If tomorrow Never Comes

 

 

I am dealing with feels like such failure as a mom to my oldest daughter.  Yes, she was an adult.  Yes, she had issues, but still, societal norms’ always shame a mother when things go wrong.  I know this and I know that she had choices and she had rejected the family members off and on, one by one, I can now say, for most of her life.  I had not intruded on her life.  I tried and for some ye
ars, in her adulthood, she had come back and wanted her mother’s love and always she got it.  A mother forgives easily, and I suspect, that is why kids blame the mother first.  We are made to forgive and to love and comfort and understand.  Some things we do understand the WHY of.  Still, a persistent old patriarchal voice of an older age still persists in me.    Perhaps it is not my way of thinking, but that I judge that others still do believe that falsehood.  Nonetheless, my door was always open to her ‘next time’ she would come and beg forgiveness.  And, now, that can’t happen.  It all resides in me to understand that concept and get past the nagging thought.  But there is more residual left from her dying young.  I have this overriding fear of losing another of my children, unexpectantly, before me.

Losing a child is a different kind of grief.  Yes, there is the sadness, the anger, the guilt and the despair of losing a mother’s wishes, hopes and dreams for that child, no matter what age the pass at.  We lose their future and our own future with them. And in all that is this deep fear from the moment of their conception, that we will lose them, or another one of them.  I was terrified until I got them over the three-month period that their life was on the line and I was responsible for keeping them alive.  I was even afraid to share them.  I would lug them everywhere I went.  I would get up and listen to them in the night to make sure they were breathing.  I have six other adult children and I am still that kind of worrier, and even more so now I have actually lost one. 

I blogged earlier about not know who I was any more.  Do I say I am the mother of seven, or WAS the mother of seven?  Suddenly the world is not so cut and dried.  I did not control it and my life has been severely altered without my absolute control.  I had no control over her life since she hit puberty.  I had no control over her death.  There is this feeling, if I had been the kind of mother she needed, this could have been avoided.  Stress would not have killed her.   She could have come to her mother and I could have comforted her, could have made sure she knew she was loved and safe.   I am fully aware this makes no sense.  But no sense telling my heart any differently until I get through this.

No matter the adult relationship, a mother is a mother.  I spent a lot of time protecting, enjoying, worrying about her.  I got her when she was elven days old.  She was a very wanted baby.  She was my first baby girl.  I adored her.  She adored me.  We had such fun together.  Even as adults we had such fun together.  I have lost her.  We all know what it feels like to lose a kid in a mall.  Well, I have lost her.  I will feel the thud every time I have to tell people how many children I have/had.  It is a constant up and down of feelings.  It can come on as quickly as a fleeting thought that does not fleet.  The only relief is to acknowledge the feeling and let it feel comforted.  Her life was way more than her death.  I have to keep remembering that.  It is all temporary.  The greatest gift in the last month has been that I have come to see death not as an ending but as a transition.  I knew this.  But I did not know it right to my soul.  “My daughter transitioned!” sounds way so much easier, more lovely, less fearful.

I have been making a point to make memories with my grandchildren, about their parents cute and sweet things. I am working hard to beat the anxiety and, yes, fear, that could overtake me when scary thoughts come.   I expect sorrow and, of course, there will be times of sorrow.  There will be sorrow for the rest of my life and need to remember that is an honor o them and not something negative. My children\s stories are a huge part of my story.  The things I rem,ember, maybe no one else will.  I need to share them.  Transition does not mean we have to forget them, far from it.  I am them and they are me.  She was to me, who she was to me.  No one else has my exact memories.  I have a mother’s memory.  I will even have memories of sharing my memories.  Of course there are the negative ones.  Find peace with those.  I am seeking peace with those.  I am coming to terms with those.  Now, on to the sweet and dear ones.  <au they reign supreme as I make new ones.

 

Miss Polly Had A Dolly

 

 

 

night has a dull ache to it

fog is moving in like a dark cloth

being carefully put over a cage

so as not to disturb a song

 

out     under sullen moon

hiding her knowing behind silver clouds

that a woman’s soul

should always weep in shadows

 

i hide this sorrow

like a precious pearl

my girl     she was

too sacred to share

 

sadness     filtered through guilt

or something like shame

because I was not strong enough

to demand that she love me

 

that she owed me a debt

of not dying before me

her final revenge

for something only she knew

though it cost her more bitterly

than I       searching sky for solace

only a mother could crave

 

I sung her    Miss Polly had a dolly

who was sick sick sick

she knew it off by heart

but I had not grasped     how deeply

 

i sing it      under canopy of sullen sky

embracing air     thick as death

for she was my girl

and this      too sacred to share

 

©Carol Desjarlais 11.25.23

 

I am not the only one who has a child who had an illness.  How hurt she was to hurt others so.  I sacrificed myself to her hate so that she would keep it there rather than be projected onto others.  That did not work either.  She always had to hate someone.  I think she got tired of hiding her truths and I did not exist to her any more.  But I know better.  She knew how it felt to be adored.  She didn’t know that a mother’s love is forever even when it is discarded in dust she molded out of her demons.  This sorrow is a longing for her to have stayed that beautiful brown-eyed girl that loved her mother deeply.  I am now a mother with no place to put that love that was meant just for that one. I would take even her hate to have her back where I could try again with the knowledge I have now.  I am not the only one.  I know many who are struggling with not knowing how to fix a beloved child who cannot love us back.

 

Once, You Needed A Mother

 

 

Well, then, today is your birthday.  I pray heaven is all you think it was.  Maybe you are working on your stuff from this plane.  Maybe you know your truths and mine.  Maybe you know that your mother loves you no matter whether you love her back or not.

How badly I needed pink.   How pink she was.  JanaDee, a pink and squalling bundle, was brought in to the Case Worker’s office.  “You may go in and spend some time with her and make your decision,” she said.  The decision was made the moment I begged my husband to be able to adopt.  She was to be mine and she would wear pink.  It was December 5, 1970 and JanaDee, the name we gave her, was thirteen days old.

 

Like my mother before me, I dressed my baby girl like a dream.  I glued pink ribbons to the tiniest wisps on the top of her head.  I reveled in her, as did her brothers and grandparents.  

 

Her first suffering was when she got her teeth.  She was eleven months old before they came in and they all came in at once.  She was so very sick with high fevers the fevers always came at night and lasted for days.  I was so afraid to lose her to illness that even teething problem became a huge problem to me. 

 

“Miss Polly Had A Dolly” was her favorite baby song.  She learned the actions right away and her voice was pure and sweet.  She talked early and when she talked her voice was so beautiful and full of laughter.  Her beautiful brown eyes sparkled all the time, even when she was angry.   She was so much sugar and spice that a friend from California called her “Pumpkin” and the nickname stuck for a few years.  She was simply adorable and dramatic.

 

JanaDee got burned really badly on the oil heater in the house we were living in Hillspring, while we waited to buy land and build, in Mountain View.  I had just bathed her and she was running about naked while I was changing the sheets on the beds.  She went over to the old fashioned oil heater and had leaned back into it and burned a huge patch of skin off her back.  She was writhing in pain and screaming and I had no idea what to do.  I called my mother, in Cardston and I rushed her in to the hospital.  There they put a dressing on it, but it would leave a bad scar.  I felt so helpless.  I still feel helpless when JanaDee is hurting.

 

When JanaDee got chicken pox, she had sores in her eyes, her ears, and her mouth.  She was so sick and I spent days bathing her and putting calamine lotion on her, before taking her to the doctor who gave her allergy medication that made her sleep.  It was a scary time and she lost so much weight.  I was so very protective of her…but not enough, lord, not enough.

 

She was my mother’s first Granddaughter and my mother loved to buy little girl things.  JanaDee loved my mother back just as fiercely.  Mother would take JanaDee into her house to stay overnight even when JanaDee was little.  Mom really bonded with her.  JanaDee would come back home singing her grandmother’s songs and would tell me the stories Grandma had taught her.  One of JanaDee’s favorite stories was “Little Black Sambo”.  She learned every word of it in one weekend and was so uncommonly dramatic in her retelling of it.

 

JanaDee’s laughter filled our houses.  You could always tell when she was around because you could hear her.  She was chattering, singing, or dancing and such a happy, loved little girl and knew it.  She sung and danced and was so dramatic in everything she did.  I know I spoiled her because ever one of her wishes was made true as much as I could.  I adored her, she was adorable and how could I not?

 

JanaDee did not want to give up her bottle.  Someone told me a great way to get an older child to give up the bottle would be to make them a trade.  I bought a satin blanket, remembering how comforting Bryce found satin.  I had been told that when a bottle got clabbered with milk, to show it to her and then have her throw it out because it was yucky. Every day I would bring out the blanket and it to her, wrapped it around her doll, let her play with her doll for a while and then put the blanket away saying, “When you are ready to give up your bottle, I will trade you.”  I did this for a couple of days until there was one bottle left in the house and then I made her a deal.  We had a big Saint Bernard, Gretchen.  Gretchen had the saddest eyes.  JanaDee loved Gretchen.  One day, I opened the front entrance and said to JanaDee, “Look JanaDee that puppy is so sad, she needs your bottle.  Give Gretchen your bottle.”  No deal.  I tried again the next day and this time, JanaDee felt sorry enough for Gretchen she gave it to her.  I quickly shut the door and praised JanaDee.  “Come; let’s get your new blanket.”  I gave her the blanket and said, “Now run and get your baby and wrap her up.”  While JanaDee went in her bedroom to get the doll, I quickly opened the door, grabbed the bottle and hid it deep in the garbage can that was in the entry with Gretchen.  JanaDee played with the doll and blanket for no more than a few minutes before she wanted her bottle.  

 

Poor Gretchen, she got the blame.  I opened the door and pretended to search and search for that bottle.  JanaDee was frantic in her own search.  “JanaDee, Gretchen was so hungry she ate your bottle.”  JanaDee hated Gretchen from then on, “Gretchen ate my bottle,” she’d wail for days after. Once the bottle was gone, we could also potty train her.  The bottle had been a big problem because she wanted it filled twice a night, regular as clockwork and she woke up soaking wet right through to her sheets.   It was time but it felt like such a mean thing to do.  She loved that bottle, but she did become attached to that pink blanket.  I saved it and gave it to her when she grew up.  

 

When JanaDee was two, our friends had twins.  They sucked their thumbs and everyone made such a fuss over them.  JanaDee saw them sucking hr thumb and in no time, she sucked hers too.  We tried everything we knew to discourage her to no avail.  We bribed her, we cajoled her, and we scolded.  She was simply besotted by that thumb. I took her in to the doctor to see if we could do anything else and what he could suggest.  He suggested a two week stint with a cast on her hand because she only sucked the one thumb.  My, but that little girl out-smarted us all.  Her cast started to smell really badly and get soft.  I finally figured out what she was doing.  She would dip her cast into the toilet, suck her thumb and then put the cast back on.  She was two, mind you.  We let it go for a while but her teeth started to be pushed out in front.   We had to do something.  I went back to the doctor with her and this time he suggested a brace on her front teeth that would not allow her to suck her thumb.  It was done right away and that was the end of the thumb, but JanaDee needed more of something and no amount of rocking and letting her sleep with us until her Dad could not stand it any longer, would help.  She took change poorly.  I should have known what I would be up against.

 

Lost At Sea

 

Some lost love swathed in pink and bundled bold anger screwed up your face shifted you to my shore by mistake, I thought to love you, have you towed into our lives.

 

Some things never settle once there has been an upending some waves go out and never return that which they drug with them though earth moves and perhaps heaven pulls tide, culled with undertow hearts can crack and sink when nothing comes of it.

 

It depends upon, I concede, the rigging and the sail      what barnacles you carry proud as one heart crashes into another

and one must sink to save the other.

 

JanaDee hated it when the boys both went to school.  On Troy’s first morning of kindergarten, Michael was ready to go and excited about taking his little brother.  We had worked on Troy so he would be excited about going, as well.  We really pumped school up.  I walked the boys out to the road to catch the bus to go to Glenwood to school.  Three-year-old JanaDee came rushing out.  She had her Dad’s old cowboy boots on, her doll’s hat, and a lunch bag that I had made for her because she demanded she have one too.  She was determined she was going.  She cried off and on all day no matter what I did to try to keep her amused.  We spent the whole time the boys were gone, visiting, picking flowers up by the church, having a picnic in the backyard, but nothing comforted her.  She wanted the boys home and things to stay the same.

 

Another memory I have that stands out, when JanaDee was little, was when I was teaching reading at Mountain View School.  Her Dad was working in Mountain View and we were taking heading out on a wintry morning.  We were just getting ready to move to Mountain View and we had to get up early in the mornings to make the drive for work.  The sky in the west looked ominous.  I guess we over-emphasized the blizzard that was coming.  I was rushing the kids and saying, “We have to hurry because a blizzard is coming.”  The kid’s Dad wanted to get on the road and he was rushing us, “A blizzard is coming, hurry.”  We bundled the kids up and were headed for the car, JanaDee’s eyes were huge and she did not want to be carried out of the house.  She was squalling as we hurried out.  Once we got them into the vehicle, she looked around, terrified and said, “Where’s the lizard?”  Her imagination was full and she could tell wonderful stories.  Sometimes she believed them.

 

JanaDee was almost seven years old when we got Lainee, in 1977.  JanaDee had been ‘the baby’ for all those years.  It had to be hard on her, this change.  The kids were all in school so I tried to do the most with Lainee when they were.  Michael, as I said, bonded with Lainee and after school he would play with her and I would give JanaDee attention.  We baked cookies.  We made cut out dolls.  I read books on how to help older children deal with a new baby in the house.  I tried everything in the book and it did seem we were getting somewhere.  Oh, somewhere, where did you go?

 

I had my brain bleed when JanaDee was just twelve.  She, being the oldest girl had much more responsibility.  She hated it.  She resented the babies.  There were more changes than she could handle.  She turned her angst towards me.

 

I do not understand how things got so bad, but when I divorced her Dad, JanaDee went, of course, to Grandma Woolf for comfort.  JanaDee was twelve and mom told me she had said, “Grandma, what happens to me if mom and dad get divorced, where do I go?”  JanaDee was emotionally wrought and the divorce was the worst thing and at the worst time in her life.  

 

It would take many years to begin to build a bridge between us.  She stayed with her Dad as did Troy, when I moved to Lethbridge with the little kids.  The horror of the divorce took a great toll on JanaDee.  Lawyers got involved and made everything worse than it was.  Anyone who has been through a divorce knows that it is cut-throat and lawyers do not have anything other than money to be paid and it doesn’t matter how much destruction they do to anyone… even the children of that divorce.  They will say and do anything against even their client’s wishes to win the court fight.  It happened in our case and we are all to blame for how it affected the kids.  Things were skewed to the lawyer’s liking.    It was a nightmare and JanaDee, as emotional as she always was, took the brunt of it.  Others got involved and worked on the angst and confusion JanaDee felt.    I know it, they know it, and one day she will know it.  

 

It would be years before JanaDee finally moved to Pincher Creek after her graduation from Grade Twelve, to live with me.  She was rebelling against her father.  She lived with us for a while then and we did begin to mend some of the fracture.  She had her tonsils out and was very sick.  Fevers were always hard on JanaDee.  She lost a great deal of weight and it really affected her emotionally.  Her father was against a boyfriend she had.  She was against who I was with living with, and rightly so.  She decided to move on and get her own place.  God, it was all so very complex.

 

A few years later I moved to Calgary and eventually we lived in the same apartment block.  JanaDee was expecting a baby and I moved in the same apartment block with the kids thinking we could help her.  Her heart was broken and I wanted nothing more than to be there for her.  Those were such good days and months.  Brandon was born and I babysat while she worked.  The kids bonded with Brandon and it felt like family again.  We were close for two years and Brandon was at our house every day.  JanaDee met a man and began living with him, but lived nearby.  JanaDee came with Brandon after we had not seen him for a few days.  She was weeping.  He had bruises. It would be years before I saw Brandon again.  

 

At the same time, I was going through family violence myself.  I, and the kids, were in hiding and the police had finally said I had to go into deeper hiding.  They hid me in a Transitional House for battered women and children that was a secure building.  I put everything we owned into storage until we could be safe.  We were told we would have to stay for six months or until my abusive partner was out of the area.  The next thing I knew, all of our belongings, every stick of furniture, my cedar chest with all the kids precious things I had saved; my memorabilia; my grandfather’s bolo, my father’s tie, my grandmothers darning spindle, my mother’s wedding dress, letters, papers, important documents, every picture I owned; the shoe I wore when I was brought down on the train to be adopted, my adoption papers, divorce papers; birth certificates; things you can never replace; everything was gone.  I was beyond devastated at losing everything that represented important things in my life were gone.  The relationship was gone.  I knew why but I felt powerless to do anything about it.  

 

Polly and The Pressure Cooker

 

The kettle on the stove has boiled dry. Did you get lost in the hot brew and forget to turn it off?

I have taken this heat long enough.  I am dry. Did I forget to teach you how to fall safely from a cuckoo’s nest? Did you think steaming whistles were stories to build your fire upon?

Minerals have built up on this tired old pot. I lied that you lied and I have run out of steam to unseal the letters

I wished I’d written and sent.  Daughter, turn the heat off, we will both burn our hands on this bad belief until there are no prints left to recognize.

 

There was great love for my first baby girl.  When I was ill she was help beyond measure.  Out of necessity, she learned to keep the house, cook, take care of the babies, and help keep the family together.  I am sure she is a magnificent housekeeper and good housewife because it was something she had to help with when she was young. 

 

Once she needed a mother.  Once I needed a baby girl.