As Father's Day approaches, I'm remembering the good things about who you used to be (to my surprise). Usually, I think of how horrible you turned out to be and how much pain you caused the family, but today I remembered you fondly.

I remember how you used to get me ready for bed at night when mom was working the late shift at the hospital. I was probably 8 or 9 at the time. You would make sure I had my bath and then braid my hair for me (you learned to do this fairly well after awhile).

I remember when I was even younger that you read my favorite book to me before bed. You read "Fox in Socks" over and over again (I requested you specifically - I wanted mom to read the fairytales), and I would laugh when phrases like "The beetles battled with paddles in the bottle" slipped you up.

I remember that you would wake me up some mornings by blasting Van Halen's "Jump" as loudly as possible. I would bolt out of bed, so it only encouraged you more. Other times, you would shake the bed and say something annoying that I can't remember at the moment.

When the rain would notoriously flood some streets across town, you would drive me there so that we could hit all of the pools of water with the car. We would splash what I thought at the time looked like tidal waves onto the sidewalk.

We went fishing a lot. We would catch catfish mostly, and once you caught a mutant goldfish. I remember the park very clearly. It had bright orange sculpture things that I would play on with the other kids when the fish weren't biting.

You had two aquariums in the house even though mom was terrified of fish (she was nicer than I would have been) and filled them with all kinds of things. We had two Arowana fish that were very strange looking, an algae eater, neons, and some sort of blue fish. The blue fish later committed fish suicide by jumping out of the tank while family friends were house-sitting (and they never house-sat again). You bought me two little crabs that I named Mustard and Ketchup (they were red and yellow, and I was a terribly imaginative child). They escaped one morning when you were cleaning the tank, and you said that you ran around the house chasing them and lifting up furniture until you found them.

You were always good during an emergency. When I was a year old and fell into the jacuzzi, mom froze in panic and you fished me out by my diaper. When I was 5, I rocked back and forth on my Mickey Mouse scooter in the garage until I fell and knocked out my front teeth. You were calm even though I was screaming, and you held my teeth in place until they went back in (not sure how this happened, but it did).

You were never afraid that crying would make you seem weak. Mom liked to tell me that you blubbered like a baby when I was born. When they asked you what my name was, you could barely stop crying enough to tell them my name.

Every Saturday morning, you would get up with me to watch Looney Tunes. You built snowmen out of tumbleweeds when the Santa Ana winds came through and spray painted the stacks white for the full effect. You did a bellyflop into the kiddie pool just to amuse my brother. You dressed up as Santa once for me and once for Ryan, though neither of us were fooled.

You were a great dad and everyone loved you. I'm not sure what happened.

I watched tv with my mom in her urn a bit ago. I realize that this is not a normal thing to do, but it's Mother's Day and I just needed to take her down from the shelf of the closet today.

My mom's ashes are inside a plastic bag that lines the inside of her urn. Her urn is what Sara said looked like a "mom urn" (mauve with pink roses) - I had Sara help me choose the urn from a catalog when I was half-crazed and she pretty much chose it for me. I have opened the bag once (to take a little bottle of ashes to California and bury them illegally next to my grandma's grave).

Tonight, I wanted to take my mom out of the urn and look at the ashes through the bag. I wanted to see what they looked like in their entirety because I've never seen them, I've only opened the lid and peered inside.

The dread of Mother's Day approaching and the damned commercials were actually worse than the day, and I felt numb today. I feel that I'm forgetting her, and it feels like maybe she was never here, that she never existed (which is strange because I mostly have little flashbacks of her unconscious in the hospital and dying, so it's jarring). So I decided to look at her ashes.

The urn is round on bottom with a narrower neck, so I had to work for about ten minutes to get the bag out of the urn. Had my brother come downstairs and seen me, he would have had me committed.

It's surreal to hold my mother in my cupped hands in a see-through bag with a twist tie. It's all of her, all that she was made up of. It's her bones and muscle and tissue and everything else turned to grey powder. I shifted the bag around for I don't know how long to examine the ashes. I wanted to see how fine the ash was and see if there were bits of bone. It's really morbid, but I wanted to find a tooth so that I would see something defining and know that this was not just a bag of dust. I wanted to see something that was part of her that I had seen while she was alive because I'd obviously not seen her bones. I of course didn't find a tooth and I know I would have been both devastated and horrified if I had. I just turned the bag round and round, shifting the powder that has the consistency of flour, but also has little shards in it. I kept looking for the shards and examining them as best I could through the bag as if I could identify what bone the pieces came from, as if I would look at a whiteish-grey pebble and recognize that it came from her tibia.

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I felt the need to be less numb, so I just listened to a song that we played at my mom's funeral. The last time I heard it was at the funeral and I've successfully avoided hearing it since. I feel that if I don't cry my eyes out on every significant date that I'm somehow dishonoring my mom, that if I don't break down on Thanksgiving or her birthday or Christmas it would mean that she was insignificant to me while she was here. And I know it's ridiculous. I know that she wouldn't want me to do this. But I felt that looking at her ashes and shedding a few tears was not enough, so I listened to "1000 Oceans" and had a violent reaction that I had not anticipated. I knew it would be bad, but I didn't expect to instantly cry so hard that I couldn't open my eyes and forgot to breathe. From four minutes of crying, I feel like I've been given a heavy sedative and had my chest ripped open. I'm surprised that I didn't fracture my eyeballs from how tightly I had them shut and grit my teeth to dust. I don't know if I've ever cried that way. Listening to that song was a terrible idea.

And now I'm listening to the song that I used to listen to while I hid in the laundry room with the door shut, pretending to be doing laundry, but was instead burying my face in one of my mom's blankets on top of the dryer, so that my brother and his friends wouldn't know that I was crying my guts out. Those were some bad times.

"And I'm still thinking 'bout you
And I'm so lonesome without you
And I can't get you out of my mind"

"Oh Mama, don't leave me alone
With my soul shut down so tight just like a stone cold tomb
...I'm just dying to hear you calling my name one more time"

"So don't pay no mind to my watering eyes
It must be something in the air that I'm breathing
And try to ignore all this blood on the floor
It's just this heart on my sleeve that's bleeding"

My mom's house looks almost exactly as she left it.

All of her knick-knacks are still where they were, even the ones that I never liked.

I sleep in her room, in her bed. I use her sheets, even the silly ones with toasters and fruit and coffee cups (which I'm lying on right now, on her side of the bed). I couldn't bring myself to use the comforter set that I bought her that she hadn't had a chance to use, so I did buy my own. But she would have liked it still (and hers is in the closet, where she left it). I rarely refer to the bedroom I sleep in as "my room" - it's always "mom's room."

Her clothes and shoes still take up one of the closets in the room, and half of the other. I only replaced my ex-stepdad's clothing with my own. The rest of her clothes are put away safely, in plastic tubs. The shirts that still smell like her are in plastic bags. The only changes I've made to her room are the addition of my dresser and my boxes of things from my apartment that I've yet to unpack. Other than that, there are the same pictures, same curtains, same lamps and end tables with frilly lace coverings. I've even left up the green ivy border that she pain-stakingly stenciled around the top of the room. It's many years old and quite faded, and I will be upset when I have to paint over it.

I've combined my books with hers in the bookshelves. I weeded out my ex-stepdad's books and gave them away. I did bring in my living room furniture (couch set, tv stand, tv and coffee table), and that is the only room that looks slightly different. The same pictures and other things that she hung on the wall are still there, save the few that my neighbor took down in an effort to "help make the house my own."

I've not replaced the computer desk nor the dining room table set, though I dislike them both. The kitchen was apple-themed, and those were all put away and the wall-paper taken down by my neighbor's son, who said it would be good for me. The kitchen is bare now. I miss the apples.

I took the wall-paper in the downstairs bathroom off because it was peeling, but the bathroom still has that weird beach theme, shell-shaped hand towel rack and all. The damn rack falls down about once a week and I still haven't properly secured it or got rid of it.

I even have all of her pills (for thyroid, blood pressure, etc.) and I remember the dosages I gave her when she was tired and I was still up: 3 green, one white, half a yellow, and a blue.

I've not held up the tradition of over-decorating the house (inside and out) for every holiday. As my uncle said during his toast this Christmas: "Joyce would have been the one here with the holiday sweater and the reindeer antlers. No one loved the holidays more than her." We haven't had a Christmas tree since she passed.

I have her urn and her ashes. They were originally in a cupboard in the kitchen where I thought my brother would never look. The closets downstairs are quite full of holiday things, etc. He inevitably found them. I initially didn't want the urn upstairs because it would either be in the room I sleep in, or the guest room, and I thought that would creep the guests out. I've moved her there anyway.

One of my aunts told me that I can't keep her and that we should put her in the Sound (I will not put her there. That is where we put my dad), or bury her at the cemetery where the rest of our family is. I said that there is no reason I cannot keep her. My friend Vita's parents have her urn and have no plans of putting it elsewhere. My other aunt and I did put a bit of my mom's ashes (quite illegally) into a little hole we dug at the edge of my grandma's grave. So they are together now, sort of.

My brother and I have to put the house up for sale shortly. This will mean clearing most everything out and putting it in storage to make the house a "clean slate." I know that the logical thing would be to sort through her things and downsize what will be put into storage, but I doubt I will do that. I don't care. I'm keeping everything.

It seems unreal that she died 8 months ago today. "Time heals" - I wonder how much time that is. I haven't made a bit of progress since the day she died, except maybe not to cry in public so much. I guess that's progress.

I feel like I'm living in a dream world, like mom's going to walk through the door any minute, back from a long vacation. I'm just here babysitting my brother and can go back to my old life upon her return, and get calls from her daily.

I left my job on the 24th of last month, and have since then taken a dive emotionally. It didn't help that her 50th birthday was on the 26th. I thought time off was what I needed to deal with my life and take care of all the things I wasn't able to while working, but it's only proven that when I'm not busy I will wallow and do nothing. My job and the chaos of my life kept me from thinking and feeling because I was always dealing with a crisis. Now there's nothing but the legal stuff, and I've avoided that for weeks. I haven't even paid a bill since leaving my job, I just drown myself in sleep and movies. Even though I was totally overwhelmed with work, at least I was getting things done. I avoid my friends for the most part, and I feel bad, but I just can't make the effort. I just want to be alone most of the time.

Our support group starts in 3 days. I don't know if we're ready, because we really haven't done much therapy. And I'm not sure I want to hear anyone else's story yet when I'm so busy feeling sorry for myself.

My mom died on June 8th at the age of 49 (the same age my dad was when he died last year).

I really thought she would make it - all the doctors said she would. Her liver failed for reasons we still don't know. She went from healthy to "not going to make it" in two weeks.

We didn't even know she needed a transplant until the 8th day she was in the hospital and they transferred her to UW Medical Center. The doctors said she was an excellent candidate. The hospital was moving so quickly to get all of her tests done so they could get her on the transplant list. She was supposed to be first on the list because she was getting sicker, though she didn't look it except for the jaundice (yellowish-orange colored skin due to the liver failure).

They were short one test when she became incoherent the day before she died. She hadn't had the slow decline like my grandfather did, she went incoherent overnight. I remember walking into her room and seeing that she had mittens on her hands so she couldn't pull out her feeding tube and her stomach was bigger because of the 25 pounds of fluid she was accumulating. She couldn't talk to us and had no idea who we were or that we were even there. When her feeding tube leaked, the nurses were changing her sheets and she was screaming because she didn't know what was happening. I remember she looked at me once and had no idea who I was. Her eyes were just blank. My aunt asked the doctors how long she had and they said about two weeks.

My best friend Sara drove to the hospital when I told her what was happening, and I am so thankful and forever indebted because I had no idea what was going to happen next and I don't think I would have been able to go through this had she not been there.

I left the hospital with Sara at about 8pm after I'd spent some time with my mom. At 11pm, my aunt called saying that they'd taken my mom to the ICU because her blood pressure had dropped. My aunt and I were in my mom's room just talking to her and telling her that she would be fine but that she needed to fight.

At 3am, they told us she wasn't doing well. At 4am, they told us her blood pressure had gotten a little better and we were hopeful. At 5am, they told us that her pupils were dilated and that her brain was swelling and I lost my fucking mind. I just started screaming and ran into the bathroom to throw up and beat on the wall. I knew because my mom was a nurse that dilated pupils meant brain damage or brain death. I went into my mom's room and I begged her not to die, not to leave me and my little brother alone and that we needed her and that I couldn't live without her. But they just couldn't save her. At 8am, her doctor came in to tell us that she wasn't going to make it.

We started calling the family to come in from California to say goodbye. I had to call my other aunt that had been staying with my brother to get him at school and bring him to the hospital. My aunt also lost her mind, so Sara drove down to get them both and bring them to the hospital. After I told my brother that she wasn't going to make it, he had the same reaction I did.
Since he's only 14, we gave him the option to see her and say goodbye and he did. He just talked to her and told her we would miss her, but that he would make her proud. Even the nurses were crying at this point.

All of my mom's brothers and sisters and one of my cousins made it to the hospital in time for us to talk to the doctors and they said it would be only hours before she passed. They couldn't guarantee us that she wasn't in pain, so we decided to turn off the life support. When we turned off the machines, my mom's blood pressure was 30 over 40 even with 3 medications trying to keep her pressure up. We told her it was okay to go, and that we would miss her terribly, but we knew that she couldn't fight anymore. I kissed her head and held her hand as she passed.

I'm living with my brother now and I'm going to raise him because I know she'd want us to stay together.

I miss you, Mama.

"Remember kids," (kids eating chocolate eggs) "Jesus died for your sins" "I know its great!" "No no its very bad!" "Whatever, just keep giving us these eggs"

So I have a new job. I'm an admin assistant which is suuuper exciting.

I was supposed to start on a Monday but my cat scratched my cornea with her claw and my eye swelled shut. So my new first day was Tuesday now. I was walking to the bus that morning (with the hurt eye shut) and I was in the crosswalk when I was HIT BY A CAR! This idiot just made her right turn straight into me and threw me to the ground. I was so frantic to get to work and disoriented from being hit that I ran to the other side of the street and cried. The girl stopped for a second, but I guess figured that since I was on the other side of the street, that it was okay for her to go. Yeah.

Also, a homeless person blew his nose into a gust of wind and it hit me in the face and my undamaged eye. Delicious.

So ignore that last post as I'm still getting this lj text thing down. Also, i have not abandoned lj, I am just employed now and spend all day on the computer, so it's the last thing I want o do when I get home.

I will update shortly on the ridiculousness that is my life.

Goddamn it, I miss you SO MUCH. Just had lunch with your mom, Sara, and Kira. It's so weird to talk about you in the past-tense, and even stranger to be at your house and you're not there. It feels like you're in your art room and we're just waiting for you to come back out. But you don't and you won't because you're gone.

I just want to call you and tell you about anything, or listen to you talk about Harry Potter or those Eragon books you loved. We saw the Eragon movie for you. You didn't miss anything.

I took a picture of a restaurant with your name in New York. I meant to get a picture when I saw it the second time I was there, before you died, but I was too late. I wish I could have shown it to you. You would have liked it. And I wish I could have been at your last birthday party.

I miss you.

Stack of new books These are some of the books I have purchased in the last 2 days on my book-buying spree.

Sorry for the camera phone picture. Too lazy to get out the real camera. From top to bottom, the books are: The Villains Guide to Better Living by Neil Zawacki, Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (I can't believe I haven't read this), Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Saffron Foer, American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (had to get this because I'm currently reading You Shall Know Our Velocity! and LOVING IT), Naked Pictures of Famous People by Jon Stewart, Nothing's Sacred by Lewis Black, A Supposedly Funny Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace, and on the side is The Copy-editor's Handbook by Amy Einsohn. I also bought these online because I'm an editing nerd: