We lost our special little orange boy on Saturday, August 31. He was only 7. Fuzzy and I are devastated, and Turnip and Jan are sad to not have their brother. Waffie was our little clown, our sunshine, our moonbeam, my butterbean, my sweet pea, and the heart and soul of the family. He is deeply missed.
Mom's been gone for 2 years. It's so weird. I wish I could talk to her--but the mom from the before times. We lost her way before we lost her. But today I am being gentle with myself, and I am going to watch hers and my favorite movie this afternoon: What a Way to Go.
I had a good laugh realizing that this movie is about DEATH and THERAPY. So fitting.
This is my favorite photo of mom:
This is my favorite fashion look of mom's:
This is the last photo I took of us together:
This is the last photo I took of her alive (yes, I have photos of her dead, but I won't share those. Just know they are beautiful):
I hope she sends me some sort of sign to let me know that she is ok, free of pain, and at peace.
Thinking back to 2 years ago....Christopher and I were moving mom from her unsafe place into Merrell Gardens, which was new and clean and cared for and provided food and daily wellness checks for their residents. It was expensive, but worth it to know that mom would be safe and have access to food. We had been in the trenches with cleaning out the old place and purging all the furniture and protecting ourselves and the new apartment from bedbugs, and we were exhausted. I decided to go home for a few days to rest and recouperate and because I had tickets to see Andrew Bird and Iron and Wine at the Salt Shed on 8/12. So on the 11th, I hosted a call in the afternoon for my doula community at Going with Grace, decided to not go to the old apartment, and went to say goodbye to mom. She was in the cafeteria eating--surprisingly she was too full for cake (for CAKE!) and so we just sat and chatted a bit. After years and years of protecting myself from her dependence and neediness and constant need for care, I had a bit of a wall up and was keeping emotionally and physically distant from her this night. I just wanted to say goodbye and go. After the same amount of years of ignoring everything that we did to help and support and protect her, she reached out to hold my hand, and thanked me for not shutting her out of my life. She said that so many of her friends' kids had cut off communication with them, and she was so thankful that we were still talking to her and helping her out. I shrugged it off and said something like "well, hopefully now you'll understand that we have your best interests and safety in mind and we aren't 'out to get you'." The truth is that earlier that year, I HAD contemplated cutting off contact with her. She was so emotionally and verbally abusive to me that it was too much and I reached my breaking point. Christopher understood and said he would support whatever I decided as long as I supported HIM with her care. That support and acknowledgement meant the world to me--I'm so blessed to have the relationship with my brother that I have--and it helped me to decide that I would NOT cut her out. But I would be cautious and only talk (which was actually text--talking was hard for her) to her with Christopher on the text chain as well--someone to bear witness and also be a buffer. So when mom thanked me to still being in her life, I sort of shrugged it off. I walked her to the elevator, where she hugged me to tightly it hurt, I took a couple pics of her, and said goodbye.
The next morning, I was back in Chicago. I went to the concert, slept a lot, took a lot of photos of my cats (my camera roll is 96% cats from that weekend) and made a plan to go back down the following weekend to finish up the move.
Monday morning, August 15, Christopher and I shot the shit via text as we usually do. But that afternoon he called and said "hey, I'm heading up to Merrell Gardens--mom didn't do her wellness check today." If residents don't push a button in their apartment by a certain time, they get a wellness check. Mom hadn't checked in, nor had she gone to breakfast, so they went into her room, found her unconscious, and called Christopher and the paramedics. So when he called me, I had a feeling that she was dead. "Ok" I said "call me back in a minute." 10 minutes later, he called again. C--"Hey-how's it going?" Me--"What's going on?" C, with shock and disbelief in his voice--"Mom DIED." I took a moment and said "ok." He filled me in on what the paramedics said, I told him I would see him the next day, and then I went to tell Fuzzy. I was in so much shock, I was only able to text a few friend groups (and a couple of these beloved friends came over to be with me--I am so so grateful.)
I wasn't surprised. I cried. I was relieved. I was in shock. I tried to eat and then pack, and the next day I headed back to SC to finish the work and say goodbye to mom for real.
We had 2 funeral services for mom after she died: one in Columbia, SC and one in Vicksburg, MS. I had lots of things I wanted to say and things I wanted people to hear, so I wrote them and read them at both services. Here is the text:
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I called her Maudra, because she called her mom Maudra. She called me Daudra, because her mom called her Daudra. The fact that I shared a birthday with her mom made that all the more special to me.
Every day I am so thankful that I was born into the family that I was born into and raised by the incredible Patricia, David, and Christopher Reid. How lucky am I? The most hilarious and kind people to ever walk the earth, and they are MY family? I can't count the hours we used to spend just laughing together. They are why I am who I am, and I couldn't have asked for a better childhood and friendship with my family.
After we lost dad in 2007, a huge hole was left in all of our lives. But his death caused mom to lose her compass, path, and anchor. For the first time in her life, she was truly rudderless, with no partner, kids to care for, or the challenge of being a caregiver to occupy her time. And unfortunately, though mom truly and deeply loved her family and friends, she did not love herself. So she tried to escape the torture of her body and mind. With a series of mental health issues, addiction issues, and physical pain plaguing her every moment of every day, she was desperate for any respite she could find.
We tried our best. Many of us did. When her home on National Street became unsafe for her, we moved her to Wisconsin Cove. When her home at Wisconsin Cove became unsafe for her, we moved her to Christopher Towers in South Carolina to be closer to family. When Christopher Towers became unsafe for her, we tried to move her again and again but she fought us for a long time. Just a mere three months ago, she finally relented, and everything lined up for her to move to a newer facility in Columbia called Merrill Gardens . There she was happy for the first time in ages. She had community again. She was eating food again. She was making friends. She had purpose. And then, shockingly, only one week later but hopefully while being truly content for the first time in a long time, she left us.
Caregiving someone with such extreme issues is so terribly hard, and when you live across the country from them, or in Christopher and Katie's case for a few years--across the globe from them-- it's almost impossible. It feels completely hopeless, with no way to actually provide any comfort or care. Christopher, Katie, Fuzzy, and I sacrificed so much of our lives to ensure that mom was healthy and safe. But it was never enough. It could never have been enough. It was literally impossible to have been enough for what she wanted and needed. So she suffered. WE suffered. We tried. We succeeded sometimes, but more often than not, we failed.
Last year, I had a change in career and became a death doula--someone that helps people and their families sit with death, grief, and dying. This is truly my life's work, inspired by caring for dad throughout his illness and learning what is helpful and not helpful when living with grief and being a caregiver. But no amount of training will prepare you for when it happens to you. The grief I am feeling over the loss of mom is so intense and so complicated. I am angry--at everything and everyone. The medical system. The lack of support for mental health from the government. The isolation of people and illusion of community in small towns. I took a class a few years back with NAMI--the National Alliance on Mental Illness--and one module talked about how people with the dual diagnosis of mental illness and addiction issues are likely to develop Tardive Dyskinesia, the condition that mom had that forced her to always be shaking and took away her ability to chew and talk. I was FLOORED. I was enraged. It was printed right there in the text, and this was YEARS after we got her diagnosis, which was a shock at the time. It was not curable, but to learn that it was preventable was devastating.
Mom was no angel. Well, she used to be, in my opinion, but these last seemingly eternal years were a challenge. They were hell, actually. But knowing that she finally has some peace and is free of pain and the plagues of her depression and torment comes as a huge comfort to me. At our private viewing of her at the funeral home in Columbia, mom was so beautiful, peaceful, and still. It was like looking at the mom we used to know.
Looking back through her lifetime's worth of photos this week, I was reminded of all the love we had and still have in our family. It's because we loved Mom so intensely that we never gave up on her. I can only hope that as time continues to advance that the pain and trauma I have that was caused by her will melt away and be refilled with memories of her humor, wit, generosity, care, and love.
But here's the thing--these hard years have also shaped who I am as a person and how I view the world, and I honestly think for the better. I have a better understanding of how to help people in crisis and how to prioritize my own mental health and safety when under extreme stress. I wish I had gained these skills in a different way, but that's not how life works. I must also take a moment of gratitude for Christopher, Katie, and Fuzzy, without whom I would not still be standing. I'm so thankful every day that they are my family.
I will continue to do my best and carry on mom and dad's legacy by being kind and respectful to people and sitting with them in their times of struggle, pain, and need. And I hope that you are all called in your lives to carry on this legacy as well, to be kind to others of all ages, races, genders, sizes, shapes, orientations, and belief systems, and that you approach all things with curiosity and compassion. And please know that your lives are important and each of you is worth fighting for. If anyone hearing this is struggling in any way, please ask for support.
One of my friends and colleagues in death work, Rel Brender, said this to me the day that mom died:
You offered your mom something that very few people get.
Now, I think she finally did something generous and thankful for you and Christopher in her final act by letting go.
It really might be her way of saying thanks.
I believe that to be the case.
I love you Maudra. Thank you for doing your best. I hope you and dad are giggling away while snuggling with all of your cats, dogs, and birds in Heaven. I will try to carry your spirit with me as best I can in all things in the future.
2024! How did that happen? I haven't written here in so long. I was plagued for years and years of stressful caregiving of mom and didn't feel like this was a safe place to express my feelings since she read the blog. I couldn't say what I really wanted to say, and therefore I mostly kept it all bottled up inside. But mom died August 15, 2022. And I've been processing and grieving ever since. So now I feel ready to get some feelings and thoughts and memories out of my head. No one might ever read this, or know that it is still here, but that's ok! Are blogs even a thing? Do blogreader apps exist? Is it all Substack now? Doesn't matter. This is for me.
The years of mom care caused a lot of trauma in me--so much that I didn't realize just how bad things were in my head and heart and body. After she died, I sort of stopped being able to sleep....my body wouldn't let me rest. Either I would have a nighttime panic attack and gasp awake, or I would have horrible recurring nightmares about 5 nights a week that were all based on real things that happened in the past. It became unsustainable. So both my therapist and my doctor recommended I try EMDR therapy for my CPTSD. I started the process with a new therapist mid-May, and now here on July 25, I can say that it is already working and is incredibly effective. I may or may not talk more about that here in the future, but some proof that it's working is the fact that I am writing here at all. I am unclogging lots of funk. Doing the hard work. It's grueling, but I am worth the effort.
So we'll see if this stream of consciousness writing helps the process. Let's chat about mental health, substance abuse, life, grief, healing, moving forward, and thinking back.
