GUESTO, it's just grief . . .

1,555 days ago and it feels like I'm just grieving for the first time

Sobbing, fairly uncontrollably, but why would I want to control it?

Mi madre was a Scorpio who knew the depth of emotion. My padre had to constantly ask her, “What’s a feeling?” They both tried to control everything in order to create a life worth living. They did that and gave me that life.

I’m that exact mix.

My mother was a classy lady. Katie, who cut her hair, was mad at me she wasn’t called to drive from Corona Del Mar to cut mom’s hair. My mother never had a ponytail on top of her head at any other time during our days on earth, AKA this incarnation we shared together, or unkempt nails either. My mother was loyal. After I introduced her to Katie, my friend from the early 90s, my mom only let Katie cut her hair.

March 11th. Day before UNIVERSAL-INTERNATIONAL lock-down in Long Beach. Until the day, BELTANE when she departed on 5/1/2020, she kept that 99-Cent purple heart pillow with her at all times. Her attachment to that pillow said more to me than the videos I have of her staring into the camera, seeming to not comprehend I loved her or we were in a lockdown, that I could no longer come to see her, hold her, kiss her, or massage her anymore. I’ve had the pillow with me ever since she no longer needed it where she was going. I gave it to her when her worst days were starting. She needed her own Purple Heart.

Now, because of my nerve damage due to shingles I allowed to set in too deeply before seeking help, in October 2021, I use that pillow on right side of the back of my head/neck that doesn’t get irritated by other pillows, collars, necklaces, etc… Before I’m ready to turn out the lights, when I’m reading in bed, it rests on my tummy like it rested on hers.

AND she chose an awesome day to go!

I don’t remember what I was looking for in iPhoto when I got stuck on these last weeks of hers (oh the wondrous wave of unexpected grieving). I have pictures up close of her bruises. Of course, up close, they look like hearts. As much as she tried to be appropriate in each moment, there are some parts of our psyche that can’t keep hidden how we truly feel.

Of course, up close

they look like hearts

I’ll keep this short. Not because life is short and then you die. I don’t believe that. Not because I don’t have more to say. Not because love, mortality, or communication are unimportant subjects and hard to share.

Part of my upcoming assignment is to focus on providing tighter pieces. Not the whole box of See’s in one sitting, but that personal (piece) preference, savored slowly with appreciative delight, not nauseating overwhelm.

I’d like to put other pictures or videos up that got me sobbing, but this is enough. This isn’t show and tell.

Ok. Just one more. Her undying gaze is still with me, with all the depth, acceptance, immense respect and immaculate love we got to experience together as mother and daughter after great effort to work out our differences, conflicting emotions, thought patterns, and expectations of what life is or should be about.

if she wouldn’t appreciate me posting these pictures but hopefully, when we meet again, she’ll remember how many other pictures I’ve posted of her class and effort to share the good life with me, and thee.

Living and expressing. Mom always asked if I’d written anything new and could I read it to her? After I read it to her she’d always say, “What do I always tell you? KEEP WRITING!”

A skirt made for a 1952 college sorority dance, pleated by mom’s paternal grandfather Louis or Samuel (Mischka) Issickman born in Ukraine, who’d been in a Siberian political prison for years.

The L in Louis became Lisa on 12/13/59. He passed in January of that year.

mom’s printing in one of my favorite colors, chocolate, on her family tree

See, perhaps all of this I should edit out… but in that skirt was the last happiest picture I have of her, and that skirt is still in my closet. Not that I can wear it. Perhaps if I cry all my tears instead of constantly stopping the process maybe one day I’ll be able to fit into this Mischka miracle skirt of mi madre’s!