MOMMY!

It is hard to believe that today has been 13 years since I have heard your guidance, laugh, and encouragement.  I think of you everyday.  I so wish you could have met Klaire.  I know you would have been the world's best grandma.  I miss you so so much Mom.   I miss you everyday.    I love you.  I hope you and Dad are out having fun and you have a bridge game everyday!

LUCY

Lucy

Lucy--A very bright spot in our home!  She came home the weekend before Halloween and has made Atlanta, almost bearable.  At least she has put me in a better mood.  We got her as a very tiny doggy, and K got to pick her out of the other 4 girls.  She had the best tail and was looking very intently at the breeder when she stood at the door.  I knew she was the one!  She is perfect.  Okay--she has had a few accidents in the house, but within a week she was ringing a bell to go downstairs to the back door.  Plus, she loves attention and to cuddle.  Right now as I type this, she is lying by the firer.  She is a bright, loving dog, everything K and I dreamed about!

K and Phoenix in Boston

Now, before I get all these comments about how I should have gone and saved a pound puppy, let me tell you---did that twice in Atlanta.  Seriously, twice.  I know, great for attachment issues, but I never in 100 years thought a dog could make you depressed.  I'm not kidding.  Let me start by saying we had the most wonderful dog that we got from a no kill shelter in San Diego over 10 years ago.  Phoenix.  He was perfect.  He would play with K, seek attention from us, lay on his bed, bark at the right people.   When we got him he was 2 years old.  He traveled around the United States with us from San Diego to Texas to Boston to Texas back to Boston. Unfortunately, he died in Boston about 2 years ago.  Since then we have promised to get K another dog.  Since K is an only child I often think of that Norman Rockwell painting where the husband comes home and yells at the wife and the wife yells at the kids and the kids yell at the dog.  That chain was broken.  K needed someone to love, take care of, a friend.  Phoenix was gone.
So when we first moved to Atlanta, a little over a year ago, we went to the pound.  We picked up a small puppy that was suppose to be a German Shepard mix.  Let me tell you---horrible!    I returned it two days later.  The next one we decided to go through rescue groups.  Talk about annoying.  You had to have a home visit, they called references, I thought I was adopting again.  It was ridiculous. Literally--RIDICULOUS!  But, after going to several pounds in the city and only seeing pit bull mixes (Yes, I know they can be nice, but they scare me), we visited one of the groups I was finally cleared for.  We picked out a dog and named him Adikus.  He was suppose to be about 2. He was more like 6 or 7.  He made me depressed.  We had him for about 8 months and finally I told me husband we had to take him back.  He was scared of everything.  He would lay in his bed all day.  He would not play.  He could not be house trained.  So everyday, I would  be home alone with him and it was depressing.  I can't tell you how happy I was when we finally returned him.  It was like a weight had been lifted.
I was not going to give up!  I wanted a dog too.  So I searched breeders.  I searched reviews of dogs, I knew that a third time was going to be a charm.  Thank GOD that it was.  Lucy (named after I LOVE LUCY--K's new favorite show) is just what our family needed.

Alone

My Dad's favorite picture of him
with K.

Yesterday, I was watching last weeks episode of Parenthood.  I started to cry.  Not over what everyone I have heard cries over-- adoption, cancer of a love one, or losing a job.  No, I wasn't crying about those things; although I have experienced all those things in life.  I was crying because the husband sat in the waiting room with his whole family supporting him.   He had a support system.  I have none.

October 23, marked the one year anniversary of my father's death and it has been a rough year.  A year that I realized I was alone.  A true orphan.  I don't want to sound dramatic.  Okay, maybe it does, but after you lose the two people you know will always be on your side, you feel incredibly alone.  It is a strange feeling to know that there is nobody that you can call and talk too without judgement.  It is strange to not have anyone to visit or share your excitement about something.  Or worst someone that can be there for guidance and support during a stressful situation.  

My mother died almost 13 years ago this November 29th.   After I lost my mother, I was devastated for several years. She was my best friend, she gave me life, she lost 80lbs to give me her kidney.   I know this sounds strange, but deep down I always thought I could have saved her, like she had saved me. I still have a twinge that I could have.  My mother died suddenly of a pulmonary embolism.  Now, you might think, well, that was sudden, etc, but it wasn't.  For months she suffered with a "sore" under her knee.  She went to over 3 doctors in the small town I grew up in.  She had it injected with cortisone, and was set to have surgery on a "baker's cyst."  It wasn't until the night she woke up and said that she thought she was having a heart attack, rushed to the hospital, and then sent home that she died.  Yes, there are many doctors that are to blame as well.   But, I could have saved her.  See, just a month before she died she had visited me in San Diego.  We had gone out and walked around the day before at a fall festival and the next day her ankle was swollen and black and blue!  I even made the comment that "Mom, this is not right, we should go to the hospital."  I just know, if I would have taken her to the hospital, she would have been saved.  I know it is stupid to say, since we can't go back in time.  A lot of people will say it was "God's Will," but crap, I believe in God like I do Santa Claus.  He is not some puppet master up there controlling our lives. I can remember going to her funeral and writing the eulogy, and everything else.  The church was filled with people, like it was a Christmas service.  Flowers, after flowers arrived at our house, the UPS man even cried when we told him.  My father and I delivered the flowers to an old folks home and my brother and I made a pack that you should send pizza to people, not flowers during a time of grieving.  I can remember being at the house and hearing the garage door open and thinking it must be her, she must just be returning from the store.  But, it wasn't.   Her clothes hung in my father's closet for 5 years.  I use to go and sniff them when I visited.  I stole her perfume and still sometimes spray it on me when I am really sad.  

I went back to work the week after.  A month after I can remember a superior coming to me and saying "Krispy, What is wrong, you are not yourself, your cheerful self anymore?"  I thought, "What the HELL?"  My best friend, my mother died, and you wonder what is wrong. Am I suppose to feel insistently, wonderful in a week?  Month?  Year?   I can remember about  it wasn't until I decided to get K, that I realized I was almost healed.  I could deal with the pain.  I could survive.  That was 5 years later.  

My dad's death was much different.  He battled cancer for 10 years, he would get sick and then better, but finally it made his body a skeleton, and he was not the strong man I knew.  It was different, he got to meet K.  He had moved on with his life, the only way he knew (another post), but I still could call him up and he would help me.  Solve everything or try.  Loved me.  I was so sick myself when he died I wondered if soon I would join him.  I wonder if I really did get time to grieve for him.  His death was different.  I got to say goodbye in a letter, I got to tell him goodbye over the phone, I knew he loved me, he said it.  I still listen to some of his voicemails.  

I often think of them.  

But, it wasn't until I was watching Parenthood that I realized why I missed them so much.  I want to tell them so much about K, about the doctors here, but nothing makes them miss them more as when you lay in a hospital bed, all alone.  Wanting someone just to sit by you.  Just to be there on your side.  Yes, that is so lonely.  It tells you that yes, you are alone.  I hate that feeling.  Not only was I sitting there alone, I had new doctors, a new town, no friends.  I feel the same way and it has almost been a year.  A very tough year.  But, I still have the memories.  Happy memories and know they are angels.

As I look at this picture I smile.  It was my father's favorite.  It reminds me that he always has my back, and now will have K's too.  It makes me think that wherever K walks an angel will walk behind her, guiding her, helping her, pushing her, like he did me.