Cleaning, Therapy Style

     We all have our ways of coping. Whether it be from stress or grief or loneliness, we react in a myriad of ways. We may overeat or drink, meditate or pray, snap at people or withdraw into solitude, whatever combination of the above, our minds and bodies are attempting to cope. Some of these methods occur automatically and we react without giving it a thought. Other coping mechanisms may be more intentional, like prayer. I tend towards a particular combination of coping mechanisms for stress and grief, but there is one quirky little thing that I've learned about myself over the years and that is my obsessive compulsive need to clean when life feels out of control. It's not a scary, life altering OCD reaction, no. Rather, it's a day's worth of channeling what I have absolutely no control over into something that I completely control. I guess the reasoning goes like this, "My mom has died and I can't do a thing about it, but I can clean, damn it."
     I can usually detect when the urge to clean is barreling in and my thoughts organize around what cleaning jobs I will tackle. I become very focused and my attitude is forthright. "Everybody stay out of my way and no one will get hurt. Hand over your toothbrushes, I need them." Normally, I would never do hard labor after the dinner hour, but this particular night you might find me scrubbing cabinets at 9:00pm. I hope my family knows me by now and there's no need to worry at such a sight. I'm simply coping.
     Wonderful things come out of this particular coping mechanism. Obviously, the first result is a clean kitchen or perhaps an entire house, depending on my energy level. Secondly, I discovered a new cleaning tool that has upped the game. I saw this on someone's blog but I can't recall where in order to give them credit. This little scrub brush holds soap inside and dispenses it as you scrub. My cabinets have never been cleaner. It even gets at the nooks and corners in the cabinet doors where greasy kitchen dust collects. Lastly and most importantly, we all know that busy hands free the mind to think and wander. Mindless work lends itself beautifully to prayer and thoughtfulness. Memories flow forward, unfinished business is contemplated and routed out from the crevices of both mind and dirty corners, and God lends His ear whenever we call upon Him whether we sit quietly in a chair or on our hands and knees, toothbrush at work.
     So, we are coping. I'm learning what hurts the most, what I can and can't do alone, and who to call on for what. I know that sometimes things have to get messier and harder before they get better. I'm in messy and hard now, trying to reason what just happened these past eight months. I ask myself what did I do right or wrong and what have I learned from it? If the scope of cleaning and renovating projects on my docket is any determination of what I still need to work out in my heart and mind then I'll be at it for a while. Some aspects of caring for my mom will never be resolved and I will need to come to grips with that, too. It hurts, but it hurts because I loved. That, I can accept.
     
    

Goodbye Mom, Marian (Maffeo) Giacomino 4/14/22 - 2/22/16

     My mother quietly passed away Monday morning, here at home with her hand in mine. For three days we sat vigil by her bedside, listening to her breathe, even counting her breaths for hours throughout the night. Breath, breath, breath, stop, breath, breath, breath, stop, while two clocks in the room ticked the minutes away. And then the breaths were no more. The silence was a shock. A moment later I noticed the clock still ticked, so I reached over and stopped it. The agony was over but the grief had just begun.
     During the long vigil I whispered loving things into Mom's ear. There's so much to say to someone we love when they're dying. No regrets, no confessions, just loving encouragement for a job well done, a life well lived, and promises of paradise and God's loving arms waiting to receive her. Sometimes I sang songs to her during the long nights. A few times I fell asleep with my head on her arm, aching for my mother because I was still her child. Steve played quiet songs for her on his recorder in the day and it seemed to soothe her breathing. Audrey and Tess came to hold her hand when I needed to leave the room. We prayed and cried as those hours and days ticked by. She was never conscious but we assumed she heard all we said and did.
     How close and thin is the veil that separates us from eternity. Just there, on the other side of a breath, angels do the Lord's bidding. Yet, how wide the chasm that separates our living reach from those on the other side.
     Friends came by to pray and talk. They dropped off meals every day, sometimes even two.We felt the love. I hope Mom felt it, too. In spirit, she's passed on to her eternal home with God and all her loved ones who have gone before her. In body, she begins her journey home to New York today. Oh how she longed to go home!

A Force to Be Reckoned With

     Suddenly there is a shift in the breeze and life blows in an entirely different direction. Words like "palliative care" and "hospice" are in our vocabulary and friends are rallying round to feed the dog, leave pizza in our kitchen, and show up with a phone charger for me at the hospital. I'm learning there are so many ways to spell the word, "love".
     After twenty years of wondering, "What is wrong with my mother?" we finally have an answer. It would have been good to know sooner, but it explains everything. Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, diagnosed with an MRI. Leave it to my mother to live way beyond the projected lifespan for this disease. It will ultimately take her life, but she has fought a good, hard battle with this invisible enemy. It has battered and broken her, taken away her speech and her smile, and yet she survived.
     So, I find myself once again trying to hoard memories and there are too many. They feel like thousands of balloons that I'm trying hold onto by scooping them into my apron. The more I scoop, the more that tumble out and can't be gathered. It's an impossible task yet I feel compelled to keep trying. My father, my sister, and now my mother. So many memories. Lord plant my roots deep and help me stand strong. The wind is blowing and the balloons won't stay in my apron.