Mourning Twice

“Well then,” Rabbi Straus counseled, “you’ll need to give yourself permission to mourn twice.”

The rabbi was new to our congregation, and I hadn’t met him yet; we were talking by phone.  “Mourn twice?”

“Once for the mother you had, and once for the mother you didn’t have.”

I’d just told Rabbi Straus that my mom was under hospice care and was unlikely to last much longer.  And I’d provided him with a brief background:  Mom was not a nurturer; she was difficult, and had caused her children a lot of suffering.  With her death imminent, I’d felt some urgency about pre-empting any assumptions Rabbi Straus might make about Mom.  I couldn’t bear to hear anything resembling a mother’s love is unconditional.

When I level with someone about my mother, I’m always a little startled to be believed.  Somehow, I expect a lecture:  surely she meant well; shouldn’t I have moved on by now, forgiven her?

And because my three sisters and I are very close with one another and have been so devoted to Mom, the claim that Mom was destructive or disturbed is bound to confuse.  She can’t have been that bad—you all turned out so well! runs the cheery skepticism.

She was that bad.  But when do I make the case, and when do I let it go?  If I smile and let things roll off my back, I feel I’m in some way complicit in the abuse and rejection that my sisters and I survived.  If I try to set the record straight, I worry that I sound shrill or not credible.

Mom died on August 2^nd, and shortly afterward I spoke candidly with an elderly relative.  “Your parents treated you girls horribly,” she told me.  She also observed that Mom “lost interest” in us once we grew out of babyhood.  I was infinitely grateful for this validation, as I was when Mom’s physician reported that my mother had several previously undiagnosed psychiatric conditions as well as dementia.

I know this will sound odd, but lately I’ve been haunted by my own generosity toward Mom.  Why did my sisters and I move her back here nine years ago?  (Tellingly, she’d opted to relocate from Berkeley to New York just as my sister and I were starting families in the Bay Area.)  Why did we obsess over hiring only the most loving caregivers for her, include her in seders, bring her to the kids’ recitals?  Why the spontaneous Happy Birthday medley we sang at her bedside on her 89^th birthday, just eleven days before she died?

What is the world supposed to think of those acts, but that they were the natural outgrowth of a wonderful relationship?

What I’ve begun to realize since Mom died is how humiliated I’d always felt by the way she treated me—how deeply, if irrationally, ashamed.  By integrating Mom into our loving families, my sisters and I were rewriting our story, joining the community of adults concerned about aging parents.  We couldn’t have the real thing, but at least we’d fashion a soothing retrofit.  It was what we could do.

One painful aspect of losing Mom is the use of phrases like “your beloved mother” in some of the many well-meaning cards and e-mails I’ve received.  It’s been an important part of my mourning process to thank each person in writing—with honesty.

Mom was a difficult person, I explain, and the challenge for me now is to sort through some very complicated feelings.  I greatly appreciate the support of community at this painful time.

I know my rabbi is behind me on this.

Published in the Piedmont Post, September 7, 2011

Please visit www.lisabravermoss.com.  Thanks!

How to Stay Trim

A recent article in the New York Times, “Fidgeting Your Way to Fitness” (May 11, 2011), suggests that “incidental” physical activity, such as drumming your fingers against your desk top in frustration, can burn calories and help maintain or augment your physical fitness.

This is great news to those of us whose primary form of exercise is hunting and pecking, wrinkling our noses, rolling our eyes, and shaking our heads at how bad something looks on the page when it looked perfectly fine yesterday.  Writing is a lot of work, my friends, and it’s nice to have this officially recognized by sports and exercise researchers normally concerned only with silly matters like the cardiovascular benefits of cross-training for marathoners.

But—what if you can’t get to the gym, and you also can’t seem to get any writing done?  Are you simply out of luck, fitness-wise?

Suppose, just hypothetically, that your hip has finally given out.  You’re largely housebound, and you need to go in for a big surgery.  With your physical activity significantly curtailed, there’s nothing much you can do besides sitting around with your laptop—which would seem like the ideal opportunity to, say, start working on that other novel.  Yet you find yourself shockingly unproductive.

Not only can’t you go for a walk; you also can’t seem to manage the aerobics of hand-wringing as you confront a draft or, worse, a blank page.  How, oh how, are you to maintain your waistline?

This is where abject terror can be a lifesaver.

Turns out you don’t need to flutter your fingers as you try coming up with a nice metaphor for that one pesky paragraph.  You don’t need to mop your brow, rethinking that clunky sentence with the weak verb.  Instead, simply work yourself up into a frenzy of anxiety over impending events.  Tighten your stomach muscles into an obstinate tangle, and voila—abdominal fitness!

Also known as isometric exercise, this technique can be applied in many other parts of the body with equally silhouette-flattering results.  Sit in the wrong chair and get some lower back tension going.  Develop a case of temporo-mandibular joint disorder.  Clench your fists.  Clutch desperately at your chest.  Look, I’m not recommending rigor mortis, but rigor vitae happens to be great exercise.

Oh, and don’t forget about the lungs.  Say you’re headed for surgery kicking and screaming—but, having had to give up kicking lately, you’re increasingly reliant on the vocal component.  Isn’t it reassuring to know your physical fitness can be enhanced by a little, um, musical expression?

If you insist on considering the eardrums of others and still wish to exercise your lungs, hyperventilation is definitely worth a try.

“You’re nice and slim,” your surgeon tells you, explaining that this will make his job easier.

“I’m nice and slim while unconscious,” you correct him.  “When I’m awake, believe me, I’m a big fat pain in the neck.”

And you whip out your list of questions, and try not to be too obvious about pulsing in agitation.

Published in the Piedmont Post, June 1, 2011

Please visit www.lisabravermoss.com.  Thanks!

Vacation From Chaos

Late one recent afternoon, spinning my wheels on all kinds of tasks that needed my attention, I called my sister Erica.  “Hey Eri, wanna go get a drink, or a cup of coffee?”

“Well—um, I’m kind of cleaning up my apartment, and—” her voice was tiny.  “I could use a hand.”

She was asking?  Forget the drink.  “I’ll be right over.”

For months, I’d been offering to help my sister, who’s not a born housekeeper.  But she’d been feeling too ashamed of her chaos to accept my offer—and too overwhelmed to tackle the job on her own.  That she was now extending an invitation to me was, in the language of sisters, something of an honor.

I know how thorny it can be to do spring cleaning, how myriad the opportunities for self-reproach:

I bought these pants, but who am I kidding?

What kind of person lets mail pile up like this?

Why didn’t I keep the moisture out of this now-unusable dishwasher soap?

How did I create such a monster out of plenty?

I headed over to Eri’s and walked into the kind of disorder only a trained eye would recognize as evidence of progress.  I began scrounging around for empty bags in which to put the castoffs.  We gained momentum, and in a few hours, we’d filled dozens of bags with giveaway, recycling and garbage.  “If you regret anything, you can always get it back on eBay or at the flea market,” I chanted, as much to myself as to her.

Eri seemed anxious that I was going to lose steam or, worse, start lecturing her.  But for me, the work wasn’t hard; I appreciated its concreteness, the discarded items piling up nicely in the hallway.  And I felt no urge to criticize my sister or tell her what to do.  I had my own pile of stuff I didn’t want to face: an e-mail inbox I hadn’t purged in a year and a half; that Advance Directive form I kept meaning to fill out; research on the various options for authors wishing to make their books available in electronic form.

I’ve been on the receiving end of sisterly hand-holding many, many times.  Home moves, babysitting, post-surgical care, fridge cleaning, remodeling decisions, party throwing, proofreading of galleys.  Until now, I hadn’t fully grasped the most important part of that generosity: countering any self-condemnation the other person may be feeling about not being able to manage everything herself.

How is it that we’re all convinced our mess is the worst, our shame the most legitimate?  While Eri waited for disapproval, I could only admire her for being brave enough to let me in.

Something must have shifted during my unplanned vacation, because when I returned to my own chaos, I found I was able to tackle it much better, as if my hand-holding of Eri were now magically extended inward.

And a few days later, Eri called to tell me she was re-organizing her kitchen cabinets.  By herself.

For more about Lisa, please visit www.lisabravermoss.com.