My Mom Said To Look For Signs

While my mom was in hospice, we talked about the spiritual world and I asked her to be sure to come back and check on me.  She told me to look for signs.  Sometimes I can be a bit oblivious in normal everyday life, so my mom would literally have to smack me at times to get my attention.  I told her to smack me from the spiritual world so I don't miss her signs.

I believe that my mom has sent me signs.  A few days after my mom died, I was driving in my car and a yellow and black butterfly was flying very close to my windshield.  It stayed hovering in front of my windshield for about 30 seconds, even though the car was moving, it maintained the same position.  I have never had a butterfly hang out that long.  Usually they flit about and disappear before I can get a really good look at them.  I immediately thought it was a sign from my mom.

A few days after the first butterfly incident, I was walking my dog on a trail that I have walked on for the past 7 years where I rarely ever see butterflies.  Another yellow and black butterfly, around the same size as the butterfly I saw in my car, flew around me while I was walking and hung around for another 30 seconds or so.  I immediately remembered the previous butterfly I had seen while driving and had a sense that mom was coming to visit again.

I have seen the same yellow and black butterfly twice now.  I honestly think that it is not a coincidence, that it is my mom coming to say hi and she is flitting about like she did before she got sick.  She is free to fly around now after being bedridden for over a year.

I felt a sense of peace and calm both times I saw that yellow and black butterfly and was able to take some much needed, satisfying deep breaths.

I hope mom comes to visit again soon.

Goodbye Mom, You'll Be Missed

My mother died on July 21, 2017 at 10:50pm.  She was the second eldest child of five children.  Her older brother died about 9 months ago.

My mother has been described as kind, strong, practical, private, intelligent, selfless, but most of all she has been described as being humble.  She didn't want to have any kind of service after she passed and she didn't want people to make a big fuss about her after she was gone, just like she never liked a big fuss made while she was alive.

My dad told her that he would honor any wish she desired except for her wish to not have a celebration of her life.  He told her that a celebration of life is more for the living.  Being the strong woman that she was, she still told him that she didn't want one.  Being the strong man my dad is, he continued to talk her into it until he finally convinced my mom that we were going to have a celebration of her life.

His main argument was that people need to pay their respects, that respect is not automatic, it is earned and I hate to admit to my dad when he is right, but I have no problem admitting that he was right this time.  She definitely earned a lot of respect.

When my mom finally did relent about having a celebration of her life, she told him that she wanted something small, with just close friends and family, I joked with her that she better make a list because her idea of small and intimate and dad's idea of small and intimate are two completely different definitions.

We also had to emphasize to her that there would be too many people who would want to pay their respects and there was no way we could ever deny them.  We reminded her about all of the people who visited her while her disease progressed and how important she was to everyone.  My mom truly had no idea the impact she made on others.

My mom was such a selfless woman.  She took care of all of those around her before she took care of herself.  I told her that as her disease progressed that she needed to finally relax and let all of us take care of her, that it was her time to be lazy and demanding.  But I also know how much she hated being dependent and on the sidelines.  She expressed multiple times how frustrated she was that her body was betraying her.

But throughout her disease, she never complained.  I believe that she was able to be so strong through it all and tolerate such a debilitating disease because she had my father taking enormously great care of her.  There is not another soul on this earth who could have done a better job caring and comforting my mother than my dad.  In the end, she drew strength from him and looked to him for relief.

My mom was a very private person, but when she was asked a direct question she would open up. She told me that her proudest achievements in her life were her daughters.  Her biggest regret was that she wasn't able to travel as much as she wanted.  She wanted to see and do so many more things.

Our family has suffered some devastating losses in the last few years.  Through those losses, my mom has been the rock in our family.  Her wisdom, selflessness, and firmness have always guided the entire family.  She led by example.

She can never be replaced.  Now that she is gone, our family will remain strong and steadfast together because that is what she wanted.  Family was the most important thing to her.

She will be missed terribly.  She is still watching and guiding us in her own way.  We will take comfort in our memories of her and she will always be in our hearts.

It Comes To All

"It comes to all.  We know not when,

or how, or why.  It's always been

a mystery, a frightening thing, 

enshrouded in the silencing.

When suddenly a loved one dies 

we seem to sort of paralyze,

to just stop still within our track.

And oh, how much we want them back."

excerpted from "When A Loved One Dies"

by Dolores Dahl, Suddenly Alone

Mom Has Pneumonia

A couple of days ago my mom aspirated while taking her medication.  She now has pneumonia.

Pneumonia is usually what kills people who are suffering from MSA.  We are hoping she pulls through the pneumonia, but since she is in hospice and doesn't want to be intubated or hospitalized, all the doctors can do is treat her with antibiotics and oxygen.

I know I need to be ready to let her go and I hope that I survive losing her.

But I'm not ready, just like I wasn't ready to lose Jeff.

Living Trust and Will

Once Jeff died, I knew that I needed to create a living trust and will.

It has taken me three and a half years to finally contact a lawyer and get it done.  

It's strange to sit in an office and decide who should get my properties, investments, and belongings when I die.  When you're married, for most of us, it's simple...your spouse gets everything for the most part.  I know there are those of us who are on their second or third marriages with children from previous relationships and of course they don't automatically give everything to their spouse but for me, I was only married once and have no children.

Now I need to decide who is going to get everything I've worked for and achieved my entire life, who is going to execute my wishes, who is responsible for making financial and health decisions for me in case I'm incapacitated, etc.

There are a lot of decisions to make.

When Jeff and I were married, it was simple.  Jeff's name followed every one of those decisions. Before Jeff, my mom was the person I wanted to make all those decisions.  Now that my mom is in hospice, she is no longer an option either.

In four years, I went from having the two most important people to put down as decision makers and emergency contacts, and now I cannot use either one of them.

Three years ago this fact would have devastated me.  Now, I realize that I am so much stronger and I can stand on my own without having the people I automatically fell back on.

This fact of losing Jeff and losing my mom soon also reminds me that I need to be grateful for those I do have in my life that I can depend on to make these decisions.  It makes me sad that I needed to find new people, but it also reminds me that I need to be grateful that I have found these new people.

This all reminds me yet again that life is short, to surround myself with people who are meaningful, that I need to live every day to the best of my ability, and to try to have no regrets.

Some Time To Process

Since my last post, I've had some time to process the fact that people who have been in my life for over 20 years don't want to be my friends anymore.

I've gone through the different emotions of grief, mainly anger and sadness, but overall I've come to realize that I need to stop wasting my time and energy on people who don't love and support me.  I can't make people love me or want to be friends with me.

I'm trying to be as strong as a fellow widow blogger. As The Polished Widow says:

"I have had friends say, while they are happy to still be friends with me, they don’t want to get to know my new husband.

To this I say, if you can’t acknowledge my future, then you don’t have a place in my life.

For friends to say ‘out of respect to Nick’ they don’t want to know John, then it’s their loss, because Nick wouldn’t want that either.

While I understand it may be ‘weird’ for some to see me with someone new, I have managed to be in a place where i’m very comfortable with it, so please don’t project your own insecurities on me."

Even though these people don't want to be friends with me right now, I'm hoping that we will come back to each other in the future, but I've come to accept that we may not and I'm going to have to be ok with that.  I will continue to embrace those who do love me and want to be my friends right now.  That is where I need to spend my time and energy.

Isn't It Ironic

When I first began this blog, I was a  couple weeks out from my husband dying.  At the time, my girlfriends were my saving grace.  My blog's URL does have "girlfriends are the new husbands" in it for a reason.

I find it ironic that I'm sitting here now with puffy eyes from crying most of the night last night over two of my girlfriends who have been purposefully excluding me from group gatherings and activities. These two girls have been my friends for over 20 years.

I have been noticing for the last year and a half or so that these two specific friends, Maria and Judy, have grown distant from me and closer to each other.  Judy voiced her disapproval of me continuing a relationship with Wyoming when I first started getting serious with him a year and a half ago, while Maria hasn't specifically said why she has grown distant.  Maria and Judy are the only two friends of mine that haven't met Wyoming yet.

I had a long phone call with Judy last night and specifically asked her why I'm not invited to the whole group dinner parties, holiday BBQ's, and out of town trips that her or Maria plan.  I still get invited to other events and activities that are not planned by them.  I appreciated her honesty when she said that she feels that I have changed, that she isn't as comfortable around me and doesn't feel the same strong connection as the past.  She blames the change in me on Wyoming.

I told her that I think the change in me is due to the fact that my husband died and not so much on me being in a relationship with Wyoming.  She disagreed and again blamed the change in me on Wyoming.  I said that I wished she would be willing to meet him but understood that she isn't interested.  I told her that I was terribly hurt at the fact that her and Maria were inviting everyone in our group to their activities and events except me.  I feel excluded.  But I also told her that I appreciated her honesty and for taking the time to explain why she is excluding me.

Overall, the conversation was informative and hopefully healing.  There wasn't too much anger or finger pointing.  It was a grown up conversation.  We agreed that things have changed but didn't agree why they changed and as I continue to think about this, I guess it doesn't matter why.

Judy and Maria don't want to be my friends anymore and I can't make people want to be my friend. I'm not going to lie, it's terribly hurtful, especially after all that I've been through in the past three and a half years.

I've lost too many important people to me by death (my husband, my grandma, my uncle, and now my mother is dying) so I'm having a hard time letting go of people by choice who have been important to me.  Losing family members has been out of my control and has been hard on me. Losing friends because they are choosing to leave me is very difficult for me to handle on top of all of the other loss.

I know I need to work on letting go and not holding on to people that don't want to be held on to.  I think this is something that I need to work on in therapy.

I know it's unfortunate, but I must accept that people change and grow apart.  I need to flex and bend to new things and not stay stagnate.  I need to let go of that which does not serve me well.  I must grieve more loss and focus on the positive in my life.

It's ironic that these two girlfriends have been in my life the longest, that I thought would be the girls I grew old with, but it seems that their chapter is coming to an end.

I can only move forward.