A Nun Walks into a Bar...

“You can write about this. Just make it funny.”

That's what you told me just a year ago when you called us all together to give us the news. To tell us you had pancreatic cancer. (http://sandwichmomonwry.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-one-where-we-promised-to-laugh.html)

You said you only wanted to have to tell us once. But I think you knew we all needed to be together, to lean on each other, to pass around the tissues, to remember the fun times (we're all right behind you), to prepare for the future.

To prepare for today.

But we weren't.

We aren't.

“Just make it funny.”

I couldn't do it then, and I don't think I can do it now. And since you can't be here, I'm gonna write whatever I want.

Like you knew I would do anyway.

Damn it.

Today I cried at Panera. I didn't make a scene. Just some sniffling and blotchiness. Just enough to make the servers nervous. They finally stopped looking at me funny every time I went in to Papa Murphy's – where I cried after you first told us the news -- and now this. 

I'm not sure what that says about me... or you... or fast food. But the absurdity does kinda make me laugh.

I think it probably made you laugh this morning, watching me cry in my coffee.

They serve coffee at Panera, Brenda! Coffee! Do you know how much I love coffee?

I can see you with your head thrown back, blue eyes sparkling, and those dimples!

Earlier this morning I was thinking about how, when we lose someone we love, we cry for us... not for the one we lost. We cry to make ourselves feel better. Not because it will make the ones we miss feel better.

Was that you nudging me, reminding me? Preparing me for the call?

I know you are OK now. I know you don't hurt now. I know you're not sick anymore.

I know you're OK now.

I can hear the angels laughing and I know you are scandalizing St. Peter. Dear God, please tell me you didn't show up at the Pearly Gates wearing your “Nun Who Ain't Getting' None” costume.

But then again, why not?

And I think of all the people lined up to greet you. All the people who've been missing you as much as you've missed them.

As much as we'll miss you.

So, here goes....

A nun walks up to a bar in heaven.

“Gimme a Captain and Coke,” she says, winking at the cute angel tending bar.

The angel, shocked by her behavior, faints dead away.

“I didn't ask for Sex on the Beach,” she says.

The New Normal

It's not the same.

The world did not stop when Mom died and sometimes that just seems so unfair.

Instead life kept rushing forward and I tried to keep up, tried to pretend nothing had changed. But of course it has.

Something – someone – is missing.

There is a hole in my life – bigger, deeper than before.

This is the new normal.

But every day is a new normal.

Things change, in big ways and in small, all the time. We adapt. We change. We accept.

Eventually.

When Mom first started to fail I would get so angry.

“Rage, rage against the dying of the light,” I would think, all full of Dylan Thomas and daughterly angst. “Do not go gentle into that good night.”

My rage was big, and loud, and physical, and angry.

And exhausting.

And useless.

Now I realize she did rage.

But her rage was small, and quiet, and peaceful, and accepting.

And a blessing.

Her rage wasn't a fight to avoid change like I wanted, but a fight to accept change. To face the end with dignity and grace.

She raged against the dying of the light by accepting the limits of physical change, but not letting it change who she was inside.

She made the most of what she still had. And she could still make people happy.

She could care. Smile. Laugh.

At her burial, as the minister said those last few words, as we said our last good byes, we accepted the physical change in our universe – her passing would leave a big, black, sucking emptiness where her body used to be. (Was her ever-shrinking body supposed to make that empty spot smaller? It didn't.)

But the emotional change, the emptiness in my heart, how could I accept that?

An ice cream truck approached from down the hill, the familiar notes of “Turkey in the Straw” ringing cheerfully across the quiet cemetery.

The air under the funeral home's tent, stifling with heat and sorrow just a moment before, changed, vibrated with barely suppressed giggles at the absurd juxtaposition.

“Dorothy would be the first one at that truck, buying us all ice cream,” said my friend-family-sister Sue.

We laughed aloud in recognition and relief.

And acceptance.

Because that is exactly what she would have done.

Exactly what she would want us to do.

Make the most of what we still had: each other.

Make people happy. Care about them. Ask about them. Listen to them.

Smile.

Laugh.

Buy them ice cream.

Accept the new normal.

Terminus Elegaic

Terminal.

What an awful word.

Termination, terminate, terminus.

So cold and detached.

“Concluding.” “To form the end of.” “To put an end to.” “To stop.”

Stop.

Stop, stop, stop, STOP!

STOP!

I'm not sure how, but I had managed to delude myself into believing that “inoperable” meant just that and ONLY that: "not able to be suitably operated on."

And then they use the “T” word.

As if the “C” word wasn't scary enough.

But scary is one thing. Scary is an emotion. An overpowering emotion. A tidal wave of fear that pulls you under, holds you immobile until self-preservation takes over – fight or flight – you rocket to  the surface, lungs burning, and explode into action.

Tears, laughter, memories, vows, plans.

Action.

But terminal.

Terminal is a big, black, empty space.

It is the absence of feeling.

Nothingness.

Terminal.

And yet....

“To put an end to,” “to form the end of...”.

“Close to causing death...”.

“Forming the end or extremity...”.

“An end...”. Not the end.

“Either end of a transportation line or a main station on it...”.

“A connective point (on an electrical circuit)...”.

All life is terminable.

But if this is an end to one station, a connective point....

Then there must be something else.

We are not losing her. She is going on ahead of us.

This is an end. Not the end.

Not nothingness.

Not emptiness.

There is still time for bravery, courage, fighting, hoping. Living. Loving. Epiphanies.

Actions.

Action.