really thankful when we came back home and I experienced a REAL (read: my grandma's) Thanksgiving dinner again.

Annie's Song

My beautiful Annie

I've rarely talked about my Annie in this blog, maybe a mention here or there...I've been remiss!

Every family has a black sheep, one who bucks the status quo and does her own thing, and that's my beautiful cousin Annie. I was always the oddball they didn't understand, but I was malleable. Annie, malleable? Never!

We have a family event every two weeks or so, or at least once a month. All 14 of us are expected to attend. The first time Annie didn't show up, I was shocked. You mean not showing up was an option?

Annie has tattoos. An ankh on her back, a huge tribal tattoo on her arm, a panther on her leg. I made the mistake of asking why she had a lizard tattoo on her leg and she didn't speak to me for hours. IT'S A PANTHER, NOT A LIZARD!!! 

Annie has a nose ring.

Only Annie is allowed any of these privileges. My grandmother would have spanked me with the yardstick for the second time in my life if I had showed up with a nose ring and tattoos. But I wouldn't, anyway, because long ago my grandfather told me I wasn't allowed. I guess Annie didn't get 'the talk'.

My mother and Annie's mother are sisters, so, due to the way my grandmother raised all of us, Annie and I might as well have been sisters, we grew up so close to each other. I was her maid of honor, and her beautiful little girl calls me 'Aunt Michelle'.

In the month that my grandmother died, Annie and I both ended up in the same treatment facility. Annie was admitted a few days before I was released. When I think back on it, our mothers had just lost their mother, and their daughters were in the hospital. We didn't make it easy on them, did we?

While my reaction to Moma's death was nearly killing myself by falling into the black hole of depression and never resurfacing, Annie's reaction was to dive deep into drugs to numb the pain.

We're both doing better now. I still have a ways to go, but I'm so much better than I was. Annie lives in the country in a bona fide farmhouse which is too far away for my liking, but she's become so capable, I'm so proud of her. She's a wonderful mother.

She'll be 29 in a couple weeks; and always my beautiful Annie.

Those days are gone...

Toast Strips

'We gotta do something about this food situation.'

Heh.

I am hungry.

I've always been a picky eater.

I grew up in Kentucky at my grandma's table and was expected to eat what she made. Luckily, my brother got there first and paved the way for me. There were epic battles between John and Moma at the table, Moma not letting him up until he ate his food, and John falling asleep at the table after sitting there for hours.

So by the time I came along, it was just much easier to let me eat my peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead of argue about it.

I don't LIKE beans and cornbread.
I won't eat fried chicken.
I hate green beans.
I never, ever eat ham.
Just thinking about broccoli casserole makes me sick.
I don't eat barbecue.
I don't like spaghetti. I don't like ice cream. 
I don't like fruits and vegetables. 
I don't eat beef or pork.
And now my neurologist has taken me off of chocolate and any kind of nuts, including my all-time favorite, peanut butter.

So I've basically been living on strawberry Pop-Tarts and microwave popcorn.
And buttered toast.

Sometimes for supper I'll have a frozen Totino's cheese pizza.

See! We gotta do something about this food situation!

So okay. Let's make a shopping list of the things I will tolerate that might be more healthy than Pop-Tarts:

• Salmon (baked or grilled...both yummy)
• Tuna (I'll share with my cat, we both like this)
• Grapes (the one fruit I can actually tolerate)

Okay, I'm done. If anybody has any other suggestions, please let me know... because I really am very hungry.

We'll carry on...

ovarian.org

In July 2009, my grandmother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Just two years later, in July 2011, she was gone.

We knew nothing at all about ovarian cancer when she was first diagnosed. Then we learned more than we ever wanted.

She had complained of symptoms for months, and we had all thought they were something else. Had we known then...

We have no way of knowing what could have happened. But the fact is, when my grandma was diagnosed, she was already in Stage IV. There are millions of women in America today who still have misconceptions about ovarian cancer, its symptoms and how it's detected.

On Friday, I discovered one of my coworkers held the #1 misconception - I had to let her know there is currently no screening test for ovarian cancer.

Three things to know:

1. They do NOT screen for ovarian cancer during a pap test. 
2. It can be hereditary. It can be linked with breast cancer. Know your family history.
3. Symptoms: bloating, feeling full, abdominal pain, frequency of urination - if they last longer than two weeks, see your doctor immediately.

I don't want anyone else to go through the pain my grandmother went through, or the pain we felt as we watched her slowly slip away. Please communicate this information with your loved ones; please help beat this terrible disease.

Throwback Thursday...

This is me, my mom and my brother, looking extremely tanned for some reason. That must have been the year we went outside. 

This is little Johnny and little Michelle. I'm the one in a dress. Everyone calls my brother Johnny, except for me. My nephew's name is Johnny, too. Yep, I always have to clarify, "Wait, do you mean Big Johnny or Little Johnny?"

This is one of my senior high school pictures. When Dwayne and I started dating, I remember him pulling his wallet out and I saw this picture in there. It was five years after graduation! I didn't even remember giving that to him...but he carried it five years, waiting for me. 

Another graduation picture. This one doesn't look like me at all. They made a huge thing of it and took it on their mall tour. That was my 15 minutes. 

This is my mom and my grandma being absolutely adorable. Every picture I see of my grandma, my heart seizes a little, I miss her so much. 

And one last one, because I am never done talking about Chelsea or my kitty on this journal, here they are! Both very young, and with very different reactions to the snow...

Love you all...

Go Wherever You Wanna Go

In the few days before my grandma died, she slipped into a coma and never woke up.

I had trouble understanding the concept. In the back of my mind, I always thought she would get better.

We spent all of our time at my grandparent's house. I would sit in Moma's room and hold her hand, while her favorite band, Dailey & Vincent, played softly in the background.

At Dwayne's insistence, I called my dad. I honestly hadn't even thought about it. My grandma had always thought of my dad like a son, and my dad loved my grandma.

My dad came to see her and admonished me for not calling sooner. I hadn't talked to him in over a year. And I was still in denial...thinking my grandma was going to wake up.

That same night, the night before she died, I was talking to my grandpa about her terrible breathing. She seemed to be struggling... My grandpa said that was the 'death rattle'.

The next day I sat with Moma some more...I held her hand, and told her I loved her, and begged her to wake up, but she never did. I finally kissed her goodbye, and Dwayne, Chelsea and I left.

We weren't gone five minutes before my mom called me and said just two words, "Come back."

We went back and I ran in the house and my grandpa said, "She's gone."

.....................................................................................................

After everything was over, after the wild grief that I hope to never ever have to go through again, my mom told us,

She was sitting with Moma and holding her hand, and suddenly Moma's breathing eased up, and she was breathing so easily. My mom called out for everyone to come. Moma was lying there, so peaceful, breathing so easily, and while Mom was still holding her hand, Moma just slipped away.
..................................................................................................

That was two years ago. I was in no shape to write about this until now. I'm still writing it with tears running down my face, but it's really okay.

Missed.

Two years ago, we celebrated Fourth of July at my grandparents house. My grandma was in the last weeks of her two-year struggle with ovarian cancer, and we were all aware that this was likely the last holiday we would all be together.

As I sat and gazed at my beautiful grandmother, I thought about Thornton Wilder's "Our Town". I felt like the young female protagonist who died and visited her life as a ghost, and implored everyone to appreciate their life and loved ones while they could.

I struggled to take in every moment of the day: my family laughing as we cooked out in the backyard; sitting in the family room with my grandma and my daughter; setting off fireworks in the street while my grandma watched from the porch. She had to be so exhausted, but she stayed up and with us every moment of the day.

Eight days later, my grandmother slipped into a coma. She died on July 16, 2011.

We didn't celebrate Independence Day at all the next year.

This year we did get together for our family thing. The pain is still there but time has eased it, and now we can smile and laugh and remember without our heart always breaking in two.

This holiday, though, is no longer just a holiday. It's the last holiday I spent with my grandmother, and will always be the most precious to me.

Happy Father's Day 2013

We had Father's Day for my grandpa today.  He was diagnosed with a brain tumor in December, had emergency surgery, then radiation, and has had lots of complications since then.  The doctor said this week that he has pneumonia again.  Is it because we went out of town last weekend?  I don't know, but I'm so grateful he's still here.

Popa, Father's Day 2008

My daughter never met her father.  I have the distinction of being one of those girls who managed to give birth AND get dumped by their boyfriend on the same day.  I was the clear winner, however, because that day I met the person who I would love more than anyone else in the whole world.

Michelle and Chelsea, 1992

I've always been a single mom, but not.  Chelsea grew up with me AND my mother AND my grandmother...and Dwayne and I started dating when she was four so she really had me plus two other moms plus a kind of stepdad. So I always had help, and HELP, but it still has always felt like me and Chelsea vs. the world.  I wonder if my mom felt like that with me?

Michelle and Chelsea 1994

Michelle and Chelsea 1995

Michelle and Chelsea 2004

Us, now

Sunday after the second Saturday...

This is my grandpa putting flowers on my grandma's grave for Decoration tomorrow.

I'm not sure why we started early.

If you're not from the Appalachians you may have never heard of Decoration Day. It's what the idea of Memorial Day came from. It warranted its own paragraph in Wikipedia under Memorial Day -

"Annual Decoration Days for particular cemeteries are held on a Sunday in late spring or early summer in some rural areas of the American South, notably in the mountains.
 

In cases involving a family graveyard where remote ancestors as well as those who were deceased more recently are buried, this may take on the character of an extended family reunion to which some people travel hundreds of miles.

People gather on the designated day and put flowers on graves and renew contacts with kinfolk and others.
 
There often is a religious service and a "dinner on the ground," the traditional term for a potluck meal in which people used to spread the dishes out on sheets or tablecloths on the grass.
It is believed that this practice began before the American Civil War and thus may reflect the real origin of the "memorial day" idea." 

This is my great- grandparents grave... I called them Ma and Pa but my Grandma, in true Appalachian fashion, called them Mommy and Daddy her whole life.

Further down this way in the Taylor Family Cemetery are the graves of my great great grandparents and my great great great grandparents.  Tomorrow morning the cemetery will be full of distantly related people we don't know and lots of firsts and second cousins we haven't seen since last Decoration.

This is my first Decoration since Moma's been gone.  Two years ago we all came down here for Decoration and my grandma was so sick - she would only live for another month after that. But she went everywhere with us. She was such a fighter.

I couldn't come the next year,... I had emergency surgery and couldn't get out of bed. 

So I've made trips in between to decorate her grave for the seasons, but this is different.  I've never been to Decoration without her.  What do I do, how do I act without her? This is her thing and I am just a supporting player with no one here to support.

I miss her so much.

Ties, baby

We go to Cumberland Falls every year.  My daughter feels the pull as much as I do, and insists on it.  She'll be 21 in July. !!!.  She was 2 or 3 in this picture, and my grandma had talked us to the edge to get a great shot.

We're Kentuckians, through and through.  Even though I was an Army brat and lived in a lot of different places, it was a relief to come back home.  I'll never want to live anywhere else.  Why would I?  This is the best place in the world.

I blame my grandmother.  She raised all of us to be like this.  I'm not kidding when I say that when I was little, she'd sing me to sleep with a lullaby that began, "Kentucky, you are the dearest land outside of heaven to me...".

I'm a city girl, but I can trace my dirt poor tobacco-farming eastern Kentucky ancestors back to the 1700's.  That's because they're all buried in our family cemetery in Blackwater, KY, where we go every year on Decoration Day.  My grandmother is buried there, and my great-great-great-great-grandmother is buried there. There's still room left for me, too.

We were taught how to handicap the Kentucky Derby by the time we were 5, the basics of country music at 6, and had field tripped the state's major landmarks before age 10.  The UK Wildcats basketball worship training began in the womb.

It's a good thing the brainwashing began early and intense, because it might not have otherwise survived the big 3-year move to Germany.  We didn't get basketball over there, I had to rely on country music cassette mix tapes sent to me via APO mail, the only mountains were the Alps, and the only landmarks were various castles and the Schwarzwald.

I got shipped back home right before I turned 13.  A little culture shock.  But my family!  My trees, my basketball, my Derby, my bluegrass, my mountains, my falls, my Kentucky...

Edit: My mom reminded me exactly how the song goes:

Kentucky, you are the dearest land outside of heaven to me,
Kentucky, I miss your laurel and your redbud trees…
When I die, I want to rest upon your graceful mountains so high..
For that is where God will look for me.

Just a little...unwell.

I've been chronically depressed since my teens, and taking medicine for it for the last ten or fifteen years or so.

But four years ago, my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer, and not even the medicine could stop my mental breakdown.

I still don't know why I stumbled and fell, and others didn't.

I wrecked my car.
I broke my leg.
I went on a mad online spending spree with money I didn't have.
I landed myself in a psychiatric hospital.
I no longer drive.
I no longer handle my own money.
I had emergency surgery.
I no longer leave my house except to go to work.

I live for the weekends, when I can sleep.  And sleep, and sleep.

And trust me, I'm better than I was.  Two years ago, I wasn't leaving the house AT ALL.

I promise I'm trying.

Secrets

It feels like I've already lived my time, and now I'm just waiting to die.

I don't want to give in.  If my tiny frail grandmother could fight and fight and fight against the cancer, I can fight against this black hole of depression.

Baby, It's Cold Outside... I Wish...

I had a dream that Moma was still alive. I woke up and for a moment, I still believed it, and I was so relieved.  That meant that the last year had been a terrible nightmare.  Then I woke up, for real. 

I still have that same sort of vague, floaty mentality I've always had.  Will that ever change?  It's so much easier to float than it is to hurt.  When group therapy and the shrinks pinpointed me to a tee, it totally freaked me out.  How'd they do that?  How'd they know all that about me?

I wonder if anyone else gets tired of being who they are all the time... I wonder if anyone thinks I'm a big fake...or is that what everyone thinks?

Charade

    
I've taken the Ambien and am patiently waiting to fall asleep, fully expecting to not remember writing any of this in the morning. That stuff is scary.  And really scary when I take it with some Benadryl and a Vicodin.  But at least I don't wash it down with a whiskey...

Sleep eludes me anymore, without a pill.  Unless it's non-threatening catnaps, in the middle of the day.  Those are easy. The pressure of lying down to sleep 6-8 hours at night in the dark has gotten to be too much, without some help...

I'm not sure at what point I'm supposed to stand back up and do things on my own again.  The crazy place floated around the idea of a year...

It's been a short seven months and I miss Moma terribly.  I'll never get over the fact that she's not here anymore.  I was blessed with a very close relationship with the perfect grandma for the first 38 years of my life.  I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Numbness, denial, escape, self-medicate, run run run

I'm not that important.

I'm trying really hard to get better. Or I think I am. I have pressures and hopes and expectations weighing down on me. Just get better. Buck up. Get with it. What is your problem, anyway?

And I caught a glimpse of real life and maybe I don't wanna get better, maybe I'd rather stay in a nice fog, where my grandma isn't gone and my daughter isn't suddenly grown up and life isn't so ugly and dreary and hurtful.