Six Months Later

Sunday, September 25th passed in such an altogether inconspicuous way, it didn't dawn on me what day it was until several days after the fact.

When you're waiting for something amazing to happen, six months seems to drag on forever and ever. When you're just trying to focus on living again, six months passes in the blink of an eye.

It is strange to think that it's been six months since the last time I saw my mother, made even more strange by the fact that before this time, I hadn't seen her in five years. When I got the phone call (that I ignored, because I already knew what it said) that my mother was gone, it felt like a piece of me was sucked away.  For a long time, every breath I took felt forced and halfway. I was more deeply sad than I even knew I was capable of, and more profoundly angry and hurt. Now, breathing is easier. It feels more natural. I don't know if this is a healthy way of coping, but in a lot of ways the idea of my mother has become a distinctive part of the past. It's in a file folder at the very back of the cabinet that is my brain. I take it out sometimes when I can handle accessing those memories or analyzing those events, but it's not often. Six months later, I feel more removed from my mother than the day I left her house when I was fourteen.

The memories I have of her are slowly turning into lists of facts rather than emotions or experiences. I can tell you what brand of mascara she used as long as I can remember, what lotion she used, her favorite midnight snacks. But the memory of her voice and her laugh are starting to fade. I've saved her voicemails but have only listened to them once.

My birthday is in a little over two months, and I can't remember the last time she didn't call me to tell me happy birthday. When I thought about this earlier this week, I realized I couldn't remember the last birthday I spent WITH her. It falls around Thanksgiving, and given our strained relationship, I usually spent the holiday with my father. But I remember the phone calls on my 19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd, etc. Most memorably the phone call on my 25th, where she ousted herself in a lie that at the time, I found unforgivable, at least for a little while. That conversation had a huge part in why our relationship fell to pieces yet again, and why the last real conversation we had was on Christmas. I told her I would call her back because I was driving in a storm, and then I never did.

What a completely selfish asshole.

When she died, I had nightmares about her almost every night. I dreamed she was in purgatory (Thanks, Catholic upbringing). I dreamed she couldn't be laid to rest until her ashes were. In one particularly awful dream, she didn't know she was dead, and I had to drag her body around the funeral home where my great grandmother's funeral was. In another, my older sister and I were getting ready for prom (though in the middle of winter), and every new location we went to prepare, I saw my mother die again. The dreams were unbearable. I didn't get a good night's sleep for weeks unless I was drinking, and I was drinking a lot.

After her burial service the great weight of anticipation was lifted, and I started to sleep, and breathe, and feel like myself again. I started dreaming about things that remind me of her, like orcas. Now, before I fall asleep, I hope that I dream of her. I hope that in the craziness of my subconscious I can access memories of her singing or laughing her ridiculous laugh, or trying to get me to divest her of the burden of her overflowing closets when I came to visit. When I go to sleep, I hope for any memories that aren't of us fighting, or of my guilt, or of her yellowed and dying in a hospital bed. I knew that nothing could prepare me for watching my mother die, for hearing her cry out in pain or in panic, for that terrible feeling between wanting her to hold on longer and wanting her to let go (because again, selfish). What I didn't realize was nothing could prepare me for the void that's left after the intense grief is gone. The terrible feeling that I don't have a mother. She is part of my past. She is part of the saga of the Before Morgan. And I'm living in the after.

Where do the memories of her belong, here in the after?

I first found out my mother was ill when I was preparing for the Saint Patrick's Day parade in Chattanooga. I took a picture of the sheet music to Carrickfergus and posted it on my Instagram somewhere between the rehearsals and the drinking to cope. Now, when I look back at that photo, there is a distinct feeling, a weight, of the girl I was before she got sick. It turns my stomach. I look at the photos from the days preceding that one, and I want to go back. Not only because I hate myself for not being better for my mother, but because I want to feel the innocence I didn't even know I had until it was gone. Growing up the way I did, innocent wasn't really a word I would use to describe myself. Now I look at those pictures, and long for the Before Morgan. The After Morgan still isn't sure how to function.

I don't know what to do with my hands.

As easily as I push the Mom File to the back of the brain cabinet, to try and forget it exists at all, I sometimes catch myself forgetting it doesn't. My mother, flawed human though she was, understood my extreme anxiety and paranoia in a way that no one else has. When it gets bad, I want to call her. When I get in the car to take a long trip, my immediate instinct is to call her and let her know I am on the way, then call her halfway, then when I reach my destination. I want to tell her about the guy I'm seeing, or about comedy, or work, or how wonderful and terrible it is to be almost 26 and almost completely in a different place than I thought I would be.

But six months later, acknowledging that gaping hole in who I am is just too much. So back into the Mom File, back into the back of the brain cabinet, while I try to function and carry on like I don't need her.

I thought when I moved out at fourteen, when I stopped talking to her at 18, when I stopped talking to her at 22, at 25...I thought I didn't need her anymore.

Do we ever stop needing our parents? Now, I'm not so sure. I think about losing my father or stepmother and the thought paralyzes me. More recently, I think of my mother's upcoming anniversary with my stepdad, and how I never even tried to be a daughter to him. Is there anything more arrogant than thinking you don't need the people who helped to raise you? Is there any worse way to treat family?

It is six months later and while I don't feel nearly as angry with her, I feel profoundly guilty. I think of all of the times I didn't call, not just on birthdays or Christmas or Easter or Thanksgiving, but when she would call just to say hello and I wouldn't call back...and I am overwhelmed with grief. Not for the woman I lost, but for the woman I hurt so deeply and profoundly for years because I wasn't a good enough person to forgive her. Worse still is the knowledge that for all of my guilt, for all of her flaws as a parent and as a person, I know in my heart of hearts she forgave every time I didn't call. And god, that makes it so much worse. I must have broke her heart every day and all I want to do is apologize and cry in her lap and beg her to forgive me, beg her to tell me I'm only human, hear her say that she loves me in spite of all of my flaws the way I only learned to love her after her death.

Six months later the details of her death are still in sharp focus if I don't push them down. In stark contrast is the memory of pieces of her all around the apartment, as if she would spring from the hospital bed in the living room and pick up right where she left off in her world. I can still see her handwriting on the notes held to the fridge with magnets, her signature, and I wonder how long ago it was she was still signing off on my permission slips and my daily planner, Nicole Rene Goodreau. I didn't realize it was possible to feel equal parts that child again and infinitely older. The Before Morgan and the After Morgan.

Six months later, I am no longer angry. Some of the time, I'm not anything. I'm throwing myself into work or into hobbies. But sometimes, when I bring the Mom File out from that dusty corner, I am deeply and profoundly sad in a way that passes my own comprehension. How does anyone know who they are without knowing where they came from? I'm not sure how to move forward knowing that she won't see me become an extraordinary person. I'm not sure if I can become anything more than this half empty version of me, the personification of aftermath, After Morgan.

Six months passed without consequence because I have focused on keeping my shoulder to the wheel to try and move forward. In another six months, I'm hoping I can slow down, let more memories in, and ultimately forgive myself the way I knew she forgave me. And wherever I am six six month spans from now, I hope I am a woman she would have been proud of, and that somehow, Before and After Morgan can bridge this gap.

Have you tried giving less of a shit?

I have a confession to make, and it's not really easy.

On any given day, at any given time, regardless of location or circumstance, I am convinced that everyone hates me.

This is not so much a matter of the seemingly ubiquitous LOW SELF ESTEEM that pervades polite millenial society, this is, in my brain of brains, complete fact.

Of course, this is not fact in the strictest sense as in "this is truth." It is fact in the way that this is how my brain processes all of my interactions. It's fact in the way the ravings of a lunatic are fact, meaning, fact only to them.

Obviously this gives me quite the struggle socially.

They didn't laugh at my joke? Must hate me.

Didn't invite me out for drinks? Must hate me.

Didn't book me on that show? (this one is the MOST FREQUENT AND MOST RIDICULOUS)

Must hate me.

Now, all this being said, I have a circle of close friends who I can usually rely on to keep me grounded and keep me from going off the deep end. However, there are certain venues that I won't go to them about, like stand up comedy.

I am firmly convinced that my stupid social paranoia is the reason I have a hard time making friends with and networking with comedians from other cities. In the same way I never got a date in high school with the boys I always had a crush on, I think it's this: My paranoia breeds utter desperation.

PLEASE LIKE ME. VALIDATE ME. TELL ME I'M PRETTY. TELL ME I'M FUNNY.

Which is just utter bullshit. I never got into stand up comedy because I wanted people to like me. I got into stand up comedy because I had an IUD put in and was a little bit drunk and on hydrocodone. Something stuck, and here I am. Stand up is something I love to do. Being good at things is also something I love to do. Stand up takes a lot of work! Rome wasn't built (or burned) in a day, and yet here I am, social paranoid playing the part of Nero, laughing and fiddling as I dig myself into hole after hole trying to figure out the playing field.

And I asked myself, recently...Morgan, have you tried giving less of a shit?

Have you thought about just writing what feels good to write, making people laugh because it feels good, and making friendships with comedians NOT because you want a leg up, but because you want advice from people who know WAY more than you?

Have you tried not giving a shit if they think you're annoying/attention seeking? Have you thought about maybe not giving a shit if they think your material is hack? Have you thought about not making everything a competition and celebrating other people's successes instead of being depressed that it's coming along sometimes more slowly for you personally?

Have you thought about fucking relaxing and realizing no one wants you to fail and no one expects it but YOU?

I'm realizing that if I could just give less of a shit about the petty, the unrealistic, and the imaginary, I'd be having a WAY better time. Because I didn't start doing comedy because I wanted people to like me, but I have made several wonderful friendships because of comedy. I started doing comedy because I have things to say, and the world is so absurd, wouldn't it be wonderful if I could share that absurdity with other like minded folks? I started doing comedy because once I started, it became as addictive as that hydrocodone the day I did my first 5 minutes at JJs.

I have SO much to learn. I am only a little over a year in. I am thankful as hell for the opportunities I've had to perform both in Chattanooga and out of town. I am thankful as hell for the support and the advice of the many more talented individuals I have met who do this every day. I am thankful for all of the missed opportunities that will eventually make me better. I'm thankful to be in a community of comedians who didn't question when I took time off after my mother died, and who welcomed me back with excitement. Anything else is just my stupid paranoid idiotic overanalytical brain.

Bookings will come if you put the work in. No one owes you shit except yourself: you owe it to yourself to put in the work. It's not that they don't like you. Maybe you're not ready. Maybe it's not the right show for you or the right time. Head down, shut up, keep working.

So here is the goal: Give less of a shit about everyone else; their opinions of me, their opinions of my material, or the imaginary bullshit world I create where everyone hates me.

Stop dwelling on things that are most likely untrue, and just WRITE. Make people laugh. Take myself less seriously. And do the thing for the sake of the thing: I love to make people laugh.

Give MORE of a shit about the time you spend writing. Give more of a shit about new ways to approach old subjects. Give more of a shit about putting the gruntwork in.

I want to directly apologize to anyone, even outside of comedy, that I've been a weird ass to. I swear it's because in my brain, you hate me for existing, or for wearing the wrong shade of lipstick, or for complimenting your outfit, or for liking too many of your statuses on Facebook.

Here's to moving forward, and giving less of a shit.

Dear Mom

If you were still alive, I probably would not have called you today.

I'm not sure I called you last year to wish you a happy Mother's Day. I'm not entirely sure what I was doing, but I'm sure it involved avoiding speaking to you.

I've spent a lot of this afternoon looking at old pictures of you and regretting the fact that there are no pictures, at least in my possession, of me as an adult with you.

Five years is a long time to not see your mother. The longer it went, the easier it was to pretend I didn't really have a mother. There was so much pain and so much hurt, and it all kept getting dredged up over and over again. Like raking the bottom of the ocean for salvage from a shipwreck.

This time last year, give or take a few months, I sat in my room and cried for the mother I had lost, the mother I wanted, the mother I missed. I never called to talk to you about it, Mom. I never called to tell you I needed you still. Everything fell apart for you again that summer,and I tried to help as best I could, but it's hard to cross thousands of miles on a phone line, and even harder to cross years of resentment.

Looking at these old pictures of you, I see glimpses of who you were as a young mother. You were a beauty that I still feel I can't compete with or emulate. There was a certain level of shyness in your pictures, as well. I really don't think you ever knew how beautiful you really were. There are pictures of you singing, pictures of you with your sisters, and at your wedding to my father.

You didn't know this, but I asked grandma to send me pictures of you after I got home from Michigan last summer. I sat at her kitchen table and pored over huge photo albums, trying to get to know my mother who had essentially been a stranger to me my whole life.

You and I never talked. Not really. I have a skeleton of knowledge about you. All I have are memories of you up in the middle of the night to make instant rice, or toast. Memories of your morning routine when you meticulously applied your makeup, Memories of you twisting and pulling my curly blonde hair until I thought my head would fall apart. Us singing to Jordan on the way to daycare so she would sleep. Christmases and birthdays and homecoming games. Memories of every fight and every screaming match.

I remember leaving your house when I was fourteen and knowing I was doing the right thing, but knowing I was killing you. I'm worried you never really recovered from that. And then I did you one worse, and moved to Tennessee for college. I lived this whole life separate from having a mother. And then you moved to California.

When you told me you were moving out there, I cried with you on the phone. I was convinced I would never see you again. It was so far away, I said. I wanted to come visit, but the money was never there. The last time I saw you in good health, I was twenty years old and at my sister's college graduation. You were drunk and pulled me into the spare bedroom and asked me to drink wine with you. I said Dad wouldn't let me because I wasn't 21 yet, and you said "I think I can have a glass of wine with my daughter." You said some awkward things to Dad that night. The whole situation was very uncomfortable for me. I honestly don't remember saying goodbye to you. And that was the last time I saw you until you were yellow and withered in a hospice bed.

Mom, there is so much I wanted you to know about me. That I'm overcoming my anxiety problems, and that I still struggle with body image every day and will always need your help with that. I wanted you to know I have the best and most sincere group of friends who have made me their family. I started doing stand up comedy. I'm kicking ass at my job. My hair has been every color of the rainbow since I was twenty.

Remember when I was in the Walgreen's waiting on my antibiotics and you asked me to send you a selfie? You said that you hadn't seen me in so long, and you wanted to know what I looked like.

You couldn't attend my college graduation because you had just gotten diagnosed with liver cirrhosis, and the money wasn't there, also. I know how proud you were of me, that I finished, especially after everything I had been going through in college.

It breaks my heart that you never got to hear me perform my senior recital, or hear that I had gotten much better at guitar than I was in high school.

I'm sorry I was a distant and awful daughter, Mom. Looking at these pictures of you, I want so badly to know you. I want to reverse time and take back all of the moments I missed. Take back all of the fights. Gosh, death makes things so clear.

You always apologized for being a bad mother, but I know now you did the best you could with what you were given. We all make choices, Mom. And as I sat next to your bed in California, watching you go, wishing I could hear you yell at me one more time, I learned the real meaning of forgiveness.

Thank you for using your every breath to teach me, right down to your last one.

I miss you in a way that defies description. It hits me at strange times. Like when I'm working Nightfall, and it'ss o crowded, and I get anxious, and I remember how you hated crowds. But you never met a stranger. Or when certain songs come on that I forgot you even loved until they're playing at work and I suddenly can't breathe for missing you.

I'm sorry I ever yelled at you for not learning time zones because I would give anything to hear your voice at 2 AM on a Monday night again.

I'm so sorry I wasn't a better daughter to you and I let things get in the way of our relationship. I always said that I would never have a relationship with my mother. I'm sorry, and I should have tried harder.

I wish that I could know for sure you knew all of these things when you went, but you know I haven't been a spiritual person for years. Maybe writing them makes me feel better. Maybe in some way these words find their way through some sort of ether. I doubt that.

If you were still alive, I probably wouldn't have called you today. So thank you, Mom, finally...for giving me an experience that ensures I will never take another relationship for granted again. I thought we had more time to fix things. I'm so sorry that we didn't.

I love you.

Morgan.

On my trip to California

On Friday, March the 25th of 2016, my mother drew her last breath. She was exactly two months from her fiftieth birthday.

Nothing feels real right now except that I was not ready. I am not ready.

The last time my mother and I had a lucid conversation was Tuesday the 15th, when she told me that her prognosis was six months at best. I told her I loved her and promised I would call every day until I got to California. I had meant to call that evening, but found I couldn't force myself. I wasn't ready to talk.

She didn't have six months. She didn't even have a month. Funny, as she was so worried about turning 50 and being "old". I'd give anything to have her be old.

I would love to say her illness came as a shock to me. In some ways, news of that gravity is always shocking. I her case, I should say it wasn't surprising. My mother had been a drinker for a long time, and she had been sad for even longer. She was diagnosed with liver cirrhosis two years ago. Apparently, they had given her a prognosis at that time. She never told me how sick she really was, and me, without a medical degree. I thought I had more time to be her daughter, and I just wasn't ready to forgive her.

I would also love to say that my mother and I were close, but we weren't. My childhood...growing up with her for a mother...it was a challenge at best. Things were so bad I eventually moved in with my father at the age of fourteen. My mother and I hardly spoke until I was sixteen, when I would pay her the cursory visit which most often was a poorly disguised attempt to see my friends from my old school.  She would tell me to go have fun, and she would see me later. When I would leave to return to my life downstate, she would cry. She would apologize for everything, and she would cry. My mom cried at everything. I suppose I get that from her.

We had tried several times to mend what had been broken, most recently last spring. But then, again, some of her choices made it difficult to talk to her. And so this summer, I cut off communication again. I had every intention of reaching out to her again. When I was ready. I wasn't ready to forgive her yet. So we engaged in the compulsory conversations...my birthday, when she accidentally came clean on a lie...Christmas, when I promised I would call her back, and didn't.

I wasn't ready to talk.

When I walked into my mother's apartment last Saturday, my beautiful mother was sleeping in a hospital bed in her living room. Her thick, beautiful dark hair laid limp on her head. Her skin was a color yellow I can't even describe. Her breathing was ragged. My grandmother woke her up, and despite her morphine induced haze, her eyes locked with mine.

In that moment, I regretted every needing to be ready to have a conversation with her. In that moment, she was not my estranged mother. She was the mother who would burst into random song. She was the mother who encouraged me to sing, even when the kids in middle school told me I wasn't any good. She was the mother who was made of smiles and an infectious laugh. The brilliant woman who was so close to earning her doctorate. The woman who danced with her sisters at her youngest sister's wedding. The mother who reprimanded a boy for giving me an extremely visible hickey the day of my older sister's graduation. The woman who ended every phone call by telling me how proud she was of me.

I locked eyes with this woman and felt all of the air go out of my body. It was as if my heart stopped. Because as ready as I wasn't to speak to her, I was even less ready to never have that option. To never have my phone ring a million times after midnight because she never figured out time zones. To never call her when I had an anxiety attack I couldn't shake. I wasn't ready for her to go. I wanted her to see me get my graduate degree and eventually my doctorate. Maybe get married. And in that moment, as I acknowledged my fear of losing her, I realized I had been losing her for years.

Losing my mother is a two fold grief because I am not only grieving the woman, I am grieving my lost chance to have a relationship with her. The relationship that I could have had. I am filled with regret. Regret for leaving her, regret for not keeping in better touch, for not asking her about her life. For being so angry. My family keeps telling me that I did what anyone would do in my circumstance. I had to do what was best for me. I had to survive. But all of the logic in the world, all of the rationalization, cannot make me stop feeling this deep regret.

Watching a parent die is the ultimate reminder of their humanity. My mother was not superwoman. She was just a woman with two kids and a broken marriage at the age of 25 who tried to pick up the pieces. A woman with a mental disorder, a pain condition, and later, a serious addiction.

It could happen to any of us. It could happen to me. I wish I had realized this before it was too late to repair what I had been unwilling to repair.

I held my mother's hand and told her I loved her. She told me she loved me.

In the days that followed I had to help my beautiful, brilliant, strong mother drink water droplets from a straw as she looked up at me with miserable and yellowed eyes. I heard her cry out that she couldn't breathe. I helped give her medication to ease her pain and her anxiety. I watched her become less and less lucid until all she did was sleep. I sang to her, songs that we used to sing together to my baby sister. And I held her hand some more.

While I was not in the room with her when she left us, I watched part of her death.

Part of me feels at peace because I told her everything I needed to tell her. I feel at peace because she had everyone around her who loved her when she went. I feel at peace because my mother loved living in California, and I know she would have loved to see my eyes light up when I saw the Pacific for the first time. My stepfather and I have started to repair our relationship, which is something she always wanted. I feel at peace because she isn't haunted by her addiction or her feelings of inadequacy or her sadness anymore.

But I grieve, and I grieve deeply.

Several months ago, I was caught in a deep bout of depression myself. As I lay in bed crying the silent tears that fall without reason (my favorite symptom of the condition) I thought to myself, "I miss my mom." I hadn't felt that feeling in several years. I had convinced myself I didn't need a mother. And that day I convinced myself again that I didn't need her. So I didn't call.

I've saved all of her voicemails so that I don't lose the sound of her voice. I'm choosing to remember her in her happy times so I can see her smile in my mind's eye and hear her laughter.

I am grieving deeply, but it hasn't really hit me yet. My grandmother wants me to sing at her memorial this summer. I am just happy I got to sing to her before she died.

The point of this, I suppose, is for me to process. But also to say thank you to her. I had a hard life. My mother chose hard paths and they affected all of us.

But thank you, Mom. Thank you for making me strong and intelligent. Thank you for making me powerful. For always teaching me. And for teaching me forgiveness in your final moments.

I left my mother's house the evening before she died. Though she was asleep, I held her hand, kissed her forehead, and said I loved her.

I said I would see her again someday.

I haven't been religious for years, but when I said that, I know I spoke truth.

I will miss her forever.