A Day to Listen to the Velvet Underground
25 Years Seems Like Yesterday. I Love You Mom.
Saturday marked the end of my first twenty five years without a mom. That is an awkward sentence, but it best captures my sentiments. Twenty…five…years. A silver anniversary.
I am not an orphan, I still have a father. Yet a part of me is still very much missing, a large part. October 7th, 1998...10,7,98...those numbers loom large and ominous in my heart and it is only recently that I am no longer completely overwhelmed by them.
My wife and I have intimate conversations often, it is one of the joys of marriage, and during one of the times she and I were discussing the death of her grandmother. My wife explained her feelings this way, "When someone dies, the world feels a little less complete. Bird songs aren't as joyful, and sunrises are slightly less beautiful." Displaying, as she often does, her magnificent talent for unedited, awkward, and spontaneous verbal poetry. She was also correct. C.S. Lewis opens his book A Grief Observed with another observation about death:
No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.
I still feel this way. Not everyday...Saturday, yesterday, today. During yesterday’s test review session for the political science class I’m teaching this Semester, I opened up the last 30 minutes for an AMA. I do this two or three times a semester to build rapport with students. They will be asking me for letters of recommendation in the future and I like to take moments on “down days” to build a mentoring relationship with them if I can and I’ve found AMAs are a good way to do it.
The first question of the AMA was, from a student who was looking for a way to break the ice, was “How are you doing?” I said I was doing okay and then talked for a couple of minutes about how Saturday had marked the 25th anniversary of my mom’s death, a death that occurred when I was an undergrad like them. They saw that I was sad, but that the death was now a part of me that shaped but didn’t overwhelm me.
Historically there had been two things that were still difficult for me to do years after my mom died.
The first was that I often had a hard time remembering truly happy moments with her...on command. Happy moments enter my consciousness at random moments and seldom on the anniversary of her death. Glimpses of her nymph-like smile...brief auditory illusions of her laughter enter my mind. But the majority of my memories are neither happy nor sad, they are the memories of everyday activities, evening dinners and the question which ever looms over the head of a teenager, "Have you finished your homework?"
Now, when I think of my mom the moments that most come to mind revolve around her sense of humor. For example, though I watched many movies with my mom, none as awkward as the time we watched The Hunger. I thing it was a Friday night, around this time of year, but I could be adding to the memory. I do remember that it was just the two of us and an erotic vampire film. I remember feeling both uncomfortable being aroused by the film, in my mom's presence, while at the same time finding the situation hilarious. I mean, what mom picks a highly erotic vampire film to watch with their kid? Okay, she probably picked it because it has David Bowie in it and he was one of my favorite musicians (those of us with January 8th birthdays have to stick together). Still, it was odd to be sitting there watching it with her and comedic troll that she was, she waited until a very specific moment in the film to ask me from where she was sitting on the other side of the room, “You like that?” Not in a judgmental way, rather in a “Ha! I caught my fairly straight edge son in an awkward moment” way. Makes me laugh every time.
Speaking of her being a troll, there are two other moments that really stand out. One is from when I was very young, maybe middle school, and I came home to see my mom eating some scooped white substance from a bowl. I asked her what she was eating and she said, “A new vanilla ice cream…want to try it?” Naturally, I did. She told me to close my eyes and open my mouth and then she gave me a bite. It was cottage cheese and it was a horrible shock when I was expecting vanilla ice cream.
Then there was my senior year of high school. My girlfriend dumped me the Saturday before the prom. It might have been two Saturdays before the prom, but I don’t think so and it was short notice regardless. I spent all that day, and most of the next, curled up in my room weeping and listening to goth and emo music. When I came out Sunday evening, my dad was super sympathetic, but my mom was ever the prankster.
She asked, straight face and all, “You know that while you were dating (name redacted) and I became close friends, right?”
Yeah, I knew and thought it was neat before Saturday.
“So,” she continued, “would it be inappropriate if we were still friends and if I chatted and had coffee with her from time to time?”
I was stunned and responded with the annoyed voice that only seems to exist for teenagers, “Yes. Yes it would be inappropriate MOM.” She laughed. I still don’t know if she was just trolling me or if she was serious. Whatever the case, it washed away almost all of my self pity because after being annoyed for about fifteen minutes, I couldn’t stop giggling inside when I thought about just how inappropriate this question was. I mean, I was heart fucking broken and here she is asking if she can hang with the person who broke my heart. She was my mom?! She’s supposed to be on my side? She was kidding right?
These moments just come to mind when I think of her. I used to not be able to remember them on demand, but more and more I can. I do wish I could remember more of them though. In all honesty, I remember my mom as a happy person, a person who added joy to the world. Every time I watch a romantic comedy starring Meg Ryan, the character Meg portrays echoes how I remember my mom. Which is why I have my other difficulty.
I can't understand my mom's addiction, and eventual death due to how it ravaged her body, to heroin. I try, by reading/watching/listening to and about other addicts. I know the narrative of my mom's addictive cycle, I can see each step of her hopeless journey. That's not what I can't understand. I know the things that led to her addiction. What I can't understand is the overwhelming power of it, how addiction stole my mom from me...day by day. Oddly, some really shallow things help. They are a poor substitute for true knowledge, and seem trite when I think hard on them, but they help. These things include the music of the Velvet Underground (in particular, you guessed it, Heroin) and Iggy Pop, the films Permanent Midnight (which I saw just after her death) and Trainspotting (though not the sequel), television shows like Breaking Bad, the book and film versions of Razor's Edge, and the writings of C.S. Lewis among other things.
I am the only member of my immediate family I know of who attends church regularly. I was raised secularly. Strange as it sounds my mom found comfort in, though she was baffled by, my faith. She once asked if I believed, expecting me (the first college student in my family) to laugh at the absurdity of the question. I told her I did and her response lingers with me to this day, "Really?" Her eyes looked at me...proud, confused, unbelieving, yet hopeful. I never was able to tell her that hope was what faith was all about ("Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen" Hebrews 11:1). It isn't about "knowledge," little of life is about actual knowledge. This is why Socrates asked us to know ourselves, that is a difficult enough task. Let alone the ability to acquire actual knowledge of something else.
I was notified of my mom's death by answering machine. I was in classes all day and since it was the 90s I didn't have a cell phone. A series of messages of an ever-worsening condition. Seizures...followed by emergency medical action, my wife and I later read the medical records to piece together a timeline, to see if there was an heroic effort to save my mom. There was. It is not the best way to be notified of death, answering machine, I think it is the worst. I also wish that my mom had been buried not cremated, I would have liked to have had the chance to speak, to say my own words. Having been to the funerals of friends taken too soon, there is comfort and closure to be found in them. There is also the knowledge that you can go to a quiet place to reflect and honor the memory of your loved one. When I used to drive by Mount Sinai Memorial Park across the freeway from Disney Studios, I can remember my dear friend Cathy and shout "Twins Cathy!" It is different when you have a portion of someone's ashes. You are constantly looking for ways to honor the dead, like by leaving ashes at random places you visit so that your mom is also visiting them, but there is also the desire to keep some to keep the memories close.
This blog post is my annual eulogy, but I'd also like to share the two poems I think best capture the way I feel. One is gender confused (for my situation not its own) and the other is written from an older generation to a younger one, but they will have to do. In addition I would like to add a part of Philip K. Dick's author's note from A Scanner Darkly.
The first poem is by W.H. Auden. Like many, I first heard the poem when I watched Four Weddings and a Funeral. It’s a lovely movie, and that is in large part due to the power of this particular scene.
The poem, which is available in its entirety at the Poetry Foundation, begins as follows:
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.The second poem is on of my favorite poems. It resonated with me before I had learned of loss. I read it in a class I took on the Romantics as an undergraduate, a year before my mom died. It’s by William Wordsworth whom I connect with more than any other Romantic poet. While Coleridge and Blake capture my imagination, Wordsworth captures my heart. When I was an angst ridden teen Shelley’s Ozymandias was my anthem, but from the first time I read Surprised by Joy I finally knew how powerful the medium of poetry could really be.
SURPRISED by joy--impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport--Oh! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind--
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss?--That thought's return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.Wordsworth wrote Surprised by Joy (C.S. Lewis titled one of his autobiographies after this poem), for his daughter Catherine who had died at the age of four. This poem masterfully captures the grief I feel over the loss of my mom. Every time I have wonderful event in my life, I want to call her and share the news. That can never happen and it brings the event of her death immediately to mind and my sorrow and feeling of loss are renewed. Every time...without fail. My mom missed my graduation, my wife's master's, my acceptance to graduate school, my wife completing her MFA in film at USC. She was not there to see her twin grandchildren born, and she will not experience any of the joy that the twins will bring into the world. The twins are a blessing in so many ways, but there is one particular way that amazes me. I get to see my mom in them every day. They are the Joy in my own personal Surprised by Joy. One of them will often do something that reminds me of my mom and I’ll want to share it with her, but have to settle for reminiscence.
As I stated before, I have continually looked to fiction and biographical narrative to understand my mom's addiction and that is why I am including the following by Philip K. Dick. I think it captures a lot of how I feel about my mom’s addiction. Unlike Dick, I do think addiction is a disease, but like him I think it is a decision too.
This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did. They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one another of them being killed --run over, maimed, destroyed -- but they continued to play anyhow...
Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgement. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a life-style. In this particular life-style the motto is "Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying," but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory..."Take the cash and let the credit go," as Villon said in 1460. But that is a mistake if the cash is a penny and the credit is a whole lifetime...
If there was any "sin" t was that these people wanted to keep on having a good time forever, and were punished for that, but, as I say, I feel that, if so, the punishment was far to great...
When my mom first told me of her addiction to heroin she expected me to be angry. A lot of my family was, I think the thought of my mother using heroin was too alien to them to even imagine. I think they viewed her use as somehow a failure on their part. I didn't, I only wanted to know if she was okay. By which I meant was she okay at the time she told me. My mom thought that heroin could make life more pleasant, for her it wasn't a selfish desire for more fun than anyone else was having, because she felt empty and sad on a regular basis. Heroin made her feel happy, or at least made her forget her sadness for a moment. I made her feel like she could endure life. But in making her think she could endure life, heroin took life from her.
I don't "forgive" my mom for dying, I have never thought there was anything to forgive. I miss my mom and wish she were here. I love her and knowing that makes the missing part not so bad, because (as C.S. Lewis said long before WandaVision) “The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal.”
Beautifully written 💜 She did stay friends with your ex. I know because that ex pierced my belly button when I was 14. Mom watched 🤣