Fabric of You...

"Does this seem smaller to you? Like the roof is lower?"

"Yeah."

"Weird. It's not like I'm taller than I was."

Thinking about the funeral. And not just the funeral but everything around it. But not in the grieving way. Or at least not in the specific grieving for Mom way.

The conversation above happened when we were walking from the church sanctuary over to fellowship hall after the service. The same walk I took when Dad died, so I had done it as an adult, and I did it a lot as a teenager, and though I might be wider than I was then, I'm not any taller. But the hallway felt really small. The roof really low. The walk really short. It was an odd sensation.

Being in the church is always an odd sensation. And when I say THE church I always mean Ridgecrest. We attended First and Valley for small bouts of time, but Ridgecrest is THE church. It's the one I was born into, the one I spent most of my time, the one I was married in. And it's the one the others spun off from once upon a time.

That was what we Ridgecrest kids always held on to. First and Heights had more money, especially First, Valley was newer and had a really beautiful building, but Ridgecrest was there first. When we went to camp and the old cabins were named for the founding families that started it, Ridgecrest Families were featured prominently. Sure, First might have raised the money for the new dorms, but they would always be called that, the new dorms. The named cabins? Those were ours.

When you are broke you tend to hold on to history and pride a little tighter.

But Ridgecrest was home. I think I was still too shell shocked at Dad's funeral to really take it all in. This time, because of time, I wasn't as foggy. And maybe because I really believe that that was the last time I will be there I paid a lot of attention. It was all so familiar. Home in its own way.

I told my nephew I used to count the woodens slats in the roof, Larry our minister at the time, had certain words he would always use, verbal tics, and when he would say one I'd start counting the other way. Brian told me he would count the stained glass in the lights and windows. We both realized that we should have had a good indication that we weren't really meant to stay at that point.

I also looked at the books in the church library. There were ones that were old when I was a child that were still there. At one point in time I could have told you how far I had read in almost all of them. We spent so much time at the church while my parents were doing various things and if I didn't have a book with me I would pull one off the shelf and read it. There were mostly devotional books but a few fiction. Christian fiction. The bar is fairly low on what good religious fiction is. People are so desperate for message books they will let the quality slide. I read a lot of really terrible religious fiction books growing up.

There were changes as well. Where the library is the other half of that room used to be wide open, it was the original fellowship hall, long before I was born, but now it's closed off with walls and doors to make it private classrooms. What was the stage and storage area in the current fellowship hall was taken out and a big new kitchen put it probably 20 years ago now, but it still seems new to me because it wasn't there when I was growing up. We had the hallway, galley kitchen and we all spent a lot of time in there, getting communion ready, making coffee for potlucks, eating pizza with the youth group or preparing snacks for VBS.

The church is filled with memories for me. It's a big part of where I grew up. It's a big part of my growing up.

Good and bad.

And at Mom's service my Aunt Carol (Mom's best friend) talked about the first time she attended, meeting Mom and Dad as they taught the Young Married's Sunday school class. Thinking about Denny and Carol being Young Marrieds made me smile. And, of course, I don't think they could have had better class leaders for a good marriage example.

My sister-in-law also talked about first meeting Mom and Dad as they were greeters the first time she came to Ridgecrest. And then about how Mom would call her on Sunday after she and John were first married and tell her that they really could use her in the nursery next Sunday. And she did that until they came back to church regularly.

Carol also talked about how Mom and Dad started the church. How Mom hadn't really wanted to work on getting a new church established when they moved to New Mexico but had been called to do it anyway. She also talked about how Mom only demanded one thing from Dad and that was that they would go to church.

Now, I happen to know that she also said he had to stop smoking and he couldn't drink but once a year or so. My mother might have given the advice that men don't change, but she still believed in making a few alterations as needed. Though to be fair, Dad didn't change. He wanted to do whatever would make her happy. That never changed.

As I talked to people before the service and after it, there was the recurring theme. Mom (and Dad) had been instrumental in establishing the church. She had been part of the fabric of church life. She had touched a lot of lives through the church. It was her great joy to have raised her family within those walls.

And I smiled and thanked them.

And wondered how many of them knew I left at 18 and very rarely looked back?

I also spoke at her service. I talked about what a great woman she was. I talked about our relationship just a bit. I also talked about how much I knew she missed Dad and how glad I was that she didn't anymore. Which I know that 90% of the people in the congregation took to mean she and Dad are together in heaven right now. But that's not what I said.

I didn't say anything about her religion at all. Though it was a huge part of who she was. It's just not who I am. I bowed my head when the minister prayed, out of respect for those around me, but not because I thought he was talking to god. In fact, when ministers pray I think even they know they aren't talking to god but are talking to their congregation. Mini sermons. But I can have respect for my mother's beliefs and not take them on myself. I've had years, decades, of practice.

It was hard to leave the church. It was woven into the very fabric of who I was. My parents started that church. My first friends were all members of that church. I still have people I grew up with in the church that I am friends with today. A large contingent of my family believes the teachings of the church. And they pray for me. Which I think is sweet of them and I hope it makes them feel good. It's not going to change things, but I do honestly think it's nice that they still try. Even if it's a little bit condescending at times. But that's okay too.

And I talked about it when Dad died. There is great comfort that can be had when someone dies if you believe you will see them again. It makes you feel better to imagine a big grand reunion. I don't have that, though my brothers and sisters do. I have what we had while they were alive and that's all. And, for me, that's enough.

I have a lot of memories of the church, and of camp, and of countless bible studies and youth group rehearsals for tour, and bible bowl competitions and time on the bus and lessons and sermons and more than a few "Listen here, young lady" lectures. It was part of who I was. It's still part of who I am. I love those memories, well most of them anyway. I have been able to pick and choose from the lessons and apply them to my life even now.

My mother's entire philosophy of not abiding by rudeness had a religious component for her, it doesn't for me, yet I still practice it. She believed in being kind to strangers because the bible told her to do it, I believe in being kind to strangers because it's the right thing to do. I practice a lot of what she preached, I just don't do it to get into heaven later. I do it to make the world around me better now.

Walking down the hallway in the church it seemed much smaller, but it was the same.

I have just outgrown it.

Memories...Mine, Yours, Ours...

Last weekend when we were home for the funeral I was talking to my sister and she said something about memory that made me smile. Because it's something I say all the time. Something I harp on. Something I read up on. Something I know to be true.

Basically your memories are yours and mine are mine and even if we are remembering the same event we don't necessarily have the same memory of it.

Memory is not trustworthy.

We all think it is. "I remember that clearly!"

But it's not.

Our memory is fickle. And each time we remember something we change it just a little. It's a memory of a memory. We can even start to remember things, in remarkable detail, that never happened. Brian Williams was a really public example of this. People hung him out to dry, but he probably honestly believed what he was saying. One of the ways you could tell is by how his story morphed over time. He started out with a pretty accurate (from other accounts, though we know those aren't really all that accurate either) then he added one detail, then another, and eventually the story he remembered and told was different than the one he started with.

And people do it all the time.

I've told the story of almost drowning and the only other person there at the time has a very different story than I do in some key areas. And that was from the start. We both lived it, but we lived it differently and what we remember is different.

I've had people tell me stories about things happening to me, or things that I've supposedly said, that I have no memory of at all. But they will swear is true and happened.

And for years, before I realized how fragile memory was, I relied on my own memory heavily. And there are times I still do feel like I must be remembering something exactly. I mean I can picture the room, I can tell you what people are wearing. I can tell you who said what and when. And I could be right. But then again, I might not at all.

We all remember things differently.

And sometimes we remember things the way we want them to be. Or need them to be.

I have friends who have changed relationships with their parents after they died. Which you would think would be tricky right? Like you had a relationship with them when they were alive and that's what it was, you could have changed it then, but not now. But really? It's easier to change it once they are dead. Because they aren't there fucking up your rewrite anymore. I've seen people who were estranged from their parents suddenly have the tightest mother/daughter bond you have ever heard about. I've seen a lot of rewriting of personalities, and not just with parents but with a lot of people. The world's biggest asshole is now tough but fair.

I think the whole don't speak ill of the dead thing comes in to play here. And if you spend enough years not speaking ill of the dead you forget that they had a lot of ill to talk about.

You all also know I don't buy in to that. If you don't want to be spoken ill of after you die then don't be a dick while you are alive. I'm not polishing your legacy for you. I might not speak of you at all, or might not contradict the polishers, but I won't add to it. They need to do what works for them, and if that means that their memories shift, then okay. As long as it doesn't hurt someone else then okay.

And sometimes you'll hear something about someone you knew that doesn't line up with your own memories and you have to figure out how to deal with those as well. For me? I fall back on that belief, your memories are yours, mine are mine.

And that's okay.

Memory is shifty. It really is. Just don't think your memories are any more reliable than someone elses and you'll be okay.

Middle Of The Night Thoughts...

Woke up in the middle of the night with something in my head and thought, well that's got to be a blog doesn't it?

Ready?

It was:

Great minds think alike, but exceptional minds think of things never thought of before. Small minds don't think at all.

And then as I was thinking about it my head gave me a little more to ponder.

We say great minds think alike but we also worry about groupthink being a problem. So what happens when your group is all great minds does that cancel out the bad part of groupthink? Or is that groupthink is more likely to happen when you have one or two great minds thinking alike and the rest of the group deciding just to follow that thought?

And then can it become an the Emperor has no clothes moment?

Just waiting for an exceptional mind to point out the error.

But...then we have the other problem. Small minds don't think at all. They do something much worse. They know.

I know this is right because...

I know this is the truth because...

And it doesn't matter how many things you show them, they don't change because they aren't thinking about it, they are knowing.

And great minds in one area can be small minds in another. They can even be exceptional in one area and then just a "knower" in another. A knower not a grower? Something like that.

And it can even be worse if you are an exceptional thinker you can convince yourself that you are right in an area where you are not thinking at all. I just listened to a podcast about this recently, maybe the You Are Not So Smart one...if you're interested I will try and find it.

We can all be susceptible to the knowing problem.  And it depends on how attached you are to the identity that goes with what you know on how willing you are to give it up. Tribalism is all based on knowing. Even if a lot of what you believe is based on great minds thinking alike. And even if it started with an exceptional idea.

Anyway....

This is what was in my head at 2 AM. Great minds think alike. Exceptional minds think of things never thought of before. Small minds don't think at all.

What are you?

And if you aren't exceptional would you even want to admit it to yourself?

I know I wouldn't...

I Remember You...

"Okay, I give. Been staring at the cursor blinking on a blank page for 20 minutes...maybe further inspiration will hit later today. I see a funeral and a very well put together older lady sitting in the back row. Hopefully she will tell me who she is and who is dead soon so I have something to write today."

That was my status update from five years ago today. As soon as I read it I thought, "Oh I remember you." And then I wondered how long she sat with me before I figured out who she was. Turns out I wrote the short story later that day. I just had to walk away from the computer for her to finish talking to me. But I do have a vague memory of her kind of hanging out at the edges of my mind for a few days before that.

That happens a lot. I can see it. Visualize it. Like there is another person sharing my head just waiting to talk to me. It makes me understand people who are schizophrenic. Who hear voices. I mean, I hear them as well, I've just figured out how to channel them.

Watching R.L. Stine's MasterClass right now and he is seriously amusing me. Sometimes because of how much I relate to him, he doesn't view writing in the same lofty way that some of the other authors I've read about do. And sometimes because we are really different in our approach.

One of the things he was talking about in a lesson is that he is a big outliner. He outlines the whole story before he ever writes. He maps out his twists and his cliffhangers and knows exactly how the whole thing goes before he ever starts writing. And while he was talking about this he talked about authors who say things like, "I wait for the character to tell me where the story goes." He does not believe this is a thing that actually happens. "Nonsense, you are in control." He thinks that this is something authors tell people interviewing them to sound more interesting.

I love that he said that. I laughed incredibly hard. He has reached the stage of his life where he is successful enough and old enough that he has zero fucks to give about anything else.

Now, I don't agree. At all. Because I am one of those people who waits for characters to tell me what happens. I view the people in my head as being pretty much real. They have a story they want me to tell. They tell me, I tell you, we are all surprised by how it turns out. Now, I get it, I do, I am making them up. They aren't real. But...

They sort of are.

To me.

And depending on how well I write their stories to you as well.

My voices have been fairly quiet lately. I think they are letting me grieve. But I'm hopeful they will start to chatter again soon. I know we have a lot of stories to share. I'm looking forward to seeing what they are.

Oh, and just incase you don't remember her as well as I do, here is the link to that story.

Promises Not Kept

I'm Not...I Didn't...We Didn't...

I'm not cleaning house today. I'm going to do my best not to clean house this week. Like more than just normal keeping it tidy cleaning. I mean the CLEAN HOUSE cleaning. I did offer to go home with Christopher and clean his place. He's been doing a big sort and clean and I would speed that right along...

I didn't spend the weekend drinking, though I "joked" about doing it. More than joked, absolutely considered it. But I didn't.

We didn't fight. At least nobody fought at the service and nobody fought at the house afterwards or dinner that night. What happened when I wasn't around is a mystery but as far as I know everyone played nicely.



They've already started sorting Mom's things. Bags of things out of the closet were already donated or tossed. But the jewelry was waiting for all of us to sort through and pick and choose what we wanted. My mother had a queen size bed, the bed was covered. And there was a good sized table as well. And a couple of other jewelry boxes. And a box filled with just watches. And boxes like you'd find at Home Depot to keep small screws and such in filled with earrings who had lost their match but had never been thrown out. Just so much jewelry.

 This was part of the bed collection

Some of it I remembered from when I was younger. She had sets that she would wear for a time period and then move on to the next. So there were things that I absolutely remembered her wearing. There was a set of earrings that I remembered playing with when I was little. I would put a shirt on my head like long a scarf and hang those earrings from the inside of my ears and pretend I was a fortune teller. My sister said, "Take them!" I said, "I'll take a picture of them."

I would play with these for hours. I thought they were the fanciest things I'd ever seen.

There was the set that I remember her wearing when she would get really dressed up. There was a bracelet and earrings and at one point there was a necklace though that disappeared. The charm that hung from it was found and David is going to use that in a memorial piece he is making. 

The dressy jewelry. Aunt Carol took this set. It reminded her of Mom in the 60s as well.

I picked up a lot of the sets and looked at them.I tried on a lot of her rings, her fingers were bigger than mine so it was all thumb rings for me. Remembering Mom wearing some of them. Wondering if she had ever worn some of the others. She had a QVC Home Shopping Network issue and there were things that I don't think were ever worn. Just purchased. Her style was always more is more. I'm kind of minimalist by taste and by allergy. My metal allergy is significant enough that just handling all of Mom's things caused a reaction and I had to take out my own earrings. Yep, the metal that I can wear was like, okay if you are going to insist on handling metal you know you can't wear we're going to remind you what happens. It was crazy.

And then there were the books. Hundreds of books. And the knick knacks. She had owls, and angels, and hummingbirds, and Noah's Ark things, and stuffed animals, and these weird little things that move in the sunlight that I think would make a great Black Mirror episode, and Southwest inspired pieces, and...well there was a lot of stuff. So I'm not cleaning out my house right now. But it's hard not to. 

All it takes is a trip home to remember that I have addictions built right into my DNA. Food, alcohol, smoking, drugs, shopping, hoarding...it's all there. And believe me, I know that my reaction to it, my I'M IN CONTROL OF IT, is also an addiction. The need to have things clean. The need to have open, empty space. The too much then not enough around food. The almost paranoid level of control around alcohol.

It was a force of will to get a drink on the flight home. I had a couple on the flight down no problem but then as soon as I hit the funeral I was as sober as I've ever been. Not like I was drunk from the night before and sobered up but like the thought of having a drink wasn't a good one. I could see another stone cold sober stretch in my future, and it might still happen. As far as addiction issues go, not drinking isn't a bad one. But I don't want to be that tight about it. I rarely have more than one at a time. I generally only have a few a week. I don't have a drinking problem. But I do know that I could. I know that in the past I've walked right up to the line. I do know that it's in my blood. I know that my grandfather and all of my father's siblings were alcoholics. So I'm careful. To an extreme. 

I've gotten really loose with shopping lately. Like if I want something I'll buy it. That's going to be paused for a bit. When I feel like I can sort more things without the drumbeat of GET RID OF EVERYTHING playing in the background I will do some of that. And I will go ahead with my plan from last month to add things that I know I need, but first I will sort everything and make sure I don't already have things that I've forgotten about, or things that I can make work. And I will go back, after that, to really questioning if I want something or if I need it. 

As far as the not fighting goes, well I left town so that should make it easier on everyone. You're welcome, family. You're welcome. 

I'm not.
I didn't.
We didn't.

Whew...

Pushed Pause...

Saturday is the day. Finally. I don't suggest pushing off a memorial service if you can help it. Delayed grieving is kind of false hope. Mom has been gone for almost two months. Two months of moving along the grief path. Two months of being pretty sure that everything is really okay. Two months that are undone now.

It all started last week when a contemporary of my mother and father passed. Margaret Schrader was a big part of my life growing up. As much as I don't like the teachings of the church it was a family along with my own family. There were five or six really core foundational families in Ridgecrest. The Schraders were one of them. We all knew them, they all knew us. The kids were similar in ages. We all intermingled. Margaret passing would have been painful anyway, but having her service last weekend and then Mom's this weekend it was a lot.

My sister went to the service and she said just walking in to the church was difficult. Seeing people she hadn't seen since Mom died and getting their condolences was almost impossible. And lucky for her and the rest of us we get to do it all again on Saturday.

I spoke with my sister on the phone and we both cried a little while we talked. This is the first time that's happened. Not the first time I've cried over Mom dying, not the first time she has, but the first time we did together. All of the other conversations have been about what needs done, when, how, how much it costs. All of the practical things. But those practical things are winding up now. Now it's just the memorial service. Public grieving. We are both dreading it.

She likes to project strength and togetherness. Just always in control. Me? I like to share what I'm feeling. On my on time and my own terms. Here. Written. In one on one conversations where we are looking for a deeper answer, or a venting session to lighten a load. Sure, that works. But in public? Like me personally not just my words? Ugh.

I've said it for a long time, I don't want a service. Nothing. Not at all. I want you to have your own private goodbye, but nothing public. I don't care for them, and I don't want to subject anyone else to them either. And yes, I get it, the service isn't for the deceased, it's for closure for those left behind, but you can get your closure without public crying. It's okay.

But do it as soon as you can after I die.

Seriously.

Don't wait.

Don't think that there will be a perfect time to say goodbye because I will already be gone. All you will be doing is delaying what you need to deal with. It doesn't make it easier. It just pushes pause.

And that's what I'm feeling right now. That we just delayed what needs done. And the delay didn't make it easier. It made it harder. Healing was happening and now the scab is breaking. The stitches didn't hold. The wound is fresh again.

There were good, valid reasons for holding off on the service, but if you have a choice, don't do it. Don't push it too long. Start that next part of healing and grieving as soon as you can. Say goodbye. Learn how to move forward with the grief instead of waiting, pretending you don't have to.

Because I feel that right now. Like we were all pretending. Maybe not Susan and Jeff because they lived with her so the loss has been daily, but the rest of us? We just kept going like everything was normal. But it wasn't. Saturday I will go to my parents church for what might be the last time, I will say goodbye to my mother then I will go to her house. But she won't be there. And that reality is finally setting in.

I'm still fine.
I still believe it was her choice.
That she wanted to be with Dad.
That this means she's not so terribly lonely anymore.

But...

Two days until I say goodbye. Three days until I let her and Dad go for the last time.

And the clock starts again.

Where Are You Coming From?

Just finished my October MasterClass. It was Alice Waters Teaches Home Cooking. It was interesting in places but not really my favorite. And not always applicable to my home. For instance the last meal she made she prepared in her kitchen fireplace.

So yeah...

No.

I mean it would be nice to go out to my  backyard pick fresh lemons from my tree and herbs from my garden and prepare them in my kitchen fireplace but that's not going to happen.

And I say that would be nice, but honestly even if I did have that I probably wouldn't do it. Pretending I would be a great cook if I only had a better kitchen is kind of my thing.  But as the cool kitchen remodel showed I don't like cooking any more in a nice kitchen than I did in a mediocre one. I like the idea of cooking much more than I do the actual cooking.

But I do keep trying. Because I am a good cook. I make better things than probably half of the places we eat out at. I also can have more control over what and how much we eat by cooking at home. And I can add green chile to all of the things. So I watch cooking shows, and take cooking MasterClasses, and buy cook books, and read cooking blogs. And I try.

But no matter how much I try I am not going to wake up tomorrow and have a large garden and a kitchen fireplace for grilling. Those are things that are completely not in my control.

So much of life is like that. What can you control? What can't you? And are you aware of it all? Where are you coming from?

I grew up poor. For a good portion of my life our house had wheels on it. But we had a house. I also went to private school for a few years. How my parents afforded that is partly a mystery and partly not to me. But that's their story. But they did it, and I went because they thought it would be best for me to be in a different situation.

I'm not sure when I made the connection between what they were dealing with at the time with my sister and their decision to put me in private school but it could have been as I was writing those last two paragraphs. Seriously. I had never thought about it together before.

We had lived in an apartment in the heights (a part of town in Albuquerque) when my sister started high school. It was a really good high school, probably the best public school in town at the time. My brother went there and was set to graduate early. I was in the feeder elementary for the district. Then we had to move. Because my sister had been expelled and there was only one school in town willing to take her on. So we had to move away from that neighborhood and to a new one.

Half of third grade and then fourth grade at the new elementary as my sister fell farther into her issues. So at the end of the school year when Mrs. Romero told Mom and Dad that her suggestion was they double pass me or I was just going to get bored (more bored) and start causing trouble (more trouble) they pulled me from public school and put me in private. I had always thought it was just an educational choice, but looking at it today and tying it to what they were dealing with with their other daughter I see to them it was a choice that had to be made to try and head off any future problems for me.

That's amazing to think about.

And probably did keep me out of a lot of trouble.

The group of kids from elementary school split in middle school. Instead of everyone playing with everyone and all of us hanging out together by the time high school started and I was back in the mix they had split. Jocks and preps on one side, freaks (our term for stoners) on the other. And as I was not a jock and the people I was closest with went freak odds are I would have as well.

Most of my life I've believed that the reason I didn't end up with a drug problem was because I saw what it did to my sister and I swore I would never touch any of it. But looking at it now, right now, I see that yes, that was part of it. It gave me the resolve sure, but it's also due to what my parents did. The choice they made. The one I had absolutely no control over.

Life is like that. There are things we can control and things we can't. There are things that we think we've done all by ourselves that when we look at them again we realize we didn't. I will not wake up tomorrow with a kitchen fireplace. But I did buy stuff to make a green chile chicken pot pie for dinner tonight. I did decide not to become a freak when I lived through the effects of someone else's use, but I was also protected in place by my parents.

Before you decide to judge a decision that someone else is making ask yourself why you make the ones you make. Before you judge where someone else is in their life ask how you got to where you are. Really how you got there. Was it all just you or were there forces in place that you weren't paying attention to? Before you get smug and want to talk about how you did it all, all by yourself, make sure you did.

And odds are, you didn't.