Trusting in Multiplication

I am at that point – financially and personally – where I have to trust that multiplication is true.

I am believing that life lived on a budget can be richer and more satisfying than life lived with a regular and exceedingly ample pay check.

I am figuring that I might even lose a few pounds if I eat out less than I used to and reacquaint myself with my collection of pots and pans.

I am finding that interacting with a wide variety of people in a series of jobs is infinitely more satisfying than talking to the same people everyday over a cubicle wall.

I am discovering the wealth that is resale shops and consignment stores.  And I am finding that they are very crowded these days.

Don’t get me wrong:  there are things I miss about having plenty of money – things like having a Starbucks latte everyday, or not thinking twice about buying theater tickets, or having my hair professionally colored.   And I miss that I am not paying for college, or a wedding or grandmotherly things.

I never wanted money just to have it.  I want to live with less.  I know that my life will be richer as a result.  But I am stepping out here with a bit of faith that Effort multiplied by Passion =  Life.

Sadness, Depression and Loss

I am in a foot race with depression this week – and most of the time,  depression is winning.

Part of it is this Easter holiday.  It is full of wonderful stories of rebirth and everlasting life and all of that, but I will be spending it alone.  No Molly because she is dead.  No Frances because she is working.  Yes, I will attend a church service – but I will be alone in the crowd there as well.  Family not available; friends otherwise engaged.  Alone.

Part of it is spring break.  Without the daily routine of substitute teaching, DESPITE the fact that I have plenty to do, alien voices emerge: the voices that suggest that I was a terrible mother to Molly; the voices that question whether any of my current endeavors are worthwhile; the voices testifying that no body likes me.

And part of it is the weather which is bleak and has been bleak seemingly forever.

I took pains to avoid this – scheduling lunches with friends, attending school lectures, generally keeping myself busy during this break.  But in the pause, in the  cracks of time that I could not fill and the slivers of energy that were not spoken for, the sadness and the loss rage behind me – and then catch up to me -  with ferocious force. 

Sadly, I think this is normal – perhaps even necessary for now.

Next weekend, the house will be full of guests and frivolity and fun to watch William and Kate’s wedding.  I will look forward to that.

The Answers

One of my blog posts, The Questions,  gets a lot of traffic.  It’s about the questions that I live with as a result of the death of my daughter; I wrote it on February 18th if you are inclined to look it up.

Yes.  As the mother of a teenaged girl who died by suicide, I am definitely living with questions.

But I am living with some answers too.   Like, “I can handle the worst that life will send to me.”  Before Molly’s death, I would have thought that losing her would be the end of me, and in some ways I guess it was.   I am not the same person I was before Molly died. But I am here.  And I am living.   And I am moving on because I have to.  Life cannot hand me anything that will defeat me.

I also know that my friends and family are there for me.  No need to question that one for a second.   People are good.   We have been loved beyond our wildest imaginings through these last two years; we treasure that gift and seek to reciprocate it as well.

I am not alone.   Living through the death of a child – even the suicide of a child – does not put me in an exclusive club.  There are many of us – lots of good people -  who are living this experience.   I am grateful to every single person who has reached out to me with their story of pain and loss; every story has strengthened me.

God is real.  I don’t have a creed to pull out or a testimony to share.  I know that religion causes lots of problems.  But Molly’s death has brought me face to face with all of the uncertainties that exist beyond the very breath that we are taking at this moment. 

And having stared those uncertainties down I am left with a confidence that life is greater than what we can know, that death does not separate us – ever -  and that God lives within our attempts to love each other.

I know. I know.  It sounds like a Barney song or something.   But it’s enough for me. 

Paris

I am going to Paris as part of my graduate program.  Have I mentioned that yet?   It’s a ten day trip this summer and I am really looking forward to it.

The only problem with this whole experience is that I am old.   Looking at my fellow students,  I am old enough to be the mother of virtually every single one of them. 

We had our first “meeting” today – mostly to fill out paperwork absolving the school of all responsibility in the event that this adventure includes our death or other unforeseen catastrophe.  During a break in the paper signing,  the professor valiantly asked what we were most looking forward to.   “Eating” said one fellow traveller.  “Shopping” said another.

I am jealous of these younger students. This trip is simply fun and exciting for them at a point in their life when fun and excitement is exactly what they should be looking forward to. 

Do I even tell them?  Do I talk about the fact my daughter would be their age if she had lived?  And that this trip, for me, is part of my journey to figure out who I am without her? 

Do I mention that Frances and I have been together for 27 years and that I have never taken a trip without a family member?   Would it encourage this younger group to know that as independent as I may seem to them, they are in many ways more independent than I?

Do I  share with them that the primary reason I am taking this trip is that I have something to prove to myself about life after death?

Or should I just come up with a cute response about what I am most looking forward to?  Something like “the wine will be good and the sights oh so memorable.”

Finding a Knife

Ever have new flooring put in?  It is one of those things that no one looks forward to, but generally results in a happy outcome.   We put new floors in two rooms last week – one was my office.  And one was Molly’s bedroom.

After Molly’s death, I never had a huge need to clean out her room, but Frances did.  So, Frances cleaned out a lot of Molly’s things; but many of Molly’s treasured belongings are still in her room closet waiting for the day when Frances and I are both strong enough at the same time to go through them.   I have put some art supplies in her room now and we half jokingly call the room my studio, but an easel doesn’t really change anything.   That room will always be Molly’s room to us.

To clear out the space for the new floors, we had to take everything out of the closet.   There were doll clothes my mother made for Molly, a sleeping bag that Molly received one year for Christmas, left over school supplies, old clothes, a field hockey stick.

And there was a briefcase.  Frances used it back when she was a manager in retail, but she had given it to Molly. I opened it, thinking that it it was in good enough shape, maybe we should give it away.

I noticed the dollar bill first.   And the knife second.

After Molly was released from the hospital I insisted on talking to a doctor – which was not part of the typical protocol for releasing an adolescent to her family. UNBELIEVABLE.  We had more access to her dentist than her psychiatrists.

Anyway, I asked the doctor point blank.  Should we lock our knives up?  And he said, unequivocally, “No.  Everything should be normal.”  It was what I wanted to hear.  And I was happy to comply.  But it was bad advice.

Molly had been cutting herself, and she obviously had secured a knife from our kitchen and was hiding it.  Looking at the knife in that briefcase put me right back in those moments when Molly was alive and I would get hints that something was very wrong.  I would read a text or sense something in her voice or find a journal entry.  And I would be terrified until she seemed fine again or a doctor told me not to worry.

There are pieces of my daughter that I will never know.  The happy child that laughs with me from the photo on my desk – the capable teenager she let me see – were real.  But there was another girl as well who was troubled and lonely and unreachable. 

Our house is full of memories of the happy Molly.  But Molly would tell me, I am sure, that her reality was not the world of happiness and confidence that we attempted to build with her; she was consumed by whatever inner turmoil she struggled against. 

We’ve got Molly’s bedroom all spruced up now.  It looks nice.  But it is somehow fitting that I found the knife that she had stashed away in the closet.  It is tempting to build a legacy for Molly that is all lightness and talent and beauty.  But that is only part of the story.

Retiring the Computer

When Molly started high school, she was required to have her own laptop.     It was an exciting proposition – a requirement that you are happy to follow.  For her, I think it symbolized freedom and emerging independence.  For me, it heralded how different her life was going to be from mine, and how much she had to look forward to.  

In my day, we were excited about boxes of 64 Crayolas with the sharpener on the back.   The laptop offered Molly similar excitement and a lot more promise.

After Molly died, there was the question of her laptop.   As she left several handwritten journals, I did not sense that we would find any notes to us in the computer files.  And we have not found any.   But I also knew that a computer guru could probably learn from the computer…  her internet searches, downloaded files, emails sent and received.

I have hesitantly looked through the word files, but other than that I chose not to look for clues.
 

Instead, I decided to use the computer.  It has seen me through half of grad school, introduced me to Facebook, seen me through my first attempts with Skpe.  That computer has been a tangible tie to Molly while keeping me very much in this world.

And now I am retiring that laptop.  Frances gave me a new laptop for my birthday, and we both cried as I opened it.   A huge piece of me wants to hold on to Molly’s computer; like any treasured object, I loved using it everyday knowing that she had loved it and used it. 

And yet, knowing that choosing to live is often accomplished in very small – and seemingly inconsequential -  steps, I was excited about the gift.

I love this new laptop.  It is the first computer that is really and truly mine.  I am having fun with the wallpapers and the desktop gadgets and the fancy features.   But everyday as I turn it on, I am reminded that I am moving beyond the limits of Molly’s experience.

The reverse of that is, of course, that Molly has moved beyond the limits of my experience.  Computers are not important to her any more.  In that way, my challenges are not that different from those faced by any parent.   Children do move on.

I do not honor her by clinging to her life – I celebrate her by living my own.

The Closing of the Pub

The local pub closed this week. 

We were regulars.   Nobody would recommend this, but we  relied on the place, the people - and yes, the alcohol to some extent - as we became increasingly involved with Molly's doctors, therapist, medicines and hospital visits.   It was completely incomprehensible that our our smart, talented, beautiful daughter who had never had a bad grade in her life could be spiraling into a mental illness with the potential to kill her.  The pub, at least, we understood.

It fancied itself to be an Irish bar, but I've been to Ireland and this was definitely an American bar.   Sports on the big screen TV.  Plenty of room for the pool table and the darts board.  Codeword BIG - big servings of fish and chips, big drinks, big space.  But within that BIG was an intimacy that you could tap into, and once you did, the place became home.  Your drink would be poured before you even sat down.

It's the place we retreated to after hospital visits and associated (required) family therapy. 

I was not then and am not now a big fan of therapy, so I am not an ideal participant in required sessions.  But I tried.    One hospital session brought together me, Frances, Molly, Molly's therapist and a hospital social worker who never saw Molly before or after that session.  Molly was nervous.  Frances and I were too.   Frances and I did not want this to be true; I guess Molly knew it was.  The hospital social worker's standard of success seemed to be that we all weren't throwing chairs at each other - with that as a criteria, she deemed our session a great success.  Molly's therapist, and I am guessing here, sensed the futility in the session and - ultimately - the hospitalization. 

My approach was to be as cooperative as possible so that we could "pass" hospitalization and move on with our life.  Surely this was all one massive mistake.  Molly was a very high performing patient.  She had no police background or past use of illegal substances.  She was a good student; she had never been in trouble for anything. She was respectful and well loved.  This couldn't be happening.

Perhaps because we really didn't fit the mold, the hospital social worker (was her name Betty Boop?)  was willing to follow my lead.  While there was talk of "partial" hospitalization as follow up care, it was quickly discarded as an option since Molly attended a local private boarding school.  There were no other options.  Take your daughter home and love each other.  Worked for me.  Let's get out of here.

Molly stayed a few more days, because that is how things are done,  and Frances and I headed to the pub.  The bar was almost big enough to hold our total bewilderment.  Confusion.  Pain.  Shock.

Every chapter of our life has a page lived out at the pub.  I cried at the back booth in the week before Molly's funeral when my sister was trying to bring me back to some semblance of living.  We've comforted Molly's friends over dinner and accepted condolences as the word of Molly's death spread.  And we have celebrated too - Frances had her 50th birthday party around the pool table.

The pub has been an extension of our living room.  A really important extension.  And we will miss it.