Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone

Second anniversary of Jean's passing. I know she's happy, wherever she is now.

The Biggest Loser

...has left the building.

When You Fall in Love with Objects

I saw this necklace in a magazine and instantly was smitten. In the miles of magazines I've read, I've rarely remembered what was in a fashion spread a few seconds after reading it, but when my eyes came upon this, I kept going back the page and viewing it like I was checking out a hot guy in a bar. What would I look like in it? Could I ever buy it? Would I look like a washed-up middle school art teacher while wearing it?

So I found it online--but it was only for rent at Bag, Borrow or Steal, a website that allows ordinary sandwich eaters like you and me to sport a top-end handbag with the secret that it's rentable by the week or month. A perfect gig when you have a party or reunion to attend and want to look the flyest of FLY. A friend coincidentally had a free rental coupon from BBoS, so it was on like Donkey Kong: I had the necklace for a week. But I wasn't having dinner with Donald Trump anytime soon; how could I downplay the glamour of this bauble? I pulled it off, but not without realizing what a strange toy I had, and how odd it looked on me. But you only live once, right? So what if I look like I'm playing dress-up in Mommy's closet.

Yesterday came the day to return it. How sad. The deal with BBoS is that you have the option to buy the item while it's rented out to you (hence the "Steal" part). I agonized. Was it worth $350? Did I have $350? The possibility of owning something so new and distinctive rolled around in my mind. The only other jewelry I buy costs $5 at H&M; why not treat myself? Look at those brooches! Those pearls! Those pretties!

Coming out of the post office down the street from my building, I looked at my reflection in the door's window and my heart stopped: my neck was bare. I had no jewelry on, a far cry from several minutes ago, when seated at my desk, I reached up to make sure it was there.

I was going to lose $350.

I frantically searched my handbag and began retracing my steps until I reached my desk, attracting the attention of every passerby as I ran sobbing down Ontario Street. A woman was taking her time sauntering to the elevator. I rudely beckoned with my hand for her to pick up the pace. I needed to find it before my next paycheck went to pay for my foolish vanity.

I reached my desk, hoping it was laying on the floor in a shiny, smiling heap of metal and pearl. Nothing. I was now attracting the attention of my normally reserved coworkers as I mumbled my train of thoughts ("Oh my god, oh my god..."). In a moment of desperation, I looked down my shirt.

The necklace was inside of my bra, nestled against my skin. It was broken, but it was there.

What a moment of resounding JOY.

I couldn't send that little shit back fast enough. But I'm going to need it for a wedding in November so it's gonna have to cool itself down by then.

January 26

What a horrible day. Two years ago, I woke up alone on January 26 in my mother's apartment in Las Vegas, having been picked up at the airport the night before by her friend Nettie. After an underwhelming and awkward trip to In-n-Out burger for a late dinner, Nettie gave me Mom's house keys and directions to the hospital where my mom had been a patient for the last week.

January 2007 was hell. The month started with my mother promptly going on short-term disability as she dealt with chronic, terrifying pleural effusions that filled her lungs up with mysterious fluid that basically made her feel like she was drowning in herself. Her flaky, incompetent internist wasn't returning her phone calls and seemed to be millions of steps behind her care as her pain became more intense and uncontrollable.

Mom couldn't resume going back to work after the holidays given her health, which was the first sign that things were awry. She had a solid work ethic, and went to work even if she was bleeding from her eyes. Suddenly she was at home with little to do other than wait for things to change. Mid-month, she became scared, thought she was unable to breathe, and called 911 to be brought to an emergency room. At first, her illness was diagnosed as pneumonia, but things changed, and suddenly she had to have exploratory surgery on her lungs to repair the damage that the pleural effusions had done and to make a final conclusion of her case. I wasn't with her when she was wheeled into the operating room, but my mom reportedly told my sister Nancy that if anything happens to her, "Robyn gets Sugar." Mom was never one for seriousness. Her jerky thoracic surgeon told Nancy immediately after the surgery that "we found cancer. Tons of it." He (unnecessarily) showed her a microscopic picture of black, gnarled cells taken during the surgery. Nancy's knees buckled.

So on January 26, I woke up alone in my mother's apartment, and drove her car over to
a Krispy Kreme donuts down the street from the hospital where she was staying. Visitor time began in twenty minutes. I drank orange juice and waited. I made note that the donuts were covered in red and pink sprinkles. Valentine's Day was approaching.

I didn't know what I was going to see when I approached her room, but when I appeared in the doorway, she was staring right at me. She looked like she had been through a lot. She had an oxygen tube in her nose, and a picked-at breakfast was by her side. She smiled. Usually one of us would have a saucy one liner to throw out in these moments, like "Come here often?" But it was just a mix of relief and uneasiness that hung over us that morning. We were going to get pathology results on the alien cells in her chest.

A chaplain came by on his daily rounds, and with the kind of hesitation that people who don't think they need special attention from God for anything (she's going to be okay, right?), we prayed with him. Two doctors came in to talk about the pathology report. As they slowly talked to her about the results, I frantically searched Wikipedia on my Blackberry for what they weren't fucking saying: that she was going to fully recover, and go back to her days of watching "Boston Legal" on Tuesday nights and giving me phone advice on how to buy a toaster. Mesothelioma, as I learned that day, has a life expectancy of 6-12 months beyond diagnosis.

On January 26, she would live another agonizing, debilitating and pain-filled 98 days before dying as she wished, at home and in her bed on a Friday morning. The last picture of her was taken as she sat on her beloved balcony, which overlooked a golf course, staring at a hummingbird feeder.

She would say I was being overdramatic were I to retrace my steps in a somber march that begins every January to May 4, and she is right: what's done is done. There are so many things I should have done for her differently, and it would not have changed her outcome but could have brought her a different peace in her final days. I miss her and don't know what else to do to keep remembering her, but I know fully well that she'd want to erase the record of the last six months of her life. I need to reset my dials.

Beloit in December

What are you trying to say?

Choppers, Again

I am realizing that January would not be January without Sugar waking me up at an ungodly early hour with her bodily expulsions. Perhaps this year it was general post-holiday queasiness, but at 4:30 a.m. today I awoke to deep retching sounds coming from somewhere in my room. I turned on my light to see Sugar at the end of my bed, vomiting on my comforter (which has a fly new duvet cover on it, tyvm). I picked her up and got her on the floor for the next several expellings, which consisted of clear, yellow bile (a normal and promising sign that her stomach's now empty of whatever may have caused her illness). I cleaned up the mess, sprayed stain remover on the comforter and waited on the couch while she fell asleep again. Then I did the same.

Read more about Sugar's January 2008 Vomit Moment and March 2008 Pooping Moment.

Mom at Christmas

I think Mom's absence is starting to sink in more that a little more time has passed. She's on my mind constantly, especially when I'm replaying the last five months of her life: why didn't I drop everything in Chicago and move in with her, why didn't I berate her internist and oncologist for basically abandoning her after she was diagnosed (it's becoming more apparent to me through my work that despite their professional obligations, doctors who are dealing with terminally ill patients are not bending over backwards to answer their calls and are much more interested in potential success stories), and what I plainly could have done just better. She's ultimately miles better now and out of her pain and misery but I have a lot of regrets.

I've also been thinking about how Mom rocked past Christmases and worked 150% to make sure that we had wonderful, fun holidays full of laughing, people, food and music in our house. Christmas was a major Family Production--we always had at least 10 extended family and friends joining us at the table, followed by a party in our basement attended by teenaged friends of my (then-teenaged) older siblings, who made stealthy efforts to hide the illegally obtained beer and liquor that they carried inside of their bulky winter coats. A few times the police showed up, called in by one of our very uptight neighbors who viewed as the nogoodniks of Palamino Road. My mom would make the food, clean the house, and be on her feet moving all day. She always bought a bottle of Korbel to enjoy at the end of the night, as the food had been put away, the kitchen cleaned and the opened gifts artfully arranged under the tree. I don't know if I was ever a help to her in those efforts--I vacuumed, cleared plates and sometimes washed dishes for her--but I'm pretty sure she did this all by herself.

She had a lot of reasons to be bitter. Her father died when she was 13 years old of a sudden heart attack several days before Christmas, which completely (and from what I can tell, permanently) upended the family. My own father, awash in depression and ineptitude, bitterly sulked in a corner during the holidays and left her to clean, cook, shop, and assemble bicycles and other impossible toys in the middle of the night (she was likely pregnant, too). She worked circles around him. As I think now, she was always the happiest person in the room during the holidays. I don't know what she was really thinking--be upbeat for the kids, maybe--but I wish I could have had the foresight to know what a gift her optimism was. I hope to continue what she started.