So, Anyway...

Last week on my way home from work I stopped into Target to do a little shopping with an American Express gift card I received for my birthday. First, I pulled out my gift card and checked with a salesperson to make sure they accepted AE. I didn't want to waste my time trying on and selecting veritably cute clothes only to be rejected at the cash register. When the coast was clear, I grabbed a shopping cart and the next 10 or 15 bright/comfortable looking/potentially flattering items. Bricks and mortar shopping wears me out. The decisions, the lines, the mirrors, the hassles, the guilt-I get overwhelmed. No shopping guilt this time as I had FREE MONEY to spend on myself, however I wanted. I wanted something yellow. I wanted a new dress. I wanted the Irish Friendship shirt for $3.50. I needed help.

I don't always know what looks good on me and I definitely don't know how to accessorize. I tried a shirt-dress on and for the life of me couldn't make my mind up as to whether it looked good as in a 50's vintage kind of way or old-fashioned in a Little House on the Prairie kind of way. I enlisted the advice of the young, urban, black, gay staff. (What? I heard them talking about going to gay bars). It took them a minute to give me a once-over and then declare that the questionable dress looked cute on me and that it fit me really well. After a little more scrutiny, I was told to not wear flat shoes or a long necklace with the dress or I would risk looking Amish. Funny, in my mind I'd already picked out the flats I was going to pair with this dress if I bought it. Then I asked my fashionistas/os whether to get the navy or yellow top. After holding each up just below my chin to give them the full effect of how my skin tone played off the saturated colors of the shirts, I was unanimously told to go with the yellow. Because navy blue is just so boring. Secretly I wanted them to pick yellow, and secretly, I kept it to myself that my favorite color in the world to wear is navy.

I gathered up the few things I was buying and the 15 items I wasn't and found the shortest line. When it was time to pay, I couldn't find my gift card. Anywhere. What the? I searched through all the folds in my wallet and in each section of my purse, and I couldn't find the card. The lady put my transaction on hold while I went back to the dressing room to see if I'd dropped it. Someone else was already in there. Crap, I thought, if someone find it laying on the dressing room floor, why would they turn it in? It's just like finding a fifty-dollar bill. I asked my fashionisto if anyone had turned in an AE gift card and he said no. I had to wait until my stall was free, but it wasn't in there. I sat there distressed looking again all through my purse. I looked in my wallet again and then in the zippered part of my purse. Why would a credit card be in the zippered part of my purse? Because earlier on the way to work, contents of my wallet spilled out onto the floor of my car when I hit the gas a little too hard, and the zippered part is where I shoved stuff that I didn't have time to neatly put back into my wallet. Why would contents of my wallet fall out of my wallet if it were snapped shut? Because the snap wouldn't shut because my wallet was too fat with an extra checkbook and too many receipts. Listen, people, it's the story of my life. I'm not organized in too many ways to count and I was mad at myself for my latest misfortune. I may have even muttered the f-word under my breath.

Where could that stupid card be? The one that I'd had in my hands thirty minutes earlier?? Just by chance, I walked by a rack of shirts that I'd looked at and tried on, glanced down to the floor and saw my AE card, all by its lonely, belly up. I grabbed it and went back and flashed it to my fashionisto who was on the phone but signalled a thumbs up, then went back to my line and finished my purchase.

One day my luck is going to run out, but until then, I probably won't change much.

I Can't Seem to Finish That Last Post

So in the meantime, read this piece, written by my good friend's dad:

Oops, I Did It Again

I've been doing it as long as David has known me; heck, I've been doing it most of my life: losing important things, freaking out about lost items, pulling other people into my frenzy of searching for lost items only to find that what I thought was lost was not lost at all.

In High School I lost my orthodontic retainer, and after ransacking every inch of our house and even the tip of the dumpster outside the school cafeteria, I concluded with gusty assurance that a ghost had taken my retainer. Months later, the retainer reappeared. The ghost had given it back. By that time, it didn't fit anymore, and the effort to retain the straight smile I had when I first got my $2,000 braces taken off had failed. I always felt guilty about that because that was a lot of money coming from two teachers' salaries, and they did it times two. Daniel was the only one of the three of us that didn't get braces and he later expressed his feeling of getting ripped off: Why couldn't he have been given the $2,000 in cash? It's not like my teeth are awful now. They're pretty straight...WAY better than when I got braces. I sucked my thumb until I was eight so when my lost baby teeth came back in, many of them came back crowded and crooked. I didn't really pay much attention, but B. H., a neighborhood boy three years my senior, made sure my budding self esteem took a major hit by asking me in front of everyone, "Where'd you get your teeth...K-Mart?" The point of all this is that I lost my retainer, sent my whole family into a tizzy helping me find it, blamed it on a ghost, then found it months later.

My junior year of college, my friend A. H. and I traveled to England and Wales to visit our friend that had been an exchange student living in our dorm the year before. During that whole two-week period, both A and L had to put up with my outbursts of "MY PASSPORT! Where is it?" as I frantically frisked myself at least five times a day. I always found my passport, and A and L always knew I would. Boy was I a neurotic international traveler.

In Florida, early in our courtship, David and I often found ourselves cooling off in the local Baskin Robins. His indoctrination to my losing-things-freak-out came one afternoon when I realized I'd left my purse at the ice cream parlor. We were thirty minutes away before I noticed I couldn't find my chapstick because I COULDN'T FIND MY PURSE!! He turned the car around, raced back, and I was lucky that my purse (and chapstick) were right where I left them. I'm usually so lucky.

I cannot even count the times over the years when things like this have happened. David is so used to it, he just always calmly reminds me that I'm doing it again and that I almost always find what I think I've lost. Just two days ago, trying to get Grace to school on time, I couldn't find my keys, (To be fair, I had a special hook where I hang my keys, but an unnamed guest recently MOVED that hook because she thought it would look better in the kitchen hanging, say, decorative hand towels). Ever since, I've been hard-pressed to find my keys when I need them. The other day I raced around looking for my keys, and then looking for the spare, and caused such a racket David jumped out of his shower...

TO BE CONTINUED...CHECK BACK LATER

Happy Music

Bob, this goes out to you...looks like we have a few more tunes to learn!! Happy St. Patty's Day!

Consider Yourself Pinched...

...if you aren't wearing green today. I hope the luck of the Irish kicks in soon. I woke up late with a sore neck (for the 10th day in a row) and was late getting Grace to school because I couldn't find my keys. Even though I set my alarm for 6:30 AM, I hit snooze so many times that David has resorted to calling our home phone from his cell phone to wake me up. How pathetic is that? Searching for my pot-o-gold...

Out Of Style

Today at the gym on the treadmill I grabbed an InStyle mag to flip through while I exercised. With Valentines all over the cover, it was apparently a February issue. I wanted to check current hair styles, make up trends and the latest must-have spring accessories. Specifically, I was looking for pictures of bright yellow shoes, handbags, and bold floral prints that have been gracing the magazines this season. Instead I saw gladiator sandals, neckline bling and a large section on celebrity weddings. I flipped through the entire magazine getting tips on how to look current this time of year but got to the end with some confusion. Vanessa Williams and Rick Fox, the perfect couple? Didn't they break up a long time ago? It was only then that I looked on the spine and saw that my "current" trend guide was four years old. I'm hopeless.

The Next Best Thing?

My mom's best friend's daughter was going away to college in a very urban part of the country--one where the traffic is so heavy, there are ordinances against driving one person to a car during rush hours. My mom's friend went to a novelty shop in Boone in search of a life-sized doll that her daugther could put in the passenger seat to look like there were more than one person traveling in the car. My mom's best friend has a wacky sense of humor, but other than that she's pretty much as straight as they come. She's one of those fun moms who says you don't need alcohol to have a good time, and means it. Anyway, she went into this shop and asked for a life-sized blow up doll. The clerk was back in the back for a long time then finally came back out holding an inflatated sheep and said, "We're all out of human dolls but we have this sheep. Will this do?"

The Last 3 Days

5 years ago March 7th was on a Friday like today. 5 years ago, March 8th, was on a Saturday, like tomorrow. This year Feb. had 29 days. In 2003, it didn't. So, the last 3 days.

We only went out when we needed to, except for Daniel, who was out of the house quite a bit. He didn't necessarily want to be there when it happened, which I guess is pretty close to needing to be away. Food kept coming in and so did visitors. When this kind of thing happens you often feel compelled to "do something" and doing something manifested itself in homemade chicken pot pies. Although we took them and ate them, those of us who knew the back story wondered, "Where have you been in the last 8 years? What took you so long? Why are you showing up on our doorstep now? It's too late." In times of grief, people do things that make themselves feel better and the crying and pain is usually a representation of what you've lost, not what the dying person is losing.

I've never lost sight of what my mom lost, but at the same time, I've never viewed her death as a tragedy. A tragedy is being shot and killed your senior year of college or what it feels like if you're the parents and family of that young woman. There are many more tragic examples of death, and I understand that my mom lived a very full eight plus years that she had cancer, and that her family and friends did too. I also know that many many people miss her being around.

David actually put in a full work week and made it back to Boone while my mom was still alive. That's remarkable, but that was Mama. It was Friday afternoon, and I was calling Boone Drug to see about running out there to pick up some more pain medication for her. David was reuniting with Grace and Kate and N were in the white room with my mom. My dad was downstairs and Daniel was with S. I can't remember how many times we all rushed in to be right there with her as she drew her last breath only for it not to be her last breath, or last hour or last day. On Friday, March 7th as I was holding on the telephone line with a pharmacist, N came running in to tell me she thought it had happened. I dropped the phone and ran into the white room. My mom had taken her last breath. It was like she knew I was planning on going out to get her next round of meds and she said, "Don't bother." N said, "She's only a shell now, her soul's in Heaven." Someone got Daddy and someone called Daniel. Someone called my Aunt S and someone called Hospice. When Hospice came, they suggested that we all gather in another room because of the difficulty in seeing someone you love being taken away. My mom was cremated, and even though I know what happened to her body, my last image of her is in the white room, in bed, in peace. We gathered downstairs and K came down to get us after Mama was gone. I'm not a huge touchy-feely hugger type (except with my own kids), but when Daniel came back, we each gave him a hug. He'd just lost his mother.

It was late, it was over, and we were all exhausted. I don't remember how, exactly, but phone calls were made and people were notified. We didn't begin planning her two memorial services until the next day, on my 31st birthday.

So tomorrow's my birthday, just like it will always be the day after March 7th. I've been especially looking forward to my birthday this year because UNC plays Dook and it's definitely our turn to win. With the recent UNC student murder there's been talk about how this UNC-Duke match-up probably will feel different, not as festive. If everything I've read about Eve Carson is true, how she epitomized the Carolina spirit, then I can say with confidence that she'd want UNC to beat some Dook butt tomorrow night. It appears to be who she was. And if my mom were around to observe the 5th anniversary of her death and if she were aware that people are still calling me and e-mailing me on March 7th to tell me they're thinking of me because I'm thinking of her, surely she'd insist that the focus be taken off her and put on the sad loss of Eve Carson. It's who she was.

Recent Updates

1.) Thanks to all my loyal informants (5 in all) that gave me the bad news throughout the day that the Raleigh Van Halen show this Friday has been canceled, wait, postponed, until April 13th. Perhaps the most touching was my dad finding out and not being able to bear telling me, so he had Kate do it. But by then I had already known for hours. I found that kind of cute and quite frankly, a little pitiful. If only that was the worst news I'd get all week.

2.) For those of you who heard about the ASU lock-down and wondered if any of my family members were affected, they were. My brother was in the fitness center when it all happened and was led to a secret room for over an hour. Turns out the gunman story was a hoax. I'm not sure what's real anymore. I'm even wondering if the hoax is a hoax. When David heard that the alleged gunman was wearing a Pink Floyd t-shirt and a black ski mask he was like, "Well that describes half the people in Boone."

The Last 10 Days, Days 4-7

David stayed through the weekend, and without much change, drove back to Chapel Hill for his Sunday shift. While he was there, though, he did what he does best. He supportively stayed out of the way, took care of Grace, ran errands and the vacuum cleaner in the family room without being asked. I was fine with him leaving. The phone calls picked up and the visits slowed down. Mrs. C was granted one last visit with Mama, but most people who came to the door didn't make it down the hallway.

Daniel and Daddy came in and out of the room, sometimes to weep buckets (my dad) but mainly it was Kate, N, Grace and me rounding the clock. I sat on the floor and played with Grace and while she napped I started working on the newspaper obituary. It felt very strange writing that in the past tense while my mom steadily breathed in and out two feet away. We all decided on a picture of her to have framed and Daniel took on this project.

There were a few laughs--ones that my mom would have surely appreciated. Grace's baby monitor was back in my dad's room with her port-a-crib and the speaker was with us in the white room. Let's just say that it's fair to assume my dad did NOT know we could all hear him doing his bathroom business. But we did hear it. All. Other zanyness included Grace's battery-operated Farmer Brown toy going off LOUDLY in the middle of somber moments. There were several dramatic times when we thought "This is it! Everyone gather round, I think she's about to take her last breath!" And instead of it being her last breath, it was "FARMER BROWN HAS A BROWN HORSE. B-R-O-W-N H-O-R-S-E, Yuk, Yuk, Yuk" reminding us that there's never a bad time for a good sense of humor. And those who knew my mom knew she had one of the best.

Hours in that room were surprising therapeutic. She was using an oxygen tank and the steady breath, the rise and fall of her chest, the touch of her still-warm pulse was enough to keep us all going and grounded. She was our center and because of her, we all knew what and where our places were. She was still the beating heart of our family. At least for a few more days.