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POW! Super Mom!
Aug. 18th, 2005 01:05 pmAnd if you recognize the quote in the title, you've watched Shaun of the Dead far too many times, possibly too many times to admit to in polite social circles! So why am I using it now? There are two reasons: I've been watching movies nonstop in an attempt to try to occupy my mind, take it off of the events that have occured over the past year and because it's a movie that I love that my mom never got a chance to see. It was one year ago last night that my mom passed away quite unexpectedly and suddenly in her sleep.
I was extremely close with my mother; we had both found ourselves in situations we didn't want to be in and turned to each other for comfort, for fun, for a friend. I had been sitting with her, watching the Olympics (which was no small measure of pride for her as she was born and grew up in Athens; she was excited to finally see the games make their way there!), she had felt sick all day and it was the first I had seen her since I had gotten up that morning. Here's what I don't tell many people because, though I know it's not rational, I still fester with guilt over it: my mom had the habit of faking illness to hide her depression. She would stay in bed all day and claim to have something wrong with her stomach or sinuses, both which she had real problems with but not to the degree that she would pretend. I thought she was pretending that day. I got angry and told my sister that I wished both of my parents would just f***ing die. I've never, ever wanted to take back anything I've ever said as much as that. I know it wouldn't make a difference in the grand scheme of things but it would to me.
She said she had a stomach ailment, she was dizzy. Coincidentally, this is the same thing that kept my father from going to the hospital for four days while he was having a massive heart attack. It wasn't a heart attack that claimed my mother but what they believe to be a brain anyeursm, which couldn't have been helped even if she had gone into the hospital the moment she felt it. She passed away apporximately 15 minutes after I had said goodnight and left her room. My father, who had dozed off, had awoken about an hour later and told us all afterwards that he had known instantly something was worng. I'll remember what came next for the rest of my life, hear it in my mind again and again: my insomnia had me sitting on the toilet at about a quarter after midnight, reading one of the Star Wars Infinities movie graphic novels (I remember this detail because I had just gotten them that day and sold them without ever finishing them the next day because of what they represented to me) when I heard my father.
"Oh God! I can't wake her! She isn't waking up!"
Again, I thought my dad was overreacting; it wouldn't have been the first time. I rushed to get up as he banged on the door that leads to my side of the house. When I walked into their bedroom, I knew it was already to late. Touching her, seeing her; she just WASN'T THERE anymore. My dad called 911 and sat in the den crying as both me and my sister tried to wake her in vain. I even administered CPR as per the instructions of the 911 operator. When the ambulence arrived, they took one look at her and, like us, knew it was too late. The Body had always been one of my favorite episodes from one of my favorite shows, Buffy The Vampire Slayer; I can no longer watch it as the first third of it is so realistic and so close to what I experienced, down to the way the 911 operator was talking to me.
I was calm, eerily so. I wrote to my close friends and called my brother because neither my sister nor my father were in any shape to do so themselves. My crisis calm, so to speak, had kicked in; the grieving would come later.
I hadn't been close to my mother in my youth; as a matter of fact, she had always been a source of antagonism and not just the normal mother/teenage daughter kind. My (at the time) abusive alcoholic dad was often the catalyst for our fights, as well as my mental illness which both my parents had just refused to deal with for years. She often promised to take my side only to buckle under the "authority" of my school or doctors; she sometimes pretended to be on my side to gain my trust, only to betray it completely. I'm telling you all of this so that you understand: my mom was not perfect, I do not hold her up to being so.
It was about five years ago that we really started becoming close. When it looked like I would pretty much become a shut-in and my mother was used to dealing with my sometimes paralyzing panic attacks and mood swings, we became thick as thieves. She knew how to hold me to calm me down, knew when I was not eating and would insist, she saw me through a nervous breakdown. We joked about things my friends had said or done online and she became just as a strong a presence in those friendships than if she were directly involved.
I loved her laugh, though she had less and less reason to do so as the years wore on. We had always believed that she would outlive my father and would be happy after his passing, living with me. She never got that chance. Rather, her difficulties with my increasingly senile father led her to smoke more heavily, drink more cups of coffee a day to "calm her nerves" despite desperate warnings from our physician. Later, I would talk to my doctor and she would admit to being angry with my mom; she felt she was doing so much as comitting suicide to get away from her troubles by ignoring the warnings of her massively high blood pressure.
My mom never got to see the Retrun of the King: EE or The Village or, the most heartbreaking of all as the Star Wars prequels were something we shared and one of the reasons we became so close, the final installment in the new trilogy. These things remind me of her and I always still and probably always will have the urge to run to find her, to share these things with her. It seems like small things compared to the wider world, but they were our things and they made both of us happy when we could not find happiness elsewhere. I missed her 60th birthday, I was looking forward to the next big milestone which never happened. I really regret that.
Last night, I lay awake and had the bad luck of seeing two ambulences pass the street outside my window; not an everyday occurence and a painful reminder of that night. Not that I could ever forget. Sitting on the can, I kept hearing my dad's words play again and again in my mind. Neither me nor my sister got much sleep last night.
I love you, mom.
Vasileke "Bess" George LeZotte
Oct. 12 1942- Aug. 18 2004
If you were here
I know that you would
Truly be amazed
At what's become of what you made
If you were here
You would know how I treasured every day
How every single word you spoke
Echos in me like a memory of hope
When you were here
You could not feel the value that I placed
On every look that crossed your face
When you were here
I did not know just how I had embraced
All that you hid behind your face
Could not hide from me
'Cause it hid in me too
-lyrics by Poe
Peace, Ghani
I was extremely close with my mother; we had both found ourselves in situations we didn't want to be in and turned to each other for comfort, for fun, for a friend. I had been sitting with her, watching the Olympics (which was no small measure of pride for her as she was born and grew up in Athens; she was excited to finally see the games make their way there!), she had felt sick all day and it was the first I had seen her since I had gotten up that morning. Here's what I don't tell many people because, though I know it's not rational, I still fester with guilt over it: my mom had the habit of faking illness to hide her depression. She would stay in bed all day and claim to have something wrong with her stomach or sinuses, both which she had real problems with but not to the degree that she would pretend. I thought she was pretending that day. I got angry and told my sister that I wished both of my parents would just f***ing die. I've never, ever wanted to take back anything I've ever said as much as that. I know it wouldn't make a difference in the grand scheme of things but it would to me.
She said she had a stomach ailment, she was dizzy. Coincidentally, this is the same thing that kept my father from going to the hospital for four days while he was having a massive heart attack. It wasn't a heart attack that claimed my mother but what they believe to be a brain anyeursm, which couldn't have been helped even if she had gone into the hospital the moment she felt it. She passed away apporximately 15 minutes after I had said goodnight and left her room. My father, who had dozed off, had awoken about an hour later and told us all afterwards that he had known instantly something was worng. I'll remember what came next for the rest of my life, hear it in my mind again and again: my insomnia had me sitting on the toilet at about a quarter after midnight, reading one of the Star Wars Infinities movie graphic novels (I remember this detail because I had just gotten them that day and sold them without ever finishing them the next day because of what they represented to me) when I heard my father.
"Oh God! I can't wake her! She isn't waking up!"
Again, I thought my dad was overreacting; it wouldn't have been the first time. I rushed to get up as he banged on the door that leads to my side of the house. When I walked into their bedroom, I knew it was already to late. Touching her, seeing her; she just WASN'T THERE anymore. My dad called 911 and sat in the den crying as both me and my sister tried to wake her in vain. I even administered CPR as per the instructions of the 911 operator. When the ambulence arrived, they took one look at her and, like us, knew it was too late. The Body had always been one of my favorite episodes from one of my favorite shows, Buffy The Vampire Slayer; I can no longer watch it as the first third of it is so realistic and so close to what I experienced, down to the way the 911 operator was talking to me.
I was calm, eerily so. I wrote to my close friends and called my brother because neither my sister nor my father were in any shape to do so themselves. My crisis calm, so to speak, had kicked in; the grieving would come later.
I hadn't been close to my mother in my youth; as a matter of fact, she had always been a source of antagonism and not just the normal mother/teenage daughter kind. My (at the time) abusive alcoholic dad was often the catalyst for our fights, as well as my mental illness which both my parents had just refused to deal with for years. She often promised to take my side only to buckle under the "authority" of my school or doctors; she sometimes pretended to be on my side to gain my trust, only to betray it completely. I'm telling you all of this so that you understand: my mom was not perfect, I do not hold her up to being so.
It was about five years ago that we really started becoming close. When it looked like I would pretty much become a shut-in and my mother was used to dealing with my sometimes paralyzing panic attacks and mood swings, we became thick as thieves. She knew how to hold me to calm me down, knew when I was not eating and would insist, she saw me through a nervous breakdown. We joked about things my friends had said or done online and she became just as a strong a presence in those friendships than if she were directly involved.
I loved her laugh, though she had less and less reason to do so as the years wore on. We had always believed that she would outlive my father and would be happy after his passing, living with me. She never got that chance. Rather, her difficulties with my increasingly senile father led her to smoke more heavily, drink more cups of coffee a day to "calm her nerves" despite desperate warnings from our physician. Later, I would talk to my doctor and she would admit to being angry with my mom; she felt she was doing so much as comitting suicide to get away from her troubles by ignoring the warnings of her massively high blood pressure.
My mom never got to see the Retrun of the King: EE or The Village or, the most heartbreaking of all as the Star Wars prequels were something we shared and one of the reasons we became so close, the final installment in the new trilogy. These things remind me of her and I always still and probably always will have the urge to run to find her, to share these things with her. It seems like small things compared to the wider world, but they were our things and they made both of us happy when we could not find happiness elsewhere. I missed her 60th birthday, I was looking forward to the next big milestone which never happened. I really regret that.
Last night, I lay awake and had the bad luck of seeing two ambulences pass the street outside my window; not an everyday occurence and a painful reminder of that night. Not that I could ever forget. Sitting on the can, I kept hearing my dad's words play again and again in my mind. Neither me nor my sister got much sleep last night.
I love you, mom.
Vasileke "Bess" George LeZotte
Oct. 12 1942- Aug. 18 2004
If you were here
I know that you would
Truly be amazed
At what's become of what you made
If you were here
You would know how I treasured every day
How every single word you spoke
Echos in me like a memory of hope
When you were here
You could not feel the value that I placed
On every look that crossed your face
When you were here
I did not know just how I had embraced
All that you hid behind your face
Could not hide from me
'Cause it hid in me too
-lyrics by Poe
Peace, Ghani
